By Media Farzin and Sohrab Mahdavi
Spring 2012 | ArteZine
A Conversation between Sohrab Mahdavi and Media Farzin on TehranAvenue.com
TehranAvenue.com (TA) was one of the earliest websites to devote itself to writing about the city of Tehran. Sohrab Mahdavi, whom I draw into a conversation here, was one of the co-founders and in many ways its driving force. The website gathered a group of writers—including, in the years 2003-04, myself—who were mostly based in Tehran. The group included veteran journalists as well as first-time writers from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds.
The site’s content was bilingual, published in Persian with English translation (and vice-versa), which contributed to its large following outside Iran. Content ranged from editorials and features to short stories and op-eds framed as fiction; reviews of art exhibitions, theater, film, books, music and local cafes; short film clips, and photo galleries. At the height of its activity, the texts were a visible stage for fierce internal debates, public literary duels, and carefully worded metaphorical critiques of current events. Activities extended to competitions showcasing underground music and experimental shorts, each sparking their own reputations and responses. The Tehran Avenue office, host to weekly meetings with the writers, also served as a gateway for visiting artists, curators and journalists, as well as a translation desk and social hub.
Tehran Avenue has not been updated since May 2011. Visitors to its homepage are greeted with the image of a shuttered storefront and a banner declaring, somewhat cryptically, that “profit is not personal,” accompanied by a link to the archive of material dating back to 2001. The unexplained closure may have been what prompted Sandra Skurvida to invite me to write about the journal and the conditions surrounding its publication and cessation for this issue of ArteEast. But since Tehran Avenue had always been more of an unmediated platform, I extended the invitation to Sohrab Mahdavi, asking him to retell the story in his own words. He generously agreed.
Our conversation took place over email in February and March 2012. From his first response, Sohrab went straight to the heart of the matter, disposing of the thematics of “censorship” altogether, and going on to situate TA and its aspirations within a class understanding of Iranian politics in the reform and post-reform era. We talk about differences and conflicts between writers based in Tehran and those returning (“pats vs. expats”), TA as cultural capital and its actual economic conditions, and potential parallels in the art world.
I have chosen to present the protagonists of some of these anecdotes anonymously, and take full responsibility for the presumed self-censorship. If censorship is an abuse of power, then responsible, committed speech (of the kind I encountered in Tehran Avenue a decade ago) requires self-awareness and an understanding of the coordinates through which information enters the world and the power dynamics that affect its circulation. Our conversation takes up these very questions.
—Media Farzin
Sohrab Mahdavi: When the word censorship is flashed, it creates its own magnetic field, which ends up loading the bases and losing all functionality. This being the 33rd year [of its existence], the Islamic Republic (IR) has gone through intermittent openings and closings, intro/extro-versions, uncivilized posturings and civilized dialogues. All this is exchange regardless of how we envision real exchange to be.
In the reform era (1997-2005), intellectual commerce was encouraged. Many expats came to Iran and shared their experiences with their by and large middle-class counterparts. Iranians within were also encouraged to talk about their experiences through repeated interruptions (such as the closure of newspapers). They seemed happy to come out of the isolation that the first revolutionary decade had imposed on them with force. Through this, they realized that they were different, that years of isolation had made of them totally different creatures. [Filmmaker Mohsen] Makhmalbaf talks about this in an interview: the absence of Coca Cola, McDonalds, etc., he says, so part of the urban landscape around the world, has made of us (Iranians) such a different beast. This was a source of great pride.
Back then we were unaccustomed to fast food. Now “fast food” is a mark of distinction. The term is in such currency in Farsi transliteration that it has become absurd. This “now,” interestingly enough, marks an era of “closure,” when early revolutionary “values” are being revisited with vehemence; yet our markets are flooded with China-made, Western-standard commodities; our cultural universe teaming with fungus-like values borrowed from globalized iconography.
The pivot, to me, is the modern middle class (MMC, an ambiguous designation, I know), which holds a monopoly over representation (or self-representation, as the statement would have it). Just like in ‘79, the MMC is the igniting agent that fans the flames of discontent and universalizes its values, taking for granted that other social classes subscribe to the same values.
There is a lot more to say here. But to start our conversation, I believe we must see TA as also an MMC undertaking. TA wanted to be voice for the “responsible,” “caring” MMC. In the process, it realized how the social divide is affecting it in irreversible ways. It became conscious of other, un-universalizable, frames of reference (the expat, the laat, the untouchable, the West).
This I suggest as a starting point. And it is a conversation because I cannot claim to speak for TA.
Media Farzin: I’m very pleased that you are acknowledging the class position from which Tehran Avenue began its work. We’re both aware, I think, of the expectation that individual voices represent categories as broad as a whole country. And as you point out, the anointed spokespeople have most frequently been members of the modern middle class, their aspirations speaking directly to those of their counterparts abroad, despite the differences that came out of decades of isolation. So much is collapsed and rendered invisible in the process. I would venture that it’s precisely because the modern middle class, from my perch in New York at least, is so easily represented by—and controlled through—its consumer desires, that their voices are allowed to be the most dominant. (But you may well disagree with this. As you say, we speak from our specific social, economic and cultural experiences and commitments—and perhaps, at this point, ours too have diverged?)
In relation to TA specifically, I’d like to hear about the desires that produced a constellation of writing over a period of time, and the way those desires were affected by the feedback loop of its producers and audiences. I am curious about the mundane details of how it was practically possible, and whether it ceased at some point to be possible. Finally, can we explain the nature of its “intellectual commerce”? That is, can we try to understand what it meant then and what it means today?
SM: I believe that members of MMC should also be seen as the main social actors who shape desires and influence the sphere of representation directly (though commercial and statist interests are always there to re-direct and capitalize on MMC’s outward expression of desires—fantasies, ennui, meaning, lack, search for warmth and open spaces). As you well point out, “their voices are [also] allowed to be the most dominant.” It is they who get the revolution ball rolling. It is true that postwar national liberation movements greatly influenced the Civil Rights movements in the US, but one should see the advertisement revolution of the 1960s (I am taking a page from Thomas Frank’s The Conquest of Cool here) also as the unleashing of the creative force of the hip generation in post-industrial world.
The revolution of 1979 in Iran can also be traced to a combination of Third-worldist aspirations and First-worldist desires for self-representation and self-expression. From the Marxist left to the secular intellectual to the religious-ideological activist and liberation theologians—the whole gamut was invested with an MMC desire for self-representation. The eventual winners were the religious-ideological activists who had their feet on the ground and their networks within the modern working classes (MWC) and the modern business classes (MBC).
Insofar as revolutions are concerned, MMC can get them rolling but MWC and MBC are a sine qua non and are needed to throw their weight around. It’s pretty self-evident: MWC is fearless, has nothing to lose, and fully understands the gravity of the situation that it finds itself in. MBC is ambitious, resentful of restrictions, and without conscience. It is they—MWC and MBC—that physically and financially make revolutions possible.
Yet in 1980 it was the ideological activists who moved to the center and drove others to the sidelines. The ideological activist was resentful of MMC—for their lack of faith, lack of social cohesion, submerged as they were in a sea of desires that shoot off in every direction. And it is this mistrust of MMC that shapes politics in Iran today and keeps MMC from taking center stage.
With reform, however, MMC found a second wind. It tried to regroup and redefine its desires. TA can be seen as a reformulation of those desires in a way that could accommodate the political changes of the past two decades, and those who had a stake in them. This included the expat, who was taking a second look at Iran as a source of identity.
With the post-reform period—which starts, by the way, with [Mohammad] Khatami’s second term (2001-2005) and not with [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad (AN)—we see a rollback in how MMC regards the state-as-historic-nemesis. It threw its hands up and refused to fully participate in the electoral process.
This, the late Khatami era, is a most difficult period for TA as well. Writers burrowed in their niches, and personal points-of-view dominated their writings. This was palpable in our weekly meetings. Self-representation became ennui and embraced the failure of reform as inevitable. As you point out, divergence of personal experiences came out of woodwork. Within TA this was characterized, as you may recall, by conflicts between one of our writers who felt equally excluded from MMC intellectualism and religio-ideological activism, and the rest of the group. It also showed itself in the debates between visiting Iranian-American contributors, whom you met at our Damavand party in 2007, and the Tehran-based writers. Several days after the trip, two expat contributors came to the meeting with a long letter of grievance over the treatment he received from TA’s Iranian writers at that gathering. They criticized Iranian counterparts for their exceptionalism. In turn, Iranian writers accused them of elitism and snobbishness.
And then we have the new ideological wave sweeping the political sphere starting in 2005. It is once again the battle of ideology-driven forces, this time within the incestuous family of the political class. 2009 marks the visibility of a cleavage within the ruling establishment, and the joining hands of MMC and the reformist middle class.
TA found a reason to think more broadly. It came out of its exile-within/exile-without. It went green and then it went red. If the pre-election excitement resembled the 1997 social elation, the post-election resistance smacked of revolutionary spirit of 1979. MMC, offended , humiliated, beaten, raped, and killed, saw itself again as an actor in the political sphere, this time with the help of a new MMC comprised mostly of sons and daughters of early revolutionary officials.
MF: From your response, it sounds like the nuanced social positions of the writers played an important part in the TA dynamic internally, and are important to understanding their writing within its larger setting. Thinking of TA’s history in the post-Khatami era and the earlier reform period, do you think writers were more focused on responding to the conditions they found, or in finding new ways of thinking and acting within the situation, or perhaps a mix of the two? I am wondering, by implication, if the stasis and retreat you describe happening within TA today comes from a sense of impotence on both fronts?
From my own experience, I know that there was a strong model of collective activity within TA, antagonisms not withstanding—or perhaps because of the antagonisms. (And that your consistent presence, dedication and flexibility had a lot to do with this.) I am wondering whether the public presence in Iran’s streets in 2009 can be traced to smaller moments of cohesion and collaboration leading up to it?
SM: I mentioned in my previous email some of the difference that came out of the woodwork between TA writers in late Khatami/early AN (what I called the post-reform) era. I went on to describe two instances of these differences. The second had to do with the pat and the expat relationship.
You have, I am sure, reflected on the dynamic between the two. There is not only a linguistic barrier to consider here, but a social one. When I came back to Iran after a decade in the early 1990s, the country was slowly coming out of its self-imposed isolation. Expats were returning mostly to take stock of what they or their parents had left behind. The divide was clearly visible back then. My whole being smacked of foreignness. This was exotic to those around me. Everyone, from the closest family members to people I had just come into contact with, wanted to know how things were on “the other side”. They were thirsty for news from abroad. This created a magnetic field that I tried hard and for years to dispel. I felt that I was special and at the same time was suspicious of the assignment.
There is, of course, a downside to sticking out—you feel like you are on some sort of a theater stage and that you must act your part. This was a trap that most expats had to grapple with. I call it a trap because the envy that the expat provoked was a strong emotion that soon turned into something else if you weren’t careful.
Now, you seemed at home in Damavand, where the TA party was held. Did you notice the strange relationship between the two groups? How did you see it? Where did you feel you belonged? How much of this dynamic is emblematic of the post-reform convergence and divergence between the two groups of Iranians? How has it, in your opinion, changed?
MF: I enjoyed that trip, but certainly had a new introduction to what you term the pat-expat dynamic. I was surprised, at first, to hear one of the Tehran-based writers condemning the “expat’s” self-centeredness. (My next thought was whether I was guilty of the same thing.) Since then, I’ve come to see things her way. What indirectly clarified things for me was the not-so subtle instrumentalization I saw in the attitude of another guest—also an “expat” visiting from the US—who was clearly treating the whole trip (to Iran, and to Damavand), as a networking opportunity. His naïve and unveiled opportunism really enforced the divide on the two sides of the villa for me.
It’s this unselfconscious self-promotion, I think, that underscores the “foreignness” of the expats. It may simply be an attitude formed by a social setting that encourages and rewards the single-minded pursuit of any kind of capital. But to be fair, I’m not suggesting those living in Iran have a different attitude out of any grand spirit of humility—perhaps the chances of success for those based in Iran, even with that kind of crude pushiness, are too slim. If the “pat” is going to be an opportunist, she will certainly be more crafty and subtle about it, and won’t bother pursuing it in settings like TA.
One point this brings up for me (somewhat to my embarrassment) is the number of expats and outright foreigners in pursuit of cultural capital that I’ve sent your way since leaving Tehran. For me, TA was a hub of activity, exactly what these people were looking for. So I am no less guilty of a kind of cultural opportunism, though I truly was hoping the benefits would be mutual. I was curious to know what would come out of the encounter.
So is there perhaps something about your liability and freedom to represent on that expat stage that allows for mutual opportunisms, enabling the meeting of pats and expats in ways that are, for all their conflict, quite productive?
SM: The way you frame the question offers an insight: the US-Iranian is innocently predisposed to sniff out opportunities (where they in fact may not be) and he tries to capitalize on them for the benefit of the self.
Hyphenated Iranians do not act in the same way, of course, and they each have their own way of reacting to the magnetic field “homeland” and this is shaped by psychology as well as gender and politics. Among expats at Damavand we also had two young women with two different sets of responses. A third US-Iranian, who had lived and worked in Iran for some years, was never easy about her relationship to Iran-residing members. All were doing their networking and trying to get projects off the ground. One was an attorney who worked with migrants in the US, and was the only one with a critical outlook on the attitude of expats vis-à-vis their Iranian counterparts. She felt that they reacted with arrogance towards their hosts. Another was a vibrant expat who had hoped to start a business and who was not interested in the internal political conflict we are speaking of. The third, on the other hand, encouraged the offended expats to write the grievance letter.
I must admit that in the aforementioned party I was woefully uneasy. I sensed the tension, and unlike the contained environment of the office, I felt hopelessly disturbed by it. After the expats read their letter of grievance at the office, the tension came out, which was good. Pats were so taken by surprise that they collectively decided to keep quiet and accept the injury, reluctantly, as it may have been.
Sima [Saeedi] and I went to the two expats who had drafted the grievance letter specifically to talk about the issues raised to find a common ground. It was obvious to me that the expats were not interested in any resolution of the conflict, albeit one that would keep differences alive. They refused to accept the difference in perspective so that something may be established. There was a righteousness about the way they wanted to get back at pats. They appealed to a legal framework, rather than friendly resolution, to do so.
My intention by bringing the issue out is to look at the larger picture and not to resolve anything for myself or for others. I see the conflict as emblematic of a divide between metropole and periphery. Pats are invested with a sense of lack. They feel that they are not in steps with the political world outside their country. There is a deep-seated sense of inferiority that sometimes manifests itself in mistrust of metropole Iranians. Expats want to make their mark. They want to prove their worth and uniqueness in the same political world. They don’t want to be expats but citizens of the world—respected for what they are. The Khatami dialogue-amongst-civilizations discourse provided the humus for abiding with difference. But that discourse soon became a source of mockery by MMC, be they pats or expats. People thought that this guy, Khatami, could hardly keep his political promises at home, yet he was now trying to come up with a grand design for the globe.
You mentioned the TA environment was conducive for both groups. I agree. Pats enjoyed the presence of expats and outsiders tremendously. It was good to be offering something (cultural capital) that others liked and enjoyed. It was good to be recognized by the metropole. I certainly felt good when Iranians living in other places came and brought freshness to the meetings. For expats, too, the feeling that they could work towards a common understanding was encouraging.
TA operated on cultural capital only, for sure. We never made payments to any of the writers. For a while, in the beginning of its operation, Sima was getting paid a little, but more so because she was in a bad situation and needed a little more income. Later Jinoos [Taghizadeh] got paid for almost the same reason. The appearance of expats added glint to this cultural capital. If no one was getting paid in cash, at least they got something out of it.
There was a little income from the outside—we sold some articles, particularly in 2003, when the House of World Cultures in Berlin paid us for some of the articles previously published online, some new ones, and for co-curating the music section of their gala Iran event [“Far-Near Distance”]. (You were in the loop, of course). There were other meager sources of income (couple of articles for the Italian Private magazine, which Shadi Ghadirian had arranged; a Jinoos article appearing in a Sentralistanbul University reader), but by and large TA ran on an empty tank or rather a tank full of cultural fuel.
This fact (cultural capital) later on gave me the idea that in the cultural sphere a lot of things could be done through a “gift economy.” I moved and helped move TA towards a “public service” platform, this despite resistances both from my cousin and co-founder, Farhad Arianpour, who first planted the seeds of TA in 1999 when I visited him in Paris, and technically backed the website’s operation for three years; and Soheyl Shahsavari, who before leaving the country to study (he is now working in London) was a major partner. [The artist] Fereydoun Ave actually directed my attention to the public platform. To him, coming from a well-to-do background, art was public service. The artist was someone who did other things for a living but who produced work for the benefit of all.
MF: The art world parallel seems important in more ways than one. Is it, again, a question of class?
SM: I think of Khosrow Hassanzadeh—so delectably unique among Iranian artists who have made their mark both inside and outside the country. Why the Iranian art scene has not produced similar artists coming from the lower middle class stratum? The answer may shed light not only on the situation of Iranian art scene but on societal gradations and structure. It is true that art is the domain of the MMC, but the MMC also wants to prove that what it chooses to do and what it has to say are not limited to a contained group of individuals. MMC strives to speak of universal truths and bring believers to its side.
But let me rephrase that. Part of the MMC wants to distinguish itself from the common lot. In intellectual circles there are two opposing forces at work. One wants others to see the way it likes to see the world. It fights for the rights of the underclass, the subjugated, and the workers. It sees itself as champion to various lofty ideals. Another senses that its values cannot be universalized and refuses to belong to the common lot. Both these tendencies may coexist in an individual or group of individuals.
Visual arts in Iran occupy a unique place. Ever since the 1979 Revolution, the Iranian state has tried, more conspicuously than other states, to control the behavior of citizens in public spaces. From the dress code for women to outdoor activities, citizens are told what to do and how to behave. In private, however, they (and especially MMC members) have defied these codes.
The art gallery in Tehran is at the threshold of private and public. This is not necessarily true of other artistic venues (theater, cinema, concert hall), most of which are either state-owned or have to get threw the censors of the Ministry of Culture. Until 2006, galleries did not have to get permission to show the works of a particular artist or group of artists, although they were supervised once the show opened and warned if the content was not considered appropriate. This gave visual artists more freedom to explore forbidding issues, and relative independence from the state. On the other hand, because of their relative isolation, gallery clientele formed a tight-knit group. Unlike cinema, the work only reaches a limited number of people. Because the “commodity” that the gallery system offers is inaccessible to many, it retains its esoteric reputation, and it is under the sway of commercial forces.
The private-public art gallery, of course, is not the only space that accommodated visual artists. During the reform era, Tehran Museum of Contemporary Arts (TMCA), part of the Ministry of Culture’s Center for Visual Arts, did a great deal to promote works of visual artists inside and outside the country—one can suspect for political gains. Between 2001 and 2005, major exhibits at the TMCA—the Conceptual Art show, the New Art Biennial, the Gardens of Iran, British Sculptors, and the like—attracted large crowds to their openings (which one TA writer pejoratively called a “circus”). These shows popularized the visual arts and made it possible for artists from various backgrounds to work in the field, the way their cinematic predecessors had done two decades earlier.
It is here that we should see the rise of stars like Khosrow Hassanzadeh and their effect on the changing demographics of the audience of visual art—as well as social relations during the reform era. The stress that reformists put on culture and the way they chose to modernize it brought greater attention to contemporary art and increased its popularity across the societal board.
Once the AN administration came to power, it cut all modern arts budgets down to almost nothing. All the gains of the two reform administrations were thus thrown down the drain. Not only did the post-reform administration do nothing to bridge the social gap, it relied on it as a political instrument to put the MMC in its place and to continue a populist hold on power.
Events that followed the 2009 presidential election, which marks the re-entrance of MMC into the politicalf milieu, was a great surprise to the religio-idealogue, who, as it turned out, mistakenly assumed—though not without historical reason—that MMC was too conservative to confront power in the long haul.
It now remains to be seen how the MMC will reach out to the rest of the society to carve out an effective public space for itself. It must first come to terms with the injuries it has suffered, especially since 2009. It then needs to see that “individual gain is not!”
MF: That seems to bring us full circle—rather than censorship, we seem to be dealing with a laboratory of modest means: how to use the given conditions to creatively engage with the social, to address and change its coordinates. That, I think, is as apt a description of Tehran Avenue as any.