Ashkan Sepahvand's Page

Age

24

I have a website

http://www.food.com

Artistic Field or Interest

Writer, Translator, Cultural Researcher

Profession

self-employed

Artistic and professional experiences

1984 Jam-e Jam Hospital 1985 Beef Broth 1986 Ruhrgebiet 1987 Grandmother’s Persimmon Tree 1988 Candle Wax Incident 1989 Behesht Zahra 1990 Red Corvette 1991 Mrs. Stoffenberg 1992 Smoky Mountain BBQ 1993 Bart Simpson’s Guide to Life 1994 Ashura 1995 Henry Crockles Moore 1996 Purple Pod Luau 1997 Pet Emu 1998 Spice Girls 1999 I Stole My Best Friend’s Boyfriend 2000 Warm Leatherette 2001 The Joy Project 2002 Hudson River Valley 2003 Nectarine and Roasted Pepper Salad 2004 Black Straight-leg Diesels 2005 King’s Cross Station 2006 The Art Library 2007 Aufenthaltserlaubnis 2008 5-Year Plan 2009 Secretary of the Greater Occultation

Statement

Dear Sir or Madam,

On Tuesday, November 27, 2007, after a long and tumultuous struggle with demands I have placed on myself and others have placed on me, as well as with the voyeuristic condition I continuously experienced over the course of my art historical studies and during many uncanny conversations with artists themselves, I decided that I – from now on – am an artist.

I view this as a coming out of sorts, the word still feels sticky in my mouth as I stutter it, but maybe in the proper German tradition of validating information by writing it down, I can confirm this personal decision and bring it to your attention.

My artistic interests are drawn from two foundational issues: self-education and communities of interaction and exchange. The former I view as a user-focused, pedagogical strategy to accumulate artistic research, presenting its content (ideas and process) as opposed to its materiality (text, whose current, aestheticized role in artistic production is an abused monstrosity inherited from conceptual art), as an instigation of self-emancipatory activity. The latter I view as a strategy of socially analyzing and redesigning the ways in which people interact and exchange in spaces, in a struggle with the options available today for any sense of a “public sphere” to viably exist. Once again, the focus is not on an exchange between a subject and an object, but amongst subjects alone (I preferably use the term “actors”), in which a stimulating cue (conversation piece) produces a communal expression of activity. In both, my belief in human agency is laid bare.

Please do not confuse my respect for the potential of human beings as agents of their own existence as some naïve belief in “democracy”, or as a purely individualistic reduction of experience to subjective sensations. Self-education and communal expression are urgent territories for an artistic contribution to the formation of a community, faced with a shadow of mental numbness that has fallen on our society in light of recent political events.

Now that I am an artist, I do not intend to limit my activities to “artificing” (the root of the word “artist”). The division of labor in the art world has its base in a systematic compartmentalization of professions out of an economic need to secure stable sources of income, and a spiritual desire to gain recognition in particular circles of reception. I do not believe in the supposed differences between these “professions” (their existence is only a proud mindset fueled by a reinforcing salary), and it is saddening to me that a model originating in the 19th century is still being implemented in the scope of cultural production today. I am using this confession as a moment in which entire horizons open up, limits disappear, and the opportunity for collaboration with others towards an artistic end becomes possible.

Thank you for your patience in seeing my confession through. I am open to any further correspondences.

Sincerely,

Ashkan Sepahvand

Research interests

New iconoclasms, image wars, visual/metaphysical presence, propaganda, the image of history (past/present/future), the Messianic operative, life/death, ghosts of history (images/objects/spaces), ritual gestures, trauma, sexuality, desire-production, fake documents, text-as-image (how can images appear in words as fragments that come together to form a whole?)

The Museum of the Occident