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18/4/2013

The Flag: Instruction Manual # 2

Sazmanab Platform for Contemporary Arts, Tehran

Sazmanab is proud to present The Flag: Instruction Manual # 2, a collaboration between London based artist Carlos Noronha Feio, curator Daria Kirsanova and Tehran based curator Sohrab Kashani. This exhibition is the second interpretation of the project started as a performance/event entitled Instruction Manual Number One: Washing the Flags for a Peaceful Revolution in Vienna, December 2011. Conceived by Carlos Noronha Feio, the work is a multimedia performance conducted via Internet that also includes an actual physical action/performance in the gallery space. The conceptual core of this project is constructed utilising the protest action ‘Lava la bandera’ (Wash the flag) by Colectivo Sociedad Civil, but it is also rooted in the proposal by the socialist American politician Norman Thomas who called for an alternative to the burning of the flag during the Vietnam War, a silent (non violent) protest -a washing of the flag.

The project presents a matrix, modular flexible conceptual construction that can be shaped according to specific concerns relevant to the place where it is performed. This unusual structure operates on multiple layers of meaning and references. The most obvious reading would be to look at the project in light of the notions of authority and authorship. Yet, it is much broader in its critique. The use of Internet here, for example, is an attempt to construct multiple layers of detachment and separation within the cyber space. This action aims to create a distance, a conceptual detachment from the actual geographical locations of either participants of the action/performance. Through this abstraction Noronha Feio seeks to transcend well-known post-colonial theory concepts of ‘centre’ and ‘periphery’ of cultural production. Noronha Feio’s practice is operating within the so-called post post-colonial theoretical field. He is opening spaces for an assumption that equality is a certainty and that constructed social environments have to be respected but not at the expense of creation of division. He is as an example, defending ideas as borderlessness.

The Flag: Instruction Manual # 2 is the result of months of exchanging ideas, where the artist’s perspective and knowledge related to the previous event has been transformed by all three intervenients. It is not just a one off performance, but a two-week exhibition that includes: sculptural objects – flag and bucket; a video – documentation of the process of making of the flag and a series of video instructions in English, Portuguese, Russian and Persian.

Sazmanab will host two collateral events during the course of the exhibition:

- 26 April 2013: Screening of a documentary AGAINST THE GRAIN: An Artist’s Survival Guide to Peru by Ann Kaneko (2008) color, 65 mins.
- 1 May 2013: Carlos Noronha Feio in conversation with Daria Kirsanova and the audience at Sazmanab. The event is conducted via Internet from London.

Open Call

As part of the exhibition a book will be assembled, this work will be composed of archival information of the making of the exhibition, as well as being open to information gathered by the spectators and other collaborators. Information on the original action as well as other manifestations of the same or different actions with the same end game: a re-empowerment of the individual in relation to the state apparatus. To this effect we are here calling for your contribution. Contributions will be accepted in any manifestation that is possible to put down in a piece of paper ( i.e: essays, found, poetry, comments, photo, code, collage, etc…)

Please send your contribution via email to info@sazmanab.org.
by post to #2, No. 99, Pardis St., Ariafar St., Sazman-e ab St., Sheikh Fazlolah Nouri Hwy., Tehran, Iran.
or drop them by the gallery.

A pdf and print on demand book will be compiled and placed on the Sazmanab website at the end of the show.

Sazmanab is an independent non-profit art space in Iran established in 2009. Sazmanab supports artistic work in a wide range of media through exhibitions and events, Sazmanab is a not-for-profit organization that presents contemporary art, artists and ideas through exceptional programming for diverse audiences. Our successes are powered by you. Sazmanab operates on public donations.

Opening: 19th of April 4-8 pm (Tehran Time)

Sazmanab Platform for Contemporary Arts
#2, No. 99, Pardis St., Ariafar St., Sazman-e ab St., Sheikh Fazlolah Nouri Hwy., Tehran, Iran
Opening Hours: 4-8 pm
Admission to Sazmanab is free.
1-5 dollar (equivalent to 40000-200000 rials) donation is suggested.

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