Conversations - Iran

Dejan Kaludjerović’s first solo exhibition in Iran “Conversations – Iran” at the Sazmanab presents Six channel sound / site specific installation Sand Box from the series: Conversations: Hula-hoops, Elastics, Marbles and Sand.

The “Conversations” series of site-specific installations is based on research and interviews with children in different countries (from 2013-present: Russia, Serbia, Azerbaijan; planned productions include: Iran, Austria, Italy, Romania, etc). The children, locals from each location, range from 7-10 years old and come from different ethnic, social and cultural backgrounds. Each installation is made in relation to the local site and based on specific and often universal children’s games which are accompanied by a sound piece emitted from 6–7 speakers (each speaker for the voice of one child). The children, interviewed individually, are then put into conversation with one another through the editing process, reacting within the installation to one another’s stances on political issues such as social exclusion and inclusion, foreigners, language, colonization, war, money, poverty, etc.

Concept:

The series of works “Conversations: Hula-hoops, Elastics, Marbles and Sand” uses children’s narratives as a litmus test in order to detect the ways in which each society in question generates cultural differences, identifies the Other, and establishes a system of values based upon their belief structures. By following the narration of children, we learn what it means to be a member of a local community or a foreigner in each respective society, to be rich or poor, to speak a different language, to be feminine or masculine, what politics are perceived to be, what it is to colonize or be colonized, what is nation, terrorism, war, etc. The children’s answers point out the ideological, cultural and social matrixes imposed upon them. Through the world of children between the ages of 7 and 10 years old, a period when they are not yet individualized, I aim to observe the world of adults and the models of social construction and codification that predetermines identity for children.