Pages #1: Public & Private

Pages #1, FEBRUARY 2004

News and the press in Iran are an important part of everyday life, a part of the private and public life of every citizen. There are more than 50 newspapers and other publications distributed every day in the streets of major cities. One may no longer see the same titles one would have found a few years ago on the shelves of the newsstands, but new titles always appear to fill in the gaps on the shelf. (What is interesting is that the press itself has become an important part of the news…) The large quantity of dailies, weeklies or periodicals says a lot about the intensified tendency to address social and political issues. This clearly reflects a gradual social move away from predefined codes and representations, toward the acceptance of a profound cultural difference and a diversified subjectivity. As a public domain where news, opinions and dialogues are circulated, the press has led a turbulent and a fragmentary life. Because of the juridical and political confusion the press is facing, the circulation of these dialogues and opinions remain rather short-lived and often inconsistent. And this has intensified the social and political agitation in Iran, where discordant and transitory discourses of representations have come to coexist.

On the other hand, the overall sociopolitical climate in Iran undermines any attempt to construct or implement consistent or even stereotypical cultural representations, either from inside or outside. However, attempts are still being made to suggest a homogeneous state of affairs, either by the traditionalists in Iran or by certain cultural agents in the West, in order to promote simplified representations that address “cultural localities” and “difference” in a “global world.” These misreadings, especially by onlookers from the West, tend to reduce those narratives of difference and discord (which profoundly define the cultural condition) to irrelevancy. In both cases we are dealing with a process of projective subjectivization, by means of which the -traditionalist and/or the Western- onlooker (presup)poses the existence of a symbolic network with which he can identify, though it may or may not be relevant to reality. In other words he designates a determinate subject position for himself through the projection of narratives other than those of the real, which always involve differentiation and dissonance.

Pages is an attempt to communicate these existing narratives. Rooted more in the context of visual arts, this periodical tries to function as a platform for exchanging thoughts and artistic projects reflecting on the sociopolitical currents in Iran and elsewhere. For its first issue, Pages will address the subject of public and private in Iran, in terms of space, appearance and activity. Through the contributions of different authors, it aims to approach different representations of public and private in cinema, photography, theater and architecture.
It is hoped that the publication of this periodical will be continuous and that in its later issues it will include contributions of non-Iranian writers and artists, so as to widen its territories of exchange and dialogue.

Contributors to Issue 1:
Farzaneh Khademian
Masserat Amir Ebrahimi
Ayat Najafi
Kianoosh Vahabi
Atoosa Afshin Navid
Babak Afrassiabi
Saeideh Akbari
Kiarash Anvari
Bahman Kiarostami
Lisa Hassanzadeh
Akram Mahmoudian