Konstfack Research Seminar: Behzad Khosravi Noori

12+3 days of writing: the enemy of my enemy – Behzad Khosravi Noori

The seminar will be based on Khosravi Noori's recent publication 12+3 days of writing, which emerged as a reflection, an observation, and a struggle to examine language to describe the twelve-day war between Israel and Iran. In his argument, he insists that the violence of imperial and colonial powers and the repression of domestic regimes do not cancel each other out. Instead, they converge in their mutual denial of dignity, memory, and future. Behzad thinks from the wound, not for the wounding hand, holding to the conviction that “the enemy of my enemy” is not my friend, but remains my enemy.

The seminar will also include a screening and discussion of Behzad’s film, On the Dermis of History (Behzad Khosravi Noori, 2017-2021; 21:59 min). An allegorical bronze-and-cement sculpture stands at the intersection of Felestin (Palestine) Street, in the centre of a large roundabout. Featuring several figures, one with a fist raised in a gesture of defiance, the work serves as a monument to the Palestinian struggle, particularly the First Intifada. It lasted from December 1987 until the Madrid Conference in 1991, and it was precisely during this period that construction of the monument took place, from 1989 until its inauguration in 1990. The sculpture was the first public monument ever built in post-revolutionary Tehran.

Behzad Khosravi Noori is an artist, writer, and educator. His research-based practice uses films, installations, and archival studies to explore the intersection of personal memory and significant world events, to examine how stories and memories cross borders and create connections between micro and macro histories. He is currently Scholar-in-Residence at the Centre for Postcolonial Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London, in collaboration between the Department of Politics and International Relations and the Department of Art. He was Director of Academic Centres at Habib University, Karachi, where he developed transdisciplinary frameworks that bridged art, design, postcolonial thinking and decolonial practices.
www.behzadnoori.art