Limited Access Festival has been invited to present a program of their choice (carte blanche) for the 36TH FESTIVAL LES INSTANTS VIDEO in October 2023.
KARIZ: DARK, WET, AND MOVING
Parking Video Library in Collaboration with Limited Access Festival – (Tehran, Iran)
Curated by Amirali Ghasemi & Bahar Ahmadifard
“The program carefully puts side-by-side dark humor, visual and textual poetry, and water as metaphors. To start a journey to Marseille in the proximity of the Mediterranean, words sometimes become heavy when soaked in water, sinking in the deep sea. Some would float like bubbles, lightheadedly making us think and smile, others just moving moments before our eyes. At the same time, we witness how the environment changes so rapidly, and our world rolls into an irreversible state of catastrophe.
In the Persian language, there are many proverbs, sayings, and stories dealing with water as it was rare and sacred; in geography, once it was expanded and spoken, there were natural springs and underground water reservoirs fed by the melting snow on top of the mountains. There were seas, lakes, and oceans. One can imagine the works in the program are connected to how a Kariz (Qanat) system for transporting underground water worked in ancient and modern Iran before the current water crisis. These different-looking visual journeys, real and Abatract, are somehow connected underneath, we may not see it with a normal eye, but from a bird’s eye view, we may discover a familiar pattern.”