Bajazzo and Haji firouz
2 channel-video installation © Shahram Entekhabi 2007
Written, Directed & Performed by
Shahram Entekhabi
Camera
Steffen Koehn
Costumes & Make up
Martina Schöne-Radunski
Manuela Pott, Berlin
Visual Foreign Correspondents, Issue 2
18
December 2007- 14 January 2008
Sharam Entekhabi, Iran
Title: Haji Firouz
In collaboration with The Globalised
Crystal Ball we are proud to announce the second issue of Visual Foreign
Correspondents. VFC is
an independent platform
in which 11 distinguished artists from around the world are invited each
month to give their personal visual commentary on events and situations from
their
locally situated perspective. Their works especially created for urban
screens and online platforms. This project will give people in the streets
of Amsterdam
a brief window into other regions, peoples and other kinds of imagination.
The work will be launched during the seminar event of the Globalised
Crystal Ball in the conference space. An introduction to the work will
be given, making
a connection to the seminar and the ideas of the artist.
Independent from the seminar the work will then feature on the urban
screen outside the ‘Balie’ every night for a month, on the The Contemporary
Art Screen, at the Zuidas and in 11-Reatuarant Bar Club, part of Post-CS,
museum of modern art, Amsterdam.
These screens will be in relationship to a specially designed website
and ‘Oog’.
The VFC website will show the work and contextualize it with political,
social and cultural background information. Furthermore it will give information
about the project and a possibility for the audience to interact.
The work will also feature in ‘OOG’, a commentary and opinion
platform that is part the online edition of De Volkskrant, a major Dutch
daily national
newspaper. Here the work will feature for a week as part of the continuing
series of artist commentaries.
Haji Firouz, 2007
In Iran Haji Firouz is a clownesque character in blackface, traditionally heralding the Persian New Year: Nowruz. With song and dance he spreads good cheer and inaugurates the festive season. Set within a busy shopping street in West-Berlin, Entekhabi enacts his own version of Haji Fairuz. However, his continuous efforts and increasingly exaggerated gestures to attract attention and become included within a commodified urban setting, are widely ignored by the busy Christmas shoppers. Their own preoccupation with performing the festive season themselves, by means of consumption, disallows them to see, let alone consume, an element which seems out-of-place and disrupts the regular flow of goods and people. Entekhabi’s Haji Firouz challenges normative behavioural patterns by pushing social and racial boundaries; it becomes clear within these parameters, that participation in a particular system, is based on exclusivity and conformity
Screen locations
De Balie: Kleine-Gartmanplantsoen 10, Amsterdam
CASZ: Zuidplein, Amsterdam
11/Restaurant bar club: Oosterdokskade
3-5, Amsterdam
Visual Foreign Correspondents
Artistic director: Nanette Hoogslag
Editors: David Garcia, Nat Muller, Petra Heck and Eric Kluitenberg
For more information please contact Nanette Hoogslag at Visual Foreign Correspondents is made possible by Amsterdamse Fonds voor de Kunsten, VSB, De Balie en het Nederlands Instituut voor Mediakunst
Produced by
Shahram Entekhabi
Co-production
Fine Arts Unternehmen AG [Zug, CH]
www.fineartsunternehmen.com
Bajazzo and Haji firouz © Shahram Entekhabi 2007