start

they wondered if it is possible to dance at the “speed of an image”
i wondered where the image is NOW and if it hears the same beat as i do
choreographing live images, not its creation but its projection,
on the walls, curtains, surfaces and textures,
on the rhythm, beats and moments
where neither dislocation (movement in space) nor relation (connection between spatially separate things)
describes what happens

four performers and a DJ gathering online on multiple channels (3x skype connection , 1x imvu chatroom and 1x mixlr channel) from different spaces:
a livingroom in Tehran / a rooftop in Karaj / a chatroom in IMVU/ a musicroom in Brussels / a studio in Amsterdam.
audience could join any of the mentioned spaces or be hosted online via the other audience’s phones on a video chatting app of their choice.

co-produced by Veemhuis voor Performance, Frascati Theater, IDlab, DAS choreography ©setarehfatehi

parallax
work in progress 2020
ongoing research into techniques of "looking awry."

screenshot telling
work in progress 2018-2020

avatar gathering
work in progress 2019-2020
collaboration with nooshin askari

bodiless heads II borders bodies flux & fluidity
lecture-performance series (30 minute) 2017-2020
setareh fatehi and shahrzad irannejad

a trip to the ancient Mesopotamian and levantine traditions
looking for the “bodiless” God of Islam
or for aniconism in art
Avicenna’s body
a synthesis of Aristotelian and Galenic concepts
trimmed of their materialism
augmented by neo-platonic transcendence ...
the state-sponsored body politics that i grew up with
easily monopolizes how i can picture HER body
either going with their poor narration
or look elsewhere
anywhere but your own past
cause the story that they are telling you
is not what eye sees if i looks back
it’s hard not to be reactive to this
to reclaim the image of OUR body - her body
bodies that fought for not being either/or
bodies that fought not to be this or that
black or white
bodies that did not let their image
be defined by the command of any authority...
free from conventions
of health, gender, race and beauty
free or at least fighting to be free
away from the politics
of eliminating [dancing] bodies
And away from the image saturated life
that OUR eye(i) is constantly
enchanted to respond to
let’s make some space
for the image-less body
to feed the meaning of
body training
medical care
immigration policies
and making love.

produced by artscabinet fellowship, hosted by Rooberoo mansion Untimely festival, Tehran, BRISMES Annual Conference, Edinburgh, Alte Medizin conference, Mainz, IPPT conference HKU, Utrecht

the migration and mutation of forms starts from various 2D clippings of notes, texts and images, expands performatively into a 3 dimensional wall piece and finally ends in digital formats that can be shared and reformed again and again. the “public” are partially involved in different actions (games and discussions), to reshape the composition. the idea is to create forms of live archive for the material to transform and grow into other formats and concepts.
the publication so far has grew into a book and a private instagram page which guests can visit temporarily.

essay
performative publication 2018-2020

www.instagram.com/paadarhavaa/ ©setarehfatehi

same-time events organised mostly between
Amsterdam and Tehran in the places that people
share different kind of doings ie. playing,
drinking, chatting, hiking, dancing and
listening to music. these online-offline
encounters played with the meaning of presence
in relation to body and physicality,in either
side and on the screen-glass in between.
beside the how to(s) that needed to be
discovered together, on how to deal with all
the devices, this work has created space
for distance (both in terms of geography and
resources), to question the economy (conditions
and impacts) of the activities that “i” might
have taken their simplicity and accessibility
for granted.

two cities
simultaneous events 2018-2019

co-produced by Jacuzzi, DAS choreography, BAZ cafe, VA-space ©setarehfatehi

the premise is to dance from the dressing room for the audience present in the
main hall via a phone. the dance is only for the person who is holding the phone.
the rest of the public can only see the face of the person watching the dance,
projected on the wall in front of them until the last few minutes when the
dance finishes on the stage.

dance of pointy clouds
performance (30 minutes) 2018
by setareh fatehi
with yalda pakzad and frederick rodrigues

co produced by Fajr festival, IDlab, YAA award ©setarehfatehi

bodiless heads I
performance (40 minutes) 2015-2016
collaboration with pouya ehsaei, tara fatehi irani and frederick rodrigues

macro camera scan the body in real time. the choreography happens
in the creation of a visual landscape through the physical and
spatial choices of the performers (in this case camerawomen or
selfy makers). framing, zooming, re-focusing and re-naming the
body-parts was the initial proposal of this work.

bodiless heads is a metaphor, a hypothesis, an imaginary state that points out the evasive, multi layered cultures of courtesy language in depicting the Body. this signifier is meant to encompass the various aspects of the undefined, undelineated presence of the body, the deliberate absence of physicality, which leaves it open to interpretation.

co-produced by Dansmakers, FLAMfestival of live art

synk part1
VR installation
collaboration with frederick rodrigues

synk uses real-time volumetric video from depth cameras fed into VR systems.
one body enters the VR environment by sitting on a chair. they hear a voice asking
them to look down at their hands where they see the hands of the performer.
the voice (of the performer) gives a light instruction for an a synchronised dance
between her volumetric avatar and the viewer’s body.

co-produced by Cinedans, IDlab, DASchoreography

o solos
one on one online dance solos 2017-2020

20 minutes solo dance for friends who has been invited to see me dancing.
the conditions are:
- solo happens online even if we are in the same city.
- solo would go for maximum 20 minutes.
- the seer is asked to keep their eyes in the frame.
- solo is recorded from my studio and from the screen of the laptop.
- any snapshot of the recordings would be presented only
with the seer’s consent
- music, movements, costumes and other materials are chosen on the spot.
- every solo is made once and it is not repeatable

it's just a second
performance 2012
by setareh fatehi
with olivia reschofsky, frederick rodrigues

two performers holding hands spinning together for half an hour. a wireless camera on their cap sends
live close up footage to the few TVs around the room. they spin for half an hour and let go at the end.

heavier than air
VR video work (5 minutes) 2014
collaboration with karin Verbruggen and frederick rodrigues
with jessica, nadia bekkers, nicolas roses, yalda pakzad, forough fami

bodies and balloons floating in a pool filmed by 360 lens underwater camera
played back in VR player. the video was watched with VR glasses inside of
an empty container.

heavier than air is a playful experiment on seeing floating objects behaviour.
curious about the general chain of events that applies to infections
(adhesion and colonization, invasion, replication and dissemination) and
the process of chemical censorship that some species do to prevent individuals
of certain groups communicating.

co-produced by AFK Amsterdam Funds voor de kunst

تجربه ی باز شماره یک
performance (60 minutes) 2016
by setareh fatehi and yalda pakzad

an improvised performance as a part of a weekly invitation for artistic interventions in Baz Cafe in Tehran. while being blindfolded by VR goggles(watching demos of oceanic creatures) they try to make a cake and serve tea to the guests of the cafe.

co-produced by BAZcafe

using a generic Instant Messenger designed for chatting and
playing using a 3D avatar in a 3D space we are exploring the gathering of cartoon-avatars and the live videos apearing on the video chatting apps.

this messenger hosts over 1 million users and thousands of creators, which some are also users of the app, who are creating chatrooms and accessories, body types, gestures and movements for the users. it also is a shopping mall with highly problematic body politics reinforced by the majority of its hetero-normative users and creators.

1001nights storytelling is the score. the one that existed way before it becomes a known written book (known as arabian nights) and being translated in european languages (French and …). this series of stories has been orally (سینه به سینه) travelled through different lands and time. one story has different variations in different eras according to the beliefs and desires of the story tellers. female figures, monarchs and peasants got different nuances in their characters according to the context it has been narrated in. stories had the ambiguity that could leave the judgment to the spectator and give them the freedom to re-narrate.

using the impossibility of capturing the moments in screenshot making (because of the delays embedded in the device and in the reflections of the seer), as a metaphor and methodology to challenge the idea of documentation, knowledge making and archiving. using frames on wheels and different textures as screens to avoid a "clear" image on the walls and to let images travel from one surface to another and appear in different grades of opacity, are the tools i’m playing with.

what is it that you wish to capture and what would you leave out of the frame?
temporal and simultaneous framing of holes, as a practice of swimming between imaging and imagining; press the button before you decide for the frame; try to capture what you wouldn’t and leave out what you like; choreography as “a selection of fragments of an event unusually meaningful (instead of useful) and desirable (instead of entertaining) bits, chosen and arranged to give an illusion of coherence..”

"parallax results in an impalpable sensation of absence or
confusion as to where the other person is actually looking and
whether they are paying attention or reading their email on
the side. this interstice-the parallax gap-is the point of
radical viewing and reflection, where one does not see things
from one's own viewpoint, or from the viewpoint of another,
but instead faces the realities that become visible in the
parallax. it is the radical position of not viewing one
determinate position in opposition to another, rather of
thinking and acting from the structural interstice in between.

parallax reintroduces the capacity of seeing strangeness, of
discovering and experiencing looking as a painfully pleasurable,
obscene, and complicated act, moved by forces inhabiting the
domain of jouissance: the domain of wonder. here, apparitions
appear, figures that demonstrate the forms askew on the margins of perception-not the realm of the visible, but the sense of the
visual, in the literal sense, on the margins of our ability to
see images". by natascha s.haghighian parallax