Digital Space and Feminist Politics in Iran: Archival Methodologies of Sound
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Screenshot from the sound piece Woman, Life,
Freedom: The Sounds of A Revolution (2023), produced
by Mahsa Alami Fariman, Ahmadreza Hakiminejad, and Duncan Whitley. |
Digital Space and Feminist Politics in Iran: Archival Methodologies of Sound
By Mahsa Alami
Fariman & Ahmadreza Hakiminejad
Synopsis
In the light of the recent women-led mobilisations in Iran which have mushroomed after the state killing of a 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman, Mahsa Jina Amini, we, the authors, in collaboration with British filmmaker and sound artist Duncan Whitley, have co-produced a multi-media sound work, entitled ‘Woman, Life, Freedom; The Sounds of A Revolution’, tries to depict the Iranian women’s struggle against the tyrannical establishment of the Iranian regime since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. In so doing, eleven sounds –which are part of a larger archive– have been extracted from the recordings of the 1979, 2009, 2021 and the 2022 protests, shared on social media from within Iran. Sounds are accompanied by texts which situates the sounds within their historic, geographic and political contexts. Through screening this work, and in reflecting on the interface between the digital and sonic geographies of the Woman, Life, Freedom mobilisations, we tend to answer the following questions: how did we approach the making of this sound-piece (feminist methodologies of care and resistance); what did our creative piece set out to explore (the sensory, digital and archival methodologies); what our findings were (production of a sensory-digital space from historic and contemporary witness recordings of the protests generated and shared via social media).
The soundpiece
The sound work can be watched here: [click on the image below]
Screenings
The work was first screened in Coventry, UK in May 2023 as part of a public event entitled Woman, Life, Freedom: The Sounds of A Revolution, also co-ordinated by the authors.
- Coventry Cathedral, 20th May 2024, 18:00-20:00 BST.
It was also screened earlier this year in Honolulu, Hawai'i at AAG Shorts 2024, co-organised by Film Geographies and American Association of Geographers.