The story I wanted to share with you today is my challenge as an Iranian artist, as an Iranian woman artist, as an Iranian woman artist living in exile. Well, it has its pluses and minuses. On the dark side, politics doesn't seem to escape people like me. Every Iranian artist, in one form or another, is political. Politics have defined our lives. If you're living in Iran, you're facing censorship, harassment, arrest, torture -- at times, execution. If you're living outside like me, you're faced with life in exile -- the pain of the longing and the separation from your loved ones and your family. Therefore, we don't find the moral, emotional, psychological and political space to distance ourselves from the reality of social responsibility.
Priča koju želim da podelim sa vama danas je izazov za mene kao iranskog umetnika, kao iranskog umetnika ženskog pola, i kao iransku umetnicu koja živi u izgnanstvu. Pa, to ima svoje dobre i loše strane. Na lošoj strani, politika, izgleda, ne beži od ljudi kao što sam ja. Svaki iranski umetnik je, na jedan ili drugi način, političan. Politika definiše naše živote. Ukoliko živite u Iranu, suočavate se sa cenzurom, maltretiranjem, hapšenjem, mučenjem, ponekad i egzekucijom. Ako živite van zemlje, kao ja, suočeni ste sa životom u ignanstvu i čežnjom i bolom jer ste razdvojeni od svojih bližnjih, od svoje porodice. Tako da mi ne nalazimo moralni, emotivni, psihološki i politički prostor da se distanciramo od realnosti društvene odgovornosti.
Oddly enough, an artist such as myself finds herself also in the position of being the voice, the speaker of my people, even if I have, indeed, no access to my own country. Also, people like myself, we're fighting two battles on different grounds. We're being critical of the West, the perception of the West about our identity -- about the image that is constructed about us, about our women, about our politics, about our religion. We are there to take pride and insist on respect. And at the same time, we're fighting another battle. That is our regime, our government -- our atrocious government, [that] has done every crime in order to stay in power. Our artists are at risk. We are in a position of danger. We pose a threat to the order of the government.
Začudo, umetnik, poput mene, je takođe glas, govornik svog naroda, iako ja zaista nemam pristup svojoj zemlji. Takođe, ljudi poput mene, vode dve bitke na različitim poljima. Kritikujemo zapad, njegovu percepciju našeg identiteta, imidža koji je stvoren o nama, o našim ženama, politici, o našoj religiji. Tamo smo da se ponosimo sobom i da insistiramo na poštovanju. U isto vreme, vodimo drugu bitku. To je naš režim, naša vlada, naša svirepa vlada koja ne zazire od zločina da bi zadržala vlast. Naši umetnici su pod rizikom. Mi smo u opasnosti. Predstavljamo pretnju vladinom poretku.
But ironically, this situation has empowered all of us, because we are considered, as artists, central to the cultural, political, social discourse in Iran. We are there to inspire, to provoke, to mobilize, to bring hope to our people. We are the reporters of our people, and are communicators to the outside world. Art is our weapon. Culture is a form of resistance. I envy sometimes the artists of the West for their freedom of expression. For the fact that they can distance themselves from the question of politics. From the fact that they are only serving one audience, mainly the Western culture. But also, I worry about the West, because often in this country, in this Western world that we have, culture risks being a form of entertainment. Our people depend on our artists, and culture is beyond communication.
Ali, ironično, ova situacija nas je sve učinila jačima jer smo, kao umetnici, u središtu kulturološkog, političkog i društvenog diskursa u Iranu. Tamo smo da inspirišemo, da provociramo, da mobilišemo, da ljudima damo nadu. Mi smo izveštavači našeg naroda i mi komuniciramo sa spoljašnim svetom. Umetnost je naše oružje. Kultura je forma otpora. Ponekad zavidim umetnicima na zapadu zbog slobode njihovog izražavanja, zbog činjenice da se mogu udaljiti od politike, zbog činjenice da oni samo služe jednoj publici, uglavnom zapadnoj kulturi. Ali i brinem zbog zapada jer, često, u ovoj zemlji, u ovom zapadnom svetu kultura rizikuje da postane forma zabave. Naši ljudi zavise od umetnika, a kultura je izvan komunikacije.
My journey as an artist started from a very, very personal place. I did not start to make social commentary about my country. The first one that you see in front of you is actually when I first returned to Iran after being separated for a good 12 years. It was after the Islamic Revolution of 1979. While I was absent from Iran, the Islamic Revolution had descended on Iran and had entirely transformed the country from Persian to the Islamic culture. I came mainly to be reunited with my family and to reconnect in a way that I found my place in the society. But instead, I found a country that was totally ideological and that I didn't recognize anymore. More so, I became very interested, as I was facing my own personal dilemmas and questions, I became immersed in the study of the Islamic Revolution -- how, indeed, it had incredibly transformed the lives of Iranian women. I found the subject of Iranian women immensely interesting, in the way the women of Iran, historically, seemed to embody the political transformation. So in a way, by studying a woman, you can read the structure and the ideology of the country.
Moj put kao umetnika je započeo sa jednog veoma, veoma ličnog mesta. Nisam počela da dajem društveno tumačenje svoje zemlje. Prva koju vidite pred sobom je kada sam se prvi put vratila u Iran pošto sam bila van zemlje dobrih 12 godina. Bilo je to posle Islamske revolucije 1979. godine. Dok sam bila odsutna iz Irana, Islamska evolucija se spustila u Iran i u potpunosti transformisala ovu zemlju, od persisjske do islamske kulture. Došla sam većinom da bih ponovo videla svoju porodicu i ponovo se povezala i našla svoje mesto u društvu. Ali, umesto toga, našla sam zemlju koja je bila u potpunosti ideološka i koju nisam mogla više da prepoznam. Štaviše, sve više sam bivala zainteresovana, kako sam se susretala sa sopstvenim dilemama i pitanjima. Zaokupila sam se studijom o Islamskoj revoluciji i o tome kako je, zapravo, neverovatno izmenila živote iranskih žena. Iranske žene su kao subjekat studije neverovatno zanimljive zbog toga što su one, kroz istoriju, oslikavale političke transformacije. Na neki način, kroz proučavanje žene, možete pročitati strukturu i ideologiju te zemlje.
So I made a group of work that at once faced my own personal questions in life, and yet it brought my work into a larger discourse -- the subject of martyrdom, the question of those who willingly stand in that intersection of love of God, faith, but violence and crime and cruelty. For me, this became incredibly important. And yet, I had an unusual position toward this. I was an outsider who had come back to Iran to find my place, but I was not in a position to be critical of the government or the ideology of the Islamic Revolution. This changed slowly as I found my voice and I discovered things that I didn't know I would discover. So my art became slightly more critical. My knife became a little sharper. And I fell into a life in exile. I am a nomadic artist. I work in Morocco, in Turkey, in Mexico. I go everywhere to make believe it's Iran.
Tako sam napravila grupu radova koja se suočila sa mojim ličnim pitanjima u životu, ali je ipak dovela moj rad do većeg diskursa - subjekat mučeništva pitanje onih koji voljno stoje na toj raskrsnici koja vodi ka ljubavi prema Bogu, veri, ali i nasilju, zločinu i oholosti. Za mene je to postalo veoma značajno. A, ipak, imala sam neobičnan stav prema ovome. Bila sam autsajder koji se vratio u Iran da bi pronašao svoje mesto, ali nisam bila u poziciji da budem kritična u odnosu na vladu ili na ideologiju Islamske revolucije. Ovo se menjalo polako kako sam pronalazila svoj glas i otkrivala stvari za koje nisam znala da ću pronaći. Tako je moja umetnost postala malo kritičnija. Moj nož je postao malo oštriji. I upala sam u život u izgnanstvu. Ja sam nomadski umetnik. Radim u Maroku, Turskoj, Meksiku. Idem svuda i pretvaram se da je Iran.
Now I am making films. Last year, I finished a film called "Women Without Men." "Women Without Men" returns to history, but another part of our Iranian history. It goes to 1953 when American CIA exercised a coup and removed a democratically elected leader, Dr. Mossadegh. The book is written by an Iranian woman, Shahrnush Parsipur. It's a magical realist novel. This book is banned, and she spent five years in prison. My obsession with this book, and the reason I made this into a film, is because it at once was addressing the question of being a female -- traditionally, historically in Iran -- and the question of four women who are all looking for an idea of change, freedom and democracy -- while the country of Iran, equally, as if another character, also struggled for an idea of freedom and democracy and independence from the foreign interventions.
Sada pravim filmove. Prošle godine sam završila film pod nazivom "Žene bez muškaraca". "Žene bez muškaraca" se vraća kroz istoriju, ali kroz drugi deo iranske istorije. Ide do 1953. kada je američka CIA sklonila sa vlasti demokratski odabranog lidera, dr Mosadeha. Ovu knjigu je napisala Iranka, Šarnuš Parsipur. To je magičan i realističan roman. Ova knjiga je zabranjena, a ona je provela pet godina u zatvoru. Moja opsesija ovom knjigom i razlog zbog kog sam je pretočila u film je što se ona postavlja pitanje kako izgleda biti žena - tradicionalno, istorijski u Iranu - i pitanje četiri žene koje su u potrazi za idejom promene, slobode i demokratije - dok se Iran, podjednako, kao da je odvojen od njih, takođe borio za ideju slobode i demokratije, kao i nezavisnosti od stranih investitora.
I made this film because I felt it's important for it to speak to the Westerners about our history as a country. That all of you seem to remember Iran after the Islamic Revolution. That Iran was once a secular society, and we had democracy, and this democracy was stolen from us by the American government, by the British government. This film also speaks to the Iranian people in asking them to return to their history and look at themselves before they were so Islamicized -- in the way we looked, in the way we played music, in the way we had intellectual life. And most of all, in the way that we fought for democracy. These are some of the shots actually from my film. These are some of the images of the coup. And we made this film in Casablanca, recreating all the shots.
Napravila sam ovaj film takvim da se obraća i zapadnjacima, da i njima govori o istoriji naše zemlje. Izgleda da se svi sećate Irana posle Islamske revolucije. Toga da je Iran nekeda bio sekularno društvo i da smo imali demokratiju koju su nam oduzele američka i britanska vlada. Ovaj film se takođe obraća Irancima i zahteva od njih da se vrate svojoj istoriji i vremenu kada nisu bili toliko islamizirani, na način na koji smo izgledali, na koji smo svirali, na način našeg intelektualnog života. I, iznad svega, na način na koji smo se borili za demokratiju. Ovo su neki od snimaka iz mog filma. Ovo su neke od fotografija sa državnog udara. Ovaj film smo snimali u Kazablanki, rekreirajući sve snimke.
This film tried to find a balance between telling a political story, but also a feminine story. Being a visual artist, indeed, I am foremost interested to make art -- to make art that transcends politics, religion, the question of feminism, and become an important, timeless, universal work of art. The challenge I have is how to do that. How to tell a political story but an allegorical story. How to move you with your emotions, but also make your mind work. These are some of the images and the characters of the film. Now comes the green movement -- the summer of 2009, as my film is released -- the uprising begins in the streets of Tehran.
Ovaj film je pokušao da uspostavi ravnotežu između pričanja političke i ženske priče. Kako sam vizuelni umetnik, pre svega sam zainteresovana za stvaranje umetnosti koja prevazilazi politiku, religiju, pitanje feminizma i može da postane važno, svevremensko, univerzalno delo umetnosti. Izazov koji je bio preda mnom je bio kako da to uradim, kako da koristeći alegoriju ispričati političku priču, kako uzburkati vaše emocije ali i podstaći vas na razmišljanje. Ovo su neke od slika i karaktera iz filma. Sada dolazi zeleni pokret - leto 2009. kada je moj film pušten - ustanak počinje na ulicama Teherana.
What is unbelievably ironic is the period that we tried to depict in the film, the cry for democracy and social justice, repeats itself now again in Tehran. The green movement significantly inspired the world. It brought a lot of attention to all those Iranians who stand for basic human rights and struggle for democracy. What was most significant for me was, once again, the presence of the women. They're absolutely inspirational for me. If in the Islamic Revolution, the images of the woman portrayed were submissive and didn't have a voice, now we saw a new idea of feminism in the streets of Tehran -- women who were educated, forward thinking, non-traditional, sexually open, fearless and seriously feminist. These women and those young men united Iranians across the world, inside and outside.
Ono što je neverovatno ironično je da se period koji smo pokušali da oslikamo u filmu, vapaj za demokratijom, i društvenom pravdom ponavlja sada, ponovo u Teheranu. Zeleni pokret je značajno inspirisao svet. To je privuklo pažnju na sve one Irance koji se zalažu za osnovna ljudska prava i bore za demokratiju. Šta mi je bilo najznačajnije je, još jednom, prisustvo žena. One su meni apsolutno inspirativne. Ako bi u Islamskoj revoluciji žene bile oslikane kao potčinjene i kao da nemaju glas sada smo videli novu ideju feminizma na ulicama Teherana, žene koje su obrazovane, otvorenog uma, netradicionalne, seksualno otvorene, neustrašive i ozbiljne feministkinje. Ove žene i oni mladi muškarci, ujedinjeni Iranci širom sveta, unutra i napolju.
I then discovered why I take so much inspiration from Iranian women. That, under all circumstances, they have pushed the boundary. They have confronted the authority. They have broken every rule in the smallest and the biggest way. And once again, they proved themselves. I stand here to say that Iranian women have found a new voice, and their voice is giving me my voice. And it's a great honor to be an Iranian woman and an Iranian artist, even if I have to operate in the West only for now.
Tada sam shvatila zašto toliko inspiracije nalazim u iranskim ženama. One, pod svim okolnostima, pomeraju granicu. Suprostavljaju se vlastima. Krše svako pravilo na najmanji mogući, kao i na najveći mogući način. I, još jednom, one su se dokazale. Stojim ovde da kažem da su iranske žene pronašle novi glas i njihov glas meni daje glas. I velika je čast biti Iranka i iranska umetnica iako trenutno moram živeti i raditi na zapadu.
Thank you so much.
Puno vam hvala!
(Applause)
(Aplauz)