Labor Neunzehn is pleased to invite you to the concert with iranian composer Aida Shirazi. The evening combines a concert and an experimental film screening in collaboration with Light Cone.
Saturday, February 15th, 2025
Cluster #38 w/Aida Shirazi and Experimental Film Screening.
20:00 DOORS 20:30 EVENT STARTS
Location: KM28 (www.km28.de)
Karl-Marx Straße, 28
12043, Berlin, Neukölln
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PROGRAM:
A. Film Screening Programme
DVA
by Alexandra Karelina
2022 /Experimental / fiction / 16mm / 33 min
Film courtesy of Light Cone (Paris)
Curated by Valentina Besegher Scotti
The film “Dva” is the poetical reflection on Russian reality which is the mix of absurd political decisions and prohibitions, escapism and violence. The film describes the invisible boundary between two states: the premonition of the disaster and the living in it. Also this story conveys the Russian unshakeable interest in mysticism and miracles. During the inexplicable state of emergency in Moscow, a lonely young man is trying to find his missing dog and to figure out what is truly going on. Eventually, he finds himself in a parallel world where the dead and the living are inseparable, but the word “death” is strictly prohibited.
She has taught at the Moscow School of New Cinema and has given master classes related to analog film. She also works as a film editor.In 2023 and 2024, Alexandra is teaching and working on her projects at ENSAD Nancy as part of an art residency.
B. Concert
Aida Shirazi » Found Objektz
Aida Shirazi | voice, sanṭūr, and electronics
BIO
Aida Shirazi began learning music as a child, particularly classical Iranian music and the sanṭūr, a form of struck string sitar. She earned a master’s in composition and music theory from Bilkent University in Ankara. In 2016, she started her thesis in composition and music theory at the University of California, Davis. In 2021, she joined IRCAM’s Cursus Program in composition and computer music.
Her pieces have been played by the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, International Contemporary Ensemble, Quince Ensemble, Ensemble Dal Niente, Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, Empyrean Ensemble, and Bilkent Symphony Orchestra, at events including ManiFeste Festival, Wien Modern, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Mostly Mozart, OutHear New Music Week, MATA, Marlboro Music Festival, Direct Current, Taproot, and Tehran Contemporary Sounds.
Shirazi focuses on timbre to structure her works and finds inspiration in Iranian and British language and literature. Poetry plays a central role in her work. Her compositions mix spoken word with acoustic and electronic sounds. Portrait and What The Wind Will Do When You Aren’t Looking for a Thousand Years (2019) are based on poems by Meredith Herndon, while Né entre corps (Born between Bodies, 2022), her final piece for Cursus, is based on a French poem by Irène Gayraud and a Persian poem by Haleh Ghassemi. Miniature (2020) was inspired from a quatrain by eleventh-century Persian poet and polymath Omar Khayyam, while of distempered corpses and distilled winds, a work in progress, draws on Walt Whitman’s This Compost. Shirazi sees the presence of poetry in her work as an anchor to her childhood in Iran, where poetry is integral to the shared cultural heritage and impresses itself into everyday language. The use of the sanṭūr is also key in this aspect of her work, since this instrument is traditionally used to play short pieces, in free time, accompanied by sung verses of classical Persian poetry.
Shirazi is a founding member and artistic codirector of the Iranian Female Composers Association (IFCA), created in 2017 to bring together female Iranian composers from around the world.
Information
Location:
KM28
Karl-Marx Straße 28
12043 Berlin, Neukölln
https://www.km28.de
Time:
Sat, 15.02.2025, 20:00 – 22:00
This concert is curated by Labor Neunzehn for Cluster Series and generously supported by inm Berlin e.V
Cluster is a new-music series devoted to the investigation of sound and notation, which provides musicians and composers with an exchange area in Berlin, at the crossroad of compositional and performance practices.
Labor Neunzehn is an artist-run project engaged in a cross-disciplinary discourse on time-based-art that involves expanded cinema, modern music, publishing, and the critical reflection in media art, with a specific focus on the migration of these languages between the online and offline domains. As an independent curatorial platform and a non-profit initiative for the production of research projects, exhibitions, performances, workshops, we are committed to the presentation of collaborative outcomes and hybrid formats.
Pics: 1. © Alexandra Karelina 2. © Anthony Katrakazis
