SuperNova examines the socio-political, temporal, linguistic and spatial factors that contribute to the formation of identity. Existing as a multi- channel video installation, SuperNova is a talent show parody that focuses on the racialized queerness of seven characters, in which I perform. The contestants - Oreo, Fatimeh, and Coco - performances addresses issues of race and ethnic performance; Oreo performs a magic trick with a deck of white “race cards,” Fatimeh sings and performs a neo-orientalist ethnic identity and Coco performs a dance as a diasporic and hybrid subject. The characters perform in the galaxy Messier 82 and present their talent in front of a panel of judges; Sirius, Mira and Bellatrix. Each judge is named after the brightest star in various constellations and mirrors one of the contestants; Sirius:Oreo, Mira:Fatimeh, and Bellatrix:Coco. The talent show sets an ideal stage to critically examine race and ethnic performance.
In SuperNova, Oreo believes she should win because of her race cards when Mira says“she can pass” it suggests that based on her whiteness, she is already favoured. This turn of phrase also references drag culture and the idea of “passing.” Notions of passing, authenticity, racial purity and the Iranian nationalist/Aryan race discourse are explored through this character.
Fatimeh sings a song in Pahlavi, that is, Middle Persian without any Arabic and French loanwords. I wrote the song and it was translated by Miguel Angel Andres-Toledo, an Avesta and Pahlavi linguist and professor at the University of Toronto. Pahlavi is incomprehensible to the contemporary Persian speaker. Only ten scholars in the world can decipher Pahlav - it is as intelligible as Beowulf is to the contemporary English speaker. Many Iranian purists believe that contemporary Farsi has been spoiled and tainted with borrowed Arabic and French terms. Therefore, Fatimeh’s performance critiques both Iranian nationalists and western neo-orientalist tendencies that position the other/self as exotic.
Coco confronts the viewer with the othered body but embraces their alien subjectivity and diasporic positionality. The character performs in a dark, galactic open space. The liminal space provides a clean slate as it has no definable borders, physical properties, material, land or topography. Coco illustrates the possibilities that become available to the diasporic subject in the margins and attempts to expand our geographical imagination. Coco performs the process of hybridity and combines First and Second place epistemologies while introducing a Thirdspace alongside new epistemic culture. Further, Coco refuses to participate in oral communication and colonial language,suggesting an unwillingness to further perpetuate communicative inequality and hegemonic discourses that are established through language. Coco takes a resistive position and introduces the margin as an ideal site to create a counter-language. Instead, Coco communicates through movement which consists of waacking, traditional Iranian dancing, and gestures from my performance artwork.
I am interested in exploring ethnicfuturism because it presents the future as a site to deconstruct and reconstruct history. In SuperNova, the audience are ethnic aliens that wear hijabs and ululate. I attempt to challenge the euro-centric cultural gaze that represents eastern subjects as stagnant and frozen in time, supposedly untouched by modernity. Thus, the ululation and hijab situate the eastern audience in the future.
I am interested in how race and gender are performed digitally. For example, the character Oreo’s voice has been digitized and manipulated to create an infantilizing high pitch vocal. The dancer Coco is also digitized as their body oscillates between transparency and visibility and is not limited by corporeality. Coco’s body disappears, reappears, splits, soars, multiplies and moves through channels and space. The music for Coco’s dance performance is a blend of traditional Persian music accompanied by digitized and synthesized sounds. “Native Melody” was created in collaboration with Kamyar Jarahzadeh. Together, Jarahzadeh and I explore the possibilities of deconstructing, appropriating and recontextualizing traditional Iranian music to create a hybrid electro-acoustic performance. Further, SuperNova explores the potential for a digital exploration of space that allows for the creation of a new imaginary and geographical landscape. This new site departs from our current world and invites the viewer on an ethnic futurist and world-making voyage.