Khat keshi | Berlin 2009

Visitors of Khat keshi will have the opportunity to communicate using Persian script, a foreign script that is largely considered to be ‘aesthetic’ but indecipherable. Khat keshi which means ‘to draw a line,’ ‘to doodle,’ or ‘to make a mark,’ originates from research carried out by Pantea Lachin on experimental typography during 2007 & 2008. This research opportunity came about as a result of a postgraduate scholarship awarded to her by the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Services), which she used to fund a study of the concept on experimental typography in New York City and Tehran. After this scholarship period, she returned to Tehran with an idea in mind to establish a group to work on the theme of experimental typography. Khat keshi is the culmination of that work and it has already been exhibited in the Tarahane Azad Gallery in Tehran to a number of successful reviews. Khat keshi investigates experimental ways of working. The artists were asked to produce work that was beyond the typical print and 2-dimensionality. But more specifically, the aim of Khat keshi is to enable visitors to communicate with what will be for most of them, a foreign script. In this exhibition, the functionality of typography as a reading tool fades into the background and affords the viewer an opportunity to engage with the typography in a different way. Most of the works in this exhibition actually disregard legibility and instead play with its unreadability, so that visitors can connect and react to the pieces. This opens up a common ground for inter-cultural dialogue. The outcome pieces are installation, object, performance, photography, interactive video...

Shervin Afshar’s interactive work encourages the visitor to experiment with the use of letters and voices, which have been mapped out in a random way.

Through the use of video, sound and photography, Pantea Lachin investigates the inherent emotion within typography.

Zeynab Izadyar’s installation draws parallels with the workings of a print house and facilitates a continuous, interactive dialogue between those who visit the exhibition.

Ali Ettehad’s installation explores memory and how the old, forgotten Pahlavi language reveals memories from ancestors.

Zeinab Shahidi’s piece uses exact calculations based on assumed viewing points so as to ensure that it only reveals its message to a curious visitor who is willing to explore.

The interactive video piece from Amirali Ghasemi takes its inspiration from the streets of Tehran and allows participants to build their own words from one or two pre-captured characters.

The performance piece conceived by Behrad Javanbakht manipulates, through the use of clothing, words and how we see and understand information.

And Maryam Niazadeh’s photo documentary work is a metaphorical piece, which likens the fashion we choose to wear to the way in which we choose words to discuss socio-political situations.