Journal articles on the topic 'Iranian Contemporary Art'

Today, letter design is no longer just a way to convey information, its visual and structural features is not limited to a particular aspect of visual language, in addition, the design of letters is a method that is always influenced by the content and thought, it is placed in different cultural and social conditions and reflected in unlimited aesthetic forms. Situation that occurs with Iranian literature that owes its value to the writings and the words. On the other hand, in the field of art, especially the art of letter design, it is this writing that plays the central role. Almost more than a century ago, new and modern phenomena slowly came to Iran, and Iranian artists began to use modern art. What is gleaned from the research is the introduction of typography as a powerful and usable tool not only in the international community but also as an art of communication on the Iranian border and examining its most important function; visual communication and the transfer of information and content. It is also discovered how the forms of typography evolve and its impact on contemporary Iranian art. The descriptive research work was carried out through the process of reviewing and collecting information from the library documents.

A student essay for the Special Student Issue of the Journal of Extreme Anthropology accompanying the art exhibition 'Artist's Waste, Wasted Artists', which opened in Vienna on the 19th of September 2017 and was curated by the students of social anthropology at the University of Vienna. This essay deals critically with the notion of the 'global art world', showing that there may instead be numerous self-centred and ethnocentric art worlds, while also critically engaging with inequalities that persist within and across these art worlds and markets. In this respect it also deals with the work of the Iranian artist Aria Vooria, based in Vienna, and his struggle to escape streotypizations across different art worlds.

AbstractThis article analyzes the dominant dichotomy in cultural and artistic ideas which Iranian artists—like many non-Euro-American artists—have been forced to confront. These include the idea of 'contemporaneity': being imbued with the 'spirit of the time', particularly dominant in the minds of the so-called 'Third Generation'; 1 and 'specificity', an underlying precept of compelling force. The first involves the idea that 'postmodernist' imagery is one of fragmentation and hybridization—the scattering of traditions and the recombination of their diverse elements (see Campbell 1999: 5). The second refers to the ever-present obsession with cultural and frequently social concerns with which Iranian artists are engaged, both within the country and across the diaspora. Contemporary debate on Iranian art reveals deep-rooted anxieties about national and cultural identity. It raises the important question: Is it possible to open up an art practice and discourse that is both contemporary and global, but also indigenous and specific? While this work reflects my own observations, it also relies heavily on the analysis offered in interviews with artists, philosophers, critics, curators and some former administrators in artistic affairs. It finally focuses on four artists through a study of their works and ideas about the aforementioned issues.

By changing the approach of modern art from the middle of the twentieth century to attention to conceptual art, art exhibitions became a spiritual movement that could provide different ways of shaping society. At the same time, the Curator becomes mediator between art and its audience. Victoria D Alexander considers the quality and impact of art on audiences in today's world dependent on distribution systems by presenting a "Better Culture Diamond" based on Wendy Griswold's Crystal Diamond Design. In this analytic-descriptive study, its data were collected through library studies, field research and interviews, while highlighting the importance of Curator as an important part in the art distribution system by examining two Curatorial projects names "Vali Asr-First Folder" and "Yousef Abad" have come to the conclusion that contemporary Curator in Iran represent the social role of art and seek to redefine social concepts such as "urban identity" through Curatorial projects. Keywords: Curator, Contemporary Iranian Art, Cultural Diamond, Urban Identity, Identity Crisis

In recent decades, there has been increasing interest in including the spirit­ual dimension in artistic practice and in discourse on art. This phenomenon seems to be universal but is definitely not homogenic. I examine it by referring to meaningful examples of abstract paintings from different cultural and reli­gious backgrounds. I analyze artworks by two contemporary bicultural paint­ers: the American-Japanese artist, Makoto Fujimura, and American-Iranian artist, Yari Ostovany. The Polish non-figurative artist Tadeusz G. Wiktor is also considered. Their oeuvre can be set within the larger context of great reli­gious and spiritual traditions. I stress the influence of Oriental legacy in con­temporary examples of abstract art. I investigate how the selected artworks refer to an invisible reality, and I focus especially on the silence they evoke. My aim is to show how contemporary non-figurative art can influence the viewer by creating a contemplative experience. I also place the selected artworks in the theoretical contexts presented by the artists themselves and refer to classi­cal and contemporary texts.

Abstract In September 2013 the Iranian authorities inaugurated the Holy Defense Museum (Muzeh-i Dafa’-i Moqaddas) in the capital Tehran that also hosts a Martyrs’ Museum (Muzeh-i Shuhada) built in the early 1980s and later renovated. The new museum is part of a grandiose project to commemorate the sacrifice of Iranians during the war provoked by the Iraqi regime (1980–1988). The museum encompasses various aspects of the arts (visual, cinematic, photographic, literary, etc.) shaped to remember and celebrate the martyrs of that war. The 1979 Iranian Revolution and the following Iran-Iraq War produced an enormous amount of visual material; works produced during this crucial period that disrupted the balance of power, both regionally and internationally, constitute an important part of Iran’s recent history. Visual materials produced in that period not only constitute a collective graphic memory of those traumatic years, they also revolutionized Iranian aesthetics. The Islamic Republic of Iran (hereafter IRI) establishment has a long experience in molding contemporary art for political purposes and the Holy Defense Museum represents the zenith of this imposing project. In this paper, I present an analytic and descriptive reading of the museum in light of my direct experience visiting the museum, and I explore its role in maintaining the collective memory of the Iran-Iraq conflict, in celebrating the revolution and in aestheticizing war.

After industrial revolution many of visionaries deal with technology in underdeveloped communities; but dealing with technology did not lead to preserving identity and culture in cities and caused unconsidered deployment of technology for response to construction needs and made environmental damages. Today, the lack of attention to the cultural aspects of the architecture in developing countries is become a common issue .This despite the fact that many of these countries, such as Iran, have rich culture and glorious history in art, engineering and architecture. So, extensive study on Iranian Traditional architecture and its technologic solutions to solve ecological issues in a cultural context have been carried out. This paper aims to find how technology and ecology were influenced by Iranian culture and how come together in contemporary architecture. This investigation was carried out based on library and field studies. Here, the concept of sustainability and position of ecology, technology and culture in it, Relationship between culture and eco-tech architecture in developing countries will be explained. Then, Iranian traditional architecture and its eco-technologic solutions in a cultural context will be discussed.

Abstract This article examines the works of the Iranian contemporary artist, Ghazaleh Hedayat. It argues that her turn from figural representation to nonfigural abstraction and consequently to what Laura Marks has called “haptic visuality” demonstrates a careful and systematic aesthetic strategy that attempts to confront and at times even exit representation. It shows that Hedayat's works since the early 2010s offer an affective approach to feminism in contemporary Iranian art that doesn't hinge on representational modes of expression, which are often susceptible to assimilation into identitarian narratives and inadvertently complicit in various forms of marginalization (gender, ethnic, etc.). Hedayat's affective feminism not only complicates clichéd interpretations of her work as a non-Western woman, but it also materializes a new form of knowledge more in tune with feminism. Focusing on the female body as a site of pain, friction, tension, love, maternality, and, more significantly, as a site where self and its other—both in terms of gender and ethnicity—encounter each other, Hedayat undermines visibility by way of pushing it across the borders of sight into the realms of visuality, haptic experience, and proprioception.

The article is devoted to the artistic legacy of Merited Artist of the Republic of Bashkortostan Talgat Masalimov — painter, graphic artist and master of decorative applied art. his work is examined in the article in the context of the processes taking place in the contemporary visual arts, marked with an exploration of new plastic means. The authors regard the legacy of Masalimov as a vivid example of the simultaneous influence of folk art, its symbolism and graphic structure, Eastern (Turkic) traditions and those of the Russian avant-garde with its aspiration towards primitive, laconic, conditional forms. The article cites examples among works of the artist created in the technique of graphics, pastel and artistic felt. At the core of the creation of these works lies the knowledge of principles of construction of the composition and depictive techniques characteristic for the Russian avant-garde and Early Russian icon-painting and Iranian miniatures, with an absence of direct associations with any concrete epoch or artistic direction. The authors see in the work of the artist a vivid example of the preservation and expansion of the heritage of the past, its development and enrichment by means of contemporary plastic arts.

Composed in 10th and 11th centuryce, theShāhnāmeh(The Book of the Kings) contains Iranian ancient history since the first king, Gayumart/Kayumars, up to the end of Sasanian era. One reason behind its popularity is the poet’s method and art in describing and explaining ancient religious elements in such a way that it does not cause religious bias among Zoroastrians and Muslims. This article shows that Ferdowsi has employed various methods to read religious issues of ancient Iran in the light of the social, cultural, and religious spirit of his own time. In his epic narratives, Ferdowsi paid serious attention to contemporary beliefs and social conditions, and this can account for the popularity of theShāhnāmehand its lasting influence.

<p>By examining the history of world art, it can be expressed that art was not conducted between different ethnic groups only through cultural exchanges. And sometimes common aspects can be found among the artworks which have been the same among all nations. This suggests that the human is a treasure of symbols and images in which the traces of all human races can be seen during different periods of time. Carl Gustav Jung called this belief as “archetype” which is manifested in various symbolic forms. According to this theory, we can cite the many artists not only to express their own ethnic and national values to create their work but also studied the human subjects which are at a collective unconscious. They moved beyond the boundaries of their land. Ali Akbar Sadeghi is an Iranian contemporary painter. He maintained the tradition of painting in his country and used universal symbols in his works. The most important of these symbols is the symbols of war. This article suggests the hypothesis that Ali Akbar Sadeghi knows the world as a place for interference and conflicts and used the tools and symbols of war in his works in order to express the permanent war in the world. The results of this paper states that these symbols have emerged during the periods of his art activities in different ways, shapes and forms in order to convey the concepts and individual contrast with the environment. The method of this study is descriptive- analytical and data collection method was performed through interviews with the artist and library studies.</p>

The result of centuries of experience of this country’s ancestors and great artists, are Memorabilia that nowadays referred to as Islamic architecture. Increasing crisis of identity and irregularities in the feature of contemporary cities and buildings, reveal the latent values of past experiences more than ever. Various definitions have been proposed to explain Islamic architecture, which mostly address its material and superficial aspects. This paper attempts to address the wisdom in Islamic architecture. Based on this view work of art that lies between the audience and the author, as the medium, contains spiritual teachings, and architect as a wayfarer seeking for spiritual growth and moral virtues, and by acquiring real knowledge of the world and reaching the perdition rank for the sake of god, revives the flow of god’s wisdom in his being and makes the grace of god appears in this worldly bodies (of architecture). In principle, this attitude toward Islamic architecture is endogenous in that it can redefine a leading Islamic architecture. This paper also purports to, extra to describing wisdom in Islamic architecture, investigate the internal and external views of Islamic wisdom toward architecture. Hence, this paper first describes the characteristics of Islamic art and then conducts an investigation on the internal and external aspects of Iranian architectural wisdoms, by defining the philosophy of Islamic architecture. Then the architecture of mosques, as the feature of Islamic buildings, is presented, along with the philosophy of each of its individual components. Finally, the philosophy of the veil in Islamic architecture is, briefly, explained. It should be noted that the future of Islamic architecture is only definable in the light of a philosophical and endogenous approach, the view that is imbedded, in best, in the Iranian style of architecture.

AbstractThrough an analysis of Chinese theophoric names - a genre that emerged in the early medieval period largely under heavy Iranian-Sogdian influence - we suggest that there was a contemporary ‘black worship’ or ‘black cult’ in northern China that has since vanished. The followers of this ‘black cult’ ranged from common people living in ethnically mixed frontier communities to the ruling echelons of the Northern Dynasties. By tapping into the fragmentary pre-Islamic Iranian-Sogdian data, we link this ‘black cult’ to the now nearly forgotten ancient Iranic worship of the Avestan family of heroes centered around Sāma. This religio-cultural exchange prompts an examination of the deliberate policy by the ethnic rulers of the Northern Dynasties to attract Central Asian immigrants for political reasons, a precursor to the Semu, the Mongols’ ‘assistant conquerors’ in the Yuan dynasty.

This article explores contemporary Iranian theatre festivals and their relation to the whole structure of theatrical playing in the country. It examines in particular the role of the most important decision-making centre for theatre and theatre festivals: the Dramatic Arts Centre (DAC), the theatrical branch of the Ministry of Culture. The main framework of the article is based on Willmar Sauter's model of the theatrical event. Two of his four elements have been selected to develop the concept of festivals as theatrical events. The section titled ‘Organization and cultural context’ will discuss the organizational structure of festivals; and the section ‘Contextual theatricality’ will analyse the framework of the festival culture. Some fifty festivals and mini-festivals are held annually throughout the whole country. They are categorized in the article according to their genre: international, national, regional and community.

AbstractThe Iranian discourse on human rights is not well known for a wide range of reasons: there are few translations from Persian; the Iranian human rights' model is often perceived as a threat to universality and Iran has a generally negative image on the international scene. The reality is that the post-Islamic Iranian human rights discourse is rich, varied and intellectually stimulating, the paradoxical outcome of a regime that limits freedom of expression and freedom of thought. Iranian intellectuals have to find strategies to avoid the censorship that threatens anyone who defies Iran's official human rights model. These intellectuals have formulated incredibly compelling theories that can be assimilated to a third voice transcending the permanent opposition between the principle of universality and cultural relativism. This theory is being advocated across the Muslim world and throughout Muslim communities. Iranian intellectuals have shaped their own approach to this third path, thereby creating an Iranian human rights' specificity within the Muslim world.

It’s hard to deny that the historically intense distrust between the United States and Iran helps motivate some of the anti-deal sentiment in each country. It’s also, however, this same shared history of suspicion that may hold some of the most import-ant insights about the deal itself. The context for this understanding is the thread of Iranian-Western relations through the ages of colonialism and decolonization, the Islamic Revolution, and the formation of the current regime in Iran. A further layer of complexity in looking at the nuclear negotiations is added with the consideration of the contemporary social and political atmosphere in the Iranian domestic sphere. This often-overlooked background speaks of a situation far more complex than what many who oppose the accords seem to entertain and that must be taken into account if the United States and the West want to see long-term diplomatic success with Iran.

In this essay, I describe a perspective of what we may call a ‘Southern Theory’ in Iran. Historical and contemporary conditions in Iran have mediated against the development of such a theory, yet could, if reflexively approached, produce a glocal theory. In exploring the issue via Iran, I note the necessity of emphasizing the diversity of thought encompassed by the Southern Theory, and of considering the different time/spaces of the South. The essay has a critical approach regarding current social and scientific relations in and out of Iran in the social sciences in general, and particularly in anthropology. In this way, I try to rethink the question of English as a scientific lingua franca, considering the short and long consequences of such an approach.

Abstract In an interview, the Iranian painter Ahmad Esfandiari (1922–2012) related that he witnessed a particularly difficult time at the beginning of his career, when he did not know what direction his work might take. Slowly he overcame this fear of the unknown and discovered ‘the pleasure of uncharted paths’. But the critics did not see any social value in his work (Mojabi 1998: 155). In his testimony, Ahmad Esfandiari described the tumultuous 1940s, during which an innovative pictorial style called ‘New Painting’ appeared in Iran. Contrary to popular opinion, contemporary Iranian painting did not begin in the 1960s with the Saqqakhaneh group of artists. Its origins can be found in the 1940s. In this article, conceived as a manifesto, I introduce the first generation of New Painting artists and I argue against a canon that has overlooked them in spite of their innovative accomplishments and profound impact.

AbstractThis paper discusses the emergence of an archaeology of the contemporary era in a Middle Eastern country, Iran. Far from North America and Europe, where the subfield was introduced, appreciated and developed by academic archaeologists, this archaeology is now also becoming established in Iran in spite of academic reluctance and (indirect) political pressure. The most encouraged form of archaeology in Iran remains nationalist and conservative, supported by the current political structures. However, the archaeology of the contemporary past is increasingly practised on a limited scale and has gradually extended its scope and subjects. Highly dependent on context, it has enriched the ways and methods of archaeological practice under dictatorship. The archaeology of the contemporary past is still in its infancy in the Middle East, but the pioneers of the subfield try to take up the challenges of smoothing the way for the future of this interdisciplinary archaeology in Iran and the Middle East. Iranian contemporary archaeology not only aims to investigate conflict, tensions and political (and armed) opposition, but also studies everyday life and disastrous contexts.

Abstract In this article, I undertake a critical analysis of Marzieh Meshkini’s 2000 directorial debut, The Day I Became a Woman, which won multiple awards at the Toronto and Venice Film Festivals, and I investigate the manner in which Meshkini’s visual aesthetics enable her to enrich vital debates about the veil, gender socialization and social mobility as well as female pleasure and jouissance in contemporary Iranian society and abroad. Through a close reading of the figurative film language and innovative cinematography in Meshkini’s film, including its novel play with different temporalities and its artistic approach to mise-en-scène and framing of various shots, I examine the extent to which Meshkini succeeds in conveying her compelling social message in terms of Iranian women’s experiences, more than two decades after the Islamic revolution.

This article brings Papua New Guinean women’s perspectives on fashion, gender and morality into conversation with questions of colonial histories and global consumerism. The article shows that adherence to social norms is policed by women in the public sphere and that one person’s choices are enmeshed in ideas of responsibility and obligation to others. Increasingly, younger generations of women believe it is an individual woman’s right to wear what she wants in Papua New Guinea (PNG). Yet young women confront their peers in much the same way older women do. What women wear in PNG is embroiled in ideas of collective morality; plays out at intersections of class, age, race and gender; and demonstrates tensions between ideas of autonomy and collectivity. On whose terms do contemporary Papua New Guinean women get to decide how to dress: their own, or in accordance with community norms and standards? What are the contemporary and historical contexts of whiteness and colonial power that have influenced these norms and standards? This article brings together the experiences and perspective of a young professional Papua New Guinean woman, and her relatives, in dialogue with a young English–Iranian woman anthropologist.

A conspicuous feature of Ottoman history from the sixteenth century onwards, or even of fifteenth-century Mamluk Egypt, is that the mass of surviving administrative documents, well complemented by European sources, makes it possible to apply a range of economic and social concepts to illuminate their economy and society. For Persia the documents are far fewer and, even where, as in seventeenth-century Iṣfahān, the extant Safavid documents are exceptionally well complemented by European source material, doubts, often of a Marxian or Braudelian order, on the legitimacy of applying European concepts to Persian society are often entertained. In other periods the paucity of material is compounded by ethnic diversity – tribal versus settled populations; Turks versus Iranians or Iranians versus Turco-Mongols, all with deeply rooted authentic traditions – which is rarely documented, let alone explained, by the contemporary historians. It is almost as if the right kind of anthropologist could do more than the historian to exploit what material there is.

In this article Patrick Duggan interrogates The Paper Birds' 2010 production Others to explore the political and ethical implications of embodying the (verbatim) texts of others. Built from a six-month exchange of letters between the company and a prisoner, a celebrity (a very non-committal Heather Mills, apparently), and an Iranian artist, Others fuses live music with verbatim and physical theatre texts to investigate the ‘otherness’ of women from vastly divergent cultural contexts. With equal measures of humour and honesty the performance deconstructs these voices both to highlight their particular concerns and problems and to interrogate larger issues relating to ‘others’ with whom we have conscious or unconscious contact. The ethical implications of continuing or discontinuing the correspondences with the three women are explored, and trauma and embodiment theories are used alongside Lévinasian and Russellian theories of ethics to ask what an encounter with such others might teach us about ourselves, about the traumatized other and about the ethics of encounter within performance texts. Patrick Duggan is Lecturer in Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Exeter. A practising director, he has also taught extensively in the UK and Ireland as well as in Germany and the United States. He is author of Trauma-Tragedy: Symptoms of Contemporary Performance (Manchester University Press, 2012) and co-edited Reverberations: Britishness, Aesthetics and Small-Scale Theatres (Intellect, 2013) and a special issue of the journal Performance Research ‘On Trauma’ (Taylor and Francis, 2011).

AbstractIn post-revolution Iran, the sacred notion of martyrdom has been transformed into a routine act of government – a moral sign of order and state sovereignty. Moving beyond the debates of the secularisation of the sacred and the making sacred of the secular, this article argues that the moment of sacralisation is realised through co-production within a social setting when the object of sacralisation is recognised as such by others. In contemporary Iran, however, the moment of sacralising bodies by the state is also the moment of its own subversion as the political-theological field of martyrdom is contested and challenged from within. This article traces the genealogy of martyrdom in contemporary Iran in order to explore its institutionalised forms and governmental practices. During the revolution, the Shi'a tradition of martyrdom and its dramatic performances of ritual mourning and self-sacrifice became central to the mass mobilisation against the monarchy. Once the revolutionary government came into existence, this sacred tradition was regulated to create ‘martyrs’ as a fixed category, in order to consolidate the legacy of the revolution. In this political theatre, the dead body is a site of transformation and performance upon which the original narrative of martyrdom takes place even as it displaces it and gives new meanings to the act.A CrashOn the morning of 6 December 2005, an Iranian military plane C-130 carrying journalists and Army officials crashed near Mehrabad airport in Tehran. The plane was attempting an emergency landing when it hit a ten-storey apartment block, setting off a big explosion which set fire to the building. In all, one hundred and sixteen charred bodies were recovered – ninty four passengers and twenty two residents of the building – from the smoke and rubble in this working class area of south-western Tehran. The residents were mostly women and schoolchildren who had stayed home – because of an official anti-pollution drive – to avoid a thick layer of smog that had developed over Tehran skies over the previous few days. Dozens of people were injured on the ground and the riot police had to be called in to clear the area of curious onlookers who were blocking the emergency services.The plane crash was met with grief, guilt and hints of anger. The Iranian media was most vocal in its expression of rage – seventy eight journalists had lost their lives in an instant. The ‘Iran News Daily’, a leading English language newspaper based in Tehran, two days later devoted a full page to the crash coverage including scathing editorials demanding accountability and answers to “disturbing questions” from the government. The editorial entitled ‘Duty and Responsibility’ stated that “condolences are not enough. People, the near and dear ones of victims in particular, have the right to know. Did the C-130 have technical problems? Was it fit for the passenger service? What would have really happened if the flight was cancelled? Who gave the final permission for the journey to go ahead? Is this another case of human error or engine failure? How can such major loss of innocent life be explained, leave [sic] alone justified?”2Similarly, Hossein Shariatmadari, influential editor of the conservative Persian daily ‘Kayhan’, called for a full investigation, not because it would bring “the dead back to life but (to) prevent repetition of similar incidents and further disasters”.3As private and public condolences began pouring in – newspapers had allocated prime space for such purpose – President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sent a short message through state media that dramatically altered the narrative of grief and anger against the authorities. The message read as follows: “I learned of the catastrophe and the fact that members of the press have been martyred. I offer my condolences to the Supreme Leader and to the families of the victims”. With this message the dead journalists had been officially pronounced ‘martyrs’ – a moral-political subjectivity that traces its genealogy to the martyrdom of Imam Hussein.4In a single moment, the burnt corpses were no longer the bodies of ordinary victims of a plane crash, but the corpses of martyrs, and their charred remains sacrificial relics.

This second manifesto marks a shift from abstraction to conceptualism in Iranian art worlds. It lays the foundation for contemporary art as it has developed in the country, albeit set in tension with, and written amid, the massive social upheaval in Iran just before the 1979 Revolution.

Architecture and urbanization are representatives of our architectural and cultural histories. Many of the lost historical characteristics can come out of the back door citing such representatives. Reconstruction and restoration are a set of activities that deal with the body and spirit of a subject. The subject can be a city, a natural environment or an architectural structure. There are different approaches to reconstruction and restoration, which differ significantly in terms of the level of intervention in a historical subject. This is a technique that our archaeologists are not sufficiently familiar with. From an archaeological point of view on the historical subjects, any document could not be as consistent as the architectural works with the circumstances of the community. The nature of the art of modern history is to see which cases have not been addressed in historical documents. As the historical subjects’ evidence, we were not so diligent in the preservation of such subjects as a documentary. The aim of this study is to investigate the heritage of contemporary architecture and to determine how to preserve such works, as well as to review the Khosrawi leather factory in Tabriz, which has now maintained its role as the Islamic Art University. The results of this research, which are obtained through a descriptive-analytical method, show that we can preserve the architectural structures by changing the application of traditional structures to the cultural or social ones.

Human history has witnessed varied surveillance and counter-surveillance activities from time immemorial. Human beings could not surveille others effectively and accurately without the technology of their era. Technology is a tool that can empower both people and governments. The outcomes are different based on the users’ intentions and aims. 2,500 years ago, Sun Tzu noted that ‘If you know both yourself and your enemy, you can win numerous (literally, "a hundred") battles without jeopardy’. His words still ring true. To be a good surveiller and counter-surveiller it is essential to know both sides, and in order to be good at these activities access to technology is vital. There is no doubt that knowledge is power, and without technology to access the information, it is impossible to be powerful. As we become more expert at technology, we will learn what makes surveillance and counter-surveillance more effective, and will be more powerful.“Surveillance” is one of the most important aspects of living in the convergent media environment. This essay illustrates government surveillance and counter-surveillance during the Iranian Green Movement (2009) on social and mobile media. The Green Movement refers to a non-violent movement that arose after the disputed presidential election on June 2009. After that Iran was facing its most serious political crisis since the 1979 revolution. Claims of vote fraud triggered massive street protests. Many took to the streets with “Green” signs, chanting slogans such as ‘the government lied’, and ‘where is my vote?’ There is no doubt that social and mobile media has played an important role in Iran’s contemporary politics. According to Internet World Stats (IWS) Internet users in 2009 account for approximately 48.5 per cent of the population of Iran. In 2009, Iran had 30.2 million mobile phone users (Freedom House), and 72 cellular subscriptions for every 100 people (World Bank). Today, while Iran has the 19th-largest population in the world, its blogosphere holds the third spot in terms of number of users, just behind the United States and China (Beth Elson et al.). In this essay the use of social and mobile media (technology) is not debated, but the extent of this use, and who, why and how it is used, is clearly scrutinised.Visibility and Surveillance There have been different kinds of surveillance for a very long time. However, all types of surveillance are based on the notion of “visibility”. Previous studies show that visibility is not a new term (Foucault Discipline). The new things in the new era, are its scale, scope and complicated ways to watch others without being watched, which are not limited to a specific time, space and group, and are completely different from previous instruments for watching (Andrejevic). As Meikle and Young (146) have mentioned ‘networked digital media bring with them a new kind of visibility’, based on different kinds of technology. Internet surveillance has important implications in politics to control, protect, and influence (Marx Ethics; Castells; Fuchs Critique). Surveillance has been improved during its long history, and evolved from very simple spying and watching to complicated methods of “iSpy” (Andrejevic). To understand the importance of visibility and its relationship with surveillance, it is essential to study visibility in conjunction with the notion of “panopticon” and its contradictory functions. Foucault uses Bentham's notion of panopticon that carries within itself visibility and transparency to control others. “Gaze” is a central term in Bentham’s view. ‘Bentham thinks of a visibility organised entirely around a dominating, overseeing gaze’ (Foucault Eye). Moreover, Thomson (Visibility 11) notes that we are living in the age of ‘normalizing the power of the gaze’ and it is clear that the influential gaze is based on powerful means to see others.Lyon (Surveillance 2) explains that ‘surveillance is any collection and processing of personal data, whether identifiable or not, for the purpose of influencing or managing those whose data have been granted…’. He mentions that today the most important means of surveillance reside in computer power which allows collected data to be sorted, matched, retrieved, processed, marketed and circulated.Nowadays, the Internet has become ubiquitous in many parts of the world. So, the changes in people’s interactions have influenced their lives. Fuchs (Introduction 15) argues that ‘information technology enables surveillance at a distance…in real time over networks at high transmission speed’. Therefore, visibility touches different aspects of people’s lives and living in a “glasshouse” has caused a lot of fear and anxiety about privacy.Iran’s Green Movement is one of many cases for studying surveillance and counter-surveillance technologies in social and mobile media. Government Surveillance on Social and Mobile Media in Iran, 2009 In 2009 the Iranian government controlled technology that allowed them to monitor, track, and limit access to the Internet, social media and mobiles communication, which has resulted in the surveillance of Green Movement’s activists. The Iranian government had improved its technical capabilities to monitor the people’s behavior on the Internet long before the 2009 election. The election led to an increase in online surveillance. Using social media the Iranian government became even more powerful than it was before the election. Social media was a significant factor in strengthening the government’s power. In the months after the election the virtual atmosphere became considerably more repressive. The intensified filtering of the Internet and implementation of more advanced surveillance systems strengthened the government’s position after the election. The Open Net Initiative revealed that the Internet censorship system in Iran is one of the most comprehensive and sophisticated censorship systems in the world. It emphasized that ‘Advances in domestic technical capacity have contributed to the implementation of a centralized filtering strategy and a reduced reliance on Western technologies’.On the other hand, the authorities attempted to block all access to political blogs (Jaras), either through cyber-security methods or through threats (Tusa). The Centre for Investigating Organized Cyber Crimes, which was founded in 2007 partly ‘to investigate and confront social and economic offenses on the Internet’ (Cyber Police), became increasingly important over the course of 2009 as the government combated the opposition’s online activities (Beth Elson et al. 16). Training of "senior Internet lieutenants" to confront Iran's "virtual enemies online" was another attempt that the Intelligence minister announced following the protests (Iran Media Program).In 2009 the Iranian government enacted the Computer Crime Law (Jaras). According to this law the Committee in Charge of Determining Unauthorized Websites is legally empowered to identify sites that carry forbidden content and report that information to TCI and other major ISPs for blocking (Freedom House). In the late fall of 2009, the government started sending threatening and warning text messages to protesters about their presence in the protests (BBC). Attacking, blocking, hacking and hijacking of the domain names of some opposition websites such as Jaras and Kaleme besides a number of non-Iranian sites such as Twitter were among the other attempts of the Iranian Cyber Army (Jaras).It is also said that the police and security forces arrested dissidents identified through photos and videos posted on the social media that many imagined had empowered them. Furthermore, the online photos of the active protesters were posted on different websites, asking people to identify them (Valizadeh).In late June 2009 the Iranian government was intentionally permitting Internet traffic to and from social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter so that it could use a sophisticated practice called Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) to collect information about users. It was reportedly also applying the same technology to monitor mobile phone communications (Beth Elson et al. 15).On the other hand, to cut communication between Iranians inside and outside the country, Iran slowed down the Internet dramatically (Jaras). Iran also blocked access to Facebook, YouTube, Wikipedia, Twitter and many blogs before, during and after the protests. Moreover, in 2009, text message services were shut down for over 40 days, and mobile phone subscribers could not send or receive text messages regardless of their mobile carriers. Subsequently it was disrupted on a temporary basis immediately before and during key protests days.It was later discovered that the Nokia Siemens Network provided the government with surveillance technologies (Wagner; Iran Media Program). The Iranian government built a complicated system that enabled it to monitor, track and intercept what was said on mobile phones. Nokia Siemens Network confirmed it supplied Iran with the technology needed to monitor, control, and read local telephone calls [...] The product allowed authorities to monitor any communications across a network, including voice calls, text messaging, instant messages, and web traffic (Cellan-Jones). Media sources also reported that two Chinese companies, Huawei and ZTE, provided surveillance technologies to the government. The Nic Payamak and Saman Payamak websites, that provide mass text messaging services, also reported that operator Hamrah Aval commonly blocked texts with words such as meeting, location, rally, gathering, election and parliament (Iran Media Program). Visibility and Counter-Surveillance The panopticon is not limited to the watchers. Similarly, new kinds of panopticon and visibility are not confined to government surveillance. Foucault points out that ‘the seeing machine was once a sort of dark room into which individuals spied; it has become a transparent building in which the exercise of power may be supervised by society as a whole’ (Discipline 207). What is important is Foucault's recognition that transparency, not only of those who are being observed but also of those who are observing, is central to the notion of the panopticon (Allen) and ‘any member of society will have the right to come and see with his own eyes how schools, hospitals, factories, and prisons function’ (Foucault, Discipline 207). Counter-surveillance is the process of detecting and mitigating hostile surveillance (Burton). Therefore, while the Internet is a surveillance instrument that enables governments to watch people, it also improves the capacity to counter-surveille, and draws public attention to governments’ injustice. As Castells (185) notes the Internet could be used by citizens to watch their government as an instrument of control, information, participation, and even decision-making, from the bottom up.With regards to the role of citizens in counter-surveillance we can draw on Jay Rosen’s view of Internet users as ‘the people formerly known as the audience’. In counter-surveillance it can be said that passive citizens (formerly the audience) have turned into active citizens. And this change was becoming impossible without mobile and social media platforms. These new techniques and technologies have empowered people and given them the opportunity to have new identities. When Thompson wrote ‘the exercise of power in modern societies remains in many ways shrouded in secrecy and hidden from the public gaze’ (Media 125), perhaps he could not imagine that one day people can gaze at the politicians, security forces and the police through the use of the Internet and mobile devices.Furthermore, while access to mobile media allows people to hold authorities accountable for their uses and abuses of power (Breen 183), social media can be used as a means of representation, organization of collective action, mobilization, and drawing attention to police brutality and reasons for political action (Gerbaudo).There is no doubt that having creativity and using alternative platforms are important aspects in counter-surveillance. For example, images of Lt. Pike “Pepper Spray Cop” from the University of California became the symbol of the senselessness of police brutality during the Occupy Movement (Shaw). Iranians’ Counter-Surveillance on Social and Mobile Media, 2009 Iran’s Green movement (2009) triggered a lot of discussions about the role of technology in social movements. In this regard, there are two notable attitudes about the role of technology: techno-optimistic (Shriky and Castells) and techno-pessimistic (Morozov and Gladwell) views should be taken into account. While techno-optimists overrated the role of social media, techno-pessimists underestimated its role. However, there is no doubt that technology has played a great role as a counter-surveillance tool amongst Iranian people in Iran’s contemporary politics.Apart from the academic discussions between techno-optimists and techno-pessimists, there have been numerous debates about the role of new technologies in Iran during the Green Movement. This subject has received interest from different corners of the world, including Western countries, Iranian authorities, opposition groups, and also some NGOs. However, its role as a means of counter-surveillance has not received adequate attention.As the tools of counter-surveillance are more or less the tools of surveillance, protesters learned from the government to use the same techniques to challenge authority on social media.Establishing new websites (such as JARAS, RASA, Kalemeh, and Iran green voice) or strengthening some previous ones (such as Saham, Emrooz, Norooz), also activating different platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube accounts to broadcast the voice of the Iranian Green Movement and neutralize the government’s propaganda were the most important ways to empower supporters of Iran’s Green Movement in counter-surveillance.‘Reporters Without Borders issued a statement, saying that ‘the new media, and particularly social networks, have given populations collaborative tools with which they can change the social order’. It is also mentioned that despite efforts by the Iranian government to prevent any reporting of the protests and due to considerable pressure placed on foreign journalists inside Iran, social media played a significant role in sending the messages and images of the movement to the outside world (Axworthy). However, at that moment, many thought that Twitter performed a liberating role for Iranian dissenters. For example, Western media heralded the Green Movement in Iran as a “Twitter revolution” fuelled by information and communication technologies (ICTs) and social media tools (Carrieri et al. 4). “The Revolution Will Be Twittered” was the first in a series of blog posts published by Andrew Sullivan a few hours after the news of the protests was released.According to the researcher’s observation the numbers of Twitter users inside Iran who tweeted was very limited in 2009 and social media was most useful in the dissemination of information, especially from those inside Iran to outsiders. Mobile phones were mostly influential as an instrument firstly used for producing contents (images and videos) and secondly for the organisation of protests. There were many photos and videos that were filmed by very simple mobile cell phones, uploaded by ordinary people onto YouTube and other platforms. The links were shared many times on Twitter and Facebook and released by mainstream media. The most frequently circulated story from the Iranian protests was a video of Neda Agha-Sultan. Her final moments were captured by some bystanders with mobile phone cameras and rapidly spread across the global media and the Internet. It showed that the camera-phone had provided citizens with a powerful means, allowing for the creation and instant sharing of persuasive personalised eyewitness records with mobile and globalised target populations (Anden-Papadopoulos).Protesters used another technique, DDOS (distributed denial of service attacks), for political protest in cyber space. Anonymous people used DDOS to overload a website with fake requests, making it unavailable for users and disrupting the sites set as targets (McMillan) in effect, shutting down the site. DDOS is an important counter-surveillance activity by grassroots activists or hackers. It was a cyber protest that knocked the main Iranian governmental websites off-line and caused crowdsourcing and false trafficking. Amongst them were Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's supreme leader’s websites and those which belong to or are close to the government or security forces, including news agencies (Fars, IRNA, Press TV…), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Justice, the Police, and the Ministry of the Interior.Moreover, as authorities uploaded the pictures of protesters onto different platforms to find and arrest them, in some cities people started to put the pictures, phone numbers and addresses of members of security forces and plain clothes police officers who attacked them during the protests and asked people to identify and report the others. They also wanted people to send information about suspects who infringed human rights. Conclusion To sum up, visibility, surveillance and counter-surveillance are not new phenomena. What is new is the technology, which increased their complexity. As Foucault (Discipline 200) mentioned ‘visibility is a trap’, so being visible would be the weakness of those who are being surveilled in the power struggle. In the convergent era, in order to be more powerful, both surveillance and counter-surveillance activities aim for more visibility. Although both attempt to use the same means (technology) to trap the other side, the differences are in their subjects, objects, goals and results.While in surveillance, visibility of the many by the few is mostly for the purpose of control and influence in undemocratic ways, in counter-surveillance, the visibility of the few by the many is mostly through democratic ways to secure more accountability and transparency from the governments.As mentioned in the case of Iran’s Green Movement, the scale and scope of visibility are different in surveillance and counter-surveillance. The importance of what Shaw wrote about Sydney occupy counter-surveillance, applies to other places, such as Iran. She has stressed that ‘protesters and police engaged in a dance of technology and surveillance with one another. Both had access to technology, but there were uncertainties about the extent of technology and its proficient use…’In Iran (2009), both sides (government and activists) used technology and benefited from digital networked platforms, but their levels of access and domains of influence were different, which was because the sources of power, information and wealth were divided asymmetrically between them. Creativity was important for both sides to make others more visible, and make themselves invisible. Also, sharing information to make the other side visible played an important role in these two areas. References Alen, David. “The Trouble with Transparency: The Challenge of Doing Journalism Ethics in a Surveillance Society.” Journalism Studies 9.3 (2008): 323-40. 8 Dec. 2013 ‹http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14616700801997224#.UqRFSuIZsqN›. 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Abstract This article examines the degree to which pre-revolutionary Iranian New Wave cinema is influenced by modern Persian fiction. Considering Iranian film adaptations have barely received any scholarly attention, this article focuses on Dariush Mehrjui’s The Cow/Gav (1969), one of the pioneering films of the New Wave, adapted from Gholamhosein Sa’edi’s story collection entitled The Mourners of Bayal/Azadaran-e Bayal (1965). The rise of the New Wave cinema through the pre-revolutionary years before 1979 was interwoven with the engagement of filmmakers like Mehrjui with Persian fiction. While Sa’edi’s stories present criticisms of the socio-political atmosphere of the late 1960s and 1970s, I argue that Mehrjui’s adaptation complicates Sa’edi’s critical perspective to establish an overt social commentary on contemporary Iranian society. This paper will conclude by demonstrating that Mehrjui in The Cow draws on Sa’edi’s work to portray a microcosm of Iranian society and places it in relation to the motifs of overdependence, fear, religion, and waiting, which are interpretable in the social context of the late 1960s and 1970s. This analysis highlights the invisible yet significant role of modern Persian fiction and adaptation strategies in establishing the perspective of The Cow, which left an impression on many New Wave films.

Contemporary interventions in historical Mahalleh and the design of new settlements in Iran rely on Western micro-urbanism patterns such as urban villages and new urbanism. Although the urban lifestyle in Iran affects the Mahalleh identity, this context-oriented pattern is more appropriate than the Western ones with all weaknesses and critiques; namely, social engineering and physical determinism. This paper aims to present a paradigm model for the Iranian micro-urbanism (Mahalleh), applying grounded theory methodology. The literature of micro-urbanism is discussed first, followed by exploring the categories of Mahalleh and integrating them around the core category in a paradigm model. Influenced by specific conditions: “collectivism” and “ecological balance” as causal conditions; “social identity” as an intervening condition; “physical and functional organization” as contextual conditions, “familiarity” emerges as a core category in the proposed model. Furthermore, residents of the Mahalleh have special interactions contributing to the “social capital,” “changeability,” and “parental effect.” Finally, “Mahalleh as the home of the families” is a consequence of the actions and interactions done under such conditions.