Ehsan Behmanesh

This installation consists of a forty-page ring bound booklet, featuring a variety of manipulated art and exhibition flyers, sourced from The Hague, alongside a mural image made by the remaining pieces of the same flyers after being used as stencils. The work is a collaboration with another artist, Arefeh Riahi, and began with a large collection of exhibition flyers, which we turned into graffiti-inspired stencils, aiming to distance the images from their initial identity and remove what could be perceived as their function and message. The title of the work In de Galerij, which was sprayed on the wall and has been part of the installation, was itself extracted from one of the flyers, which was an exhibition running concurrent to the one wherein this work was shown. The work was made specifically for the exhibition ‘Exit Gemak: All Art is Political’, the closing event of the project space Gemak. Gemak was a foundation that had run for 68 years; its closure had provoked much debate within The Hague’s art scene, specifically concerned with the power (or lack thereof) held by artistic institutions.

part of installation

This project consists of booklets bound/punch in different and specific ways in the size of A4. They are to be placed in public spaces like stations, trams and buses, book stores, libraries, newspaper kiosks, outside galleries, supermarkets and shops for people to take for free. The three samples that have been made are about communication, information exchange and language. The ideal form of this project should be collective, made by a group of artists, specifically local and non-mainstream artists. Beside the experience of departing from common forms of art presentation and eliminating the mediators of such presentations, namely museums, galleries, and other institutions, this project provides an opportunity for artists to present playful experiences and thus reveals an aesthetic and taste that is less familiar to the society.

In this project I recorded a stereo sound of the wheels of a suitcase being rolled on the ground, through two contact microphones which have been places on each of the wheels. In four routes, between eight points. My attention and engagement to this sound lies within the experience of several trips and temporary residences outside the city/country where I grew up, an experience that is common among many people of my generation, my colleagues, and also (by force) my middle eastern-mates. This sound is almost an imposed music that the traveller negligibly affects through the choice of route, the speed of movement, listening (paying attention) and calling it “music”. This suitcase is a musical instrument for which departure, destination and texture of route are parts of it. This instrument is being played with the whole body, with two different sounds of the two wheels for two ears. Despite the desire I have for producing this sound, when I used to carry a suitcase in trips it always made me uncomfortable for the noticeable sound that draws attentions and announces that I don’t belong there, an alien. The alienation that accompanies me even in the city where I born, home.

This is a map of my 1-2 years journey in a place that cannot be named a "land", let alone a “wonder”. A playful, horizontal, vast, non-linear route that passes through various areas in continental philosophy and sciences, and its goal is not to reach a destination in the shortest time, or by spending the least amount of energy, rather it is seeking to rhizomatically study the relations of contemporary “human” species (individual and social), along with all that is in its surrounding as the universe or multiverse. This project began with the practical experience of rhizomatic study. The outcome is an installation with four separated, joined parts. Crow: A crow’s corpse hanging upside down with one leg from a tree branch, right in front of my studio’s window, in first days of this project. It had been hanging there for a year. In addition, the map of the corvus constellation printed on a transparent paper. Flip books: Four 365-paged flip books with each page showing a map of planets and stars in the south sky of Den Haag with four different speeds; an image in every minute, every hour, at a certain time of every day and every year. S(Hi)tory: Four story-histories related to my residence in the city of Den Haag and my relationship with crow.

part of installation (flip books)

In the education system of zen, kōans are raised for thinking, not for answering. They usually challenge the axioms. When the master of zen, standing upon the bridge, asks “is the bridge flowing or the river?”, he challenges the moment of “now” and the place of presence (here). This project was produced through a residency, based in Linz and a group exhibition with the themes 'expand, explore, expose' within the context of the city. I collected 13 different samples from the water of the Danube, from 13 cities alongside the river (from headstream until the end of the river), and I put the sample taken from the city of Linz into circulation, along with air bubbles, in a closed circle of a transparent pipe, shaped as the Danube in Linz. This project can be done with other long rivers, but the Danube, as the second longest river in Europe that flows from west to east (from the Black Forest to the Black Sea), adds a specific content to the project.

part of installation

These collections were made in a group research on collecting. In a group of four, each person made a collection of objects for the other three, and then the collecting methods of each collection were theoretically compared with each others. I made each of these collections for one person, based on the online information for that person and through a long process where the act of collecting has been considered in every step. For the first step, I chose one of the various chain second hand stores, which is full of objects that have already been selected twice. I chose a section for each person and collected three items from each section; second hand utensils, books and TV remote controls. In different ways I divided each of the objects into several pieces and then I recollected three final pieces for each person.

This photo installation in four sheets is produced as consequence of my study of interviews with Michel Foucault, specially the one in Lomond (1980), titled The Masked Philosopher, in addition to my roaming in the city of Linz during a residency. Usually, reading a series of interviews exposes the reader to different aspects of the interviewee’s thought. But in this project my concern has been more subjects of power, control, discipline and sexuality. For me, the study of a text (if I find it interesting) does not happen during the reading, but rather in the following days, when I find connections between many things or events with the subject of the study -- the way a cashier treat the customer, a mother with a baby carriage in tram, traffic signs or news.