Sahar Te

Made in Tehran is a series of performances that express our current condition through its composition. In other words, it is an experiential adaption of our relationship with the space that we live in.

Conducted by: Rahi Sinaki

Directed by: Sahar Te

The Price, in 100 Notes is a performance-based work which explores and compares oil prices between Canada and Iran within a span of 97 months, from January 2009 to May 2017. West Canadian Select (Canada) and OPEC Basket (Iran) oil prices are converted into Midi numbers and then to Viola and Santur musical notes. The Price, in 100 Notes is performed by Jonathan D. Lews and Bijan Meysami with photo direction by Alex Moon.

Presented in partnership with The New Gallery at the Royal Canadian Legion #1

The Price, in 98 Notes is a performance-based work that explores and compares oil prices between Canada and Iran within a span of 98 months, from January 2009 to March 2017. West Canadian Select (Canada) and OPEC Basket (Iran) oil prices are converted into Midi numbers and then to Viola and Santur musical notes. The color field in the video responds to the data as performers play each note.

The music performance is based on the performer’s interpretation of the notes that each stand for the price of oil in each performer’s motherland.

The piece suggests a shared space between the East and the West, a common struggle between two distanced worlds. The performer is an everyday human being affected by numbers, and reacting to them.  The Price, in 98 Notes provides a case in which, hearing becomes an alternative way of interpreting statistical data for the audience. Through this translation, the artist aims to create an entry point to further conversation.

Performers: Jonathan D.Lewis, Bijan Meysami

Director of Photography: Alex Moon

“TARJOME/ترجمه/_UU/TRANSLATION” is a text installation. The text is based on four different translations of a Persian poem, written on four sides of a column in the Luke Lindoe Library at the Alberta College of Art and Design.

The piece explores different methodologies in translating poetry inspired by Jacques Derrida, Jorges Luis Borges, and Vladimir Nabokov’s suggestions on translation.

Each translation follows a thinker’s suggested approach on translation. The first one follows Derridian ethics of translation and admitting the lack and making the lack functional. It is the poem in Farsi, written in its phonetics in Latin letters. The second translation follows Borges’s idea of the translation being nothing like the original, and it celebrating the space created between the source and target language. The written symbols on the column are visual elements of the metric system, which is symbols that are used for studying the rhythm of the poem. The third one is a Google translation of the poem to English which follows Nabakov’s solution for perfect translation. Nobokov considers “free translation” as a crime, and believes that the clumsiest literary translation is a thousand times more useful than the prettiest paraphrase. He gives priority to “utility” in translation over aesthetic considerations in literary translation

“TARJOME/ترجمه/_UU/TRANSLATION” celebrates mistranslation and suggests alternatives for literary translation.

KHAAREJ No.2 is a performance involving an opera singer and a drummer. The performance is based on a poem written by Sahar Te, in a free-form, modern style for the singer to improvise upon.  The poem is structured around words taken from English and used in Farsi, while the Farsi words are scratched out on the sheet. It is written in free format and its scattered words around the page allows for the singer to interpret the poem based on the visual layout and phonetics. 

Since foreign language functions as music (words are meaningless sounds), it is important to have the Persian language performed by an English speaker singing for the English speaking audience. The performer accepts the role of interpreter and translator of the poetry to the audience. Meaning is derived, not based on the text’s literal meaning, but the physical and material elements of the words. Both The Eastern Carpet in the Western World and KHAAREJ juxtapose existing cultural materials within an entirely different context, creating new meanings through renegotiating the original works. These approaches can potentially be seen as misrepresentations, mistranslations, and misuses of their original counterparts. They both celebrate inter-cultural exchanges and their consequential products.

* KHAAREJ in Farsi can be translated as: outside, foreign, out of tune/out of key (in music), outer, exterior, abroad, quotient (mathematics), and beyond

Director: Sahar Te

Performers: Louisa Brianna Adria, Craig Fahner
Site: Shannon Bool's exhibition "The Eastern Carpet in the Western World Revisited" at Illingworth Kerr Gallery, ACAD.

Photo: Chelsea Yang-Smith.

KHAAREJ is a two-act performance involving an opera singer and a drummer. The first act performs a poem by Rumi, while the second act is based on a poem by Sahar Te. Classical Persian poetry is written based on certain configurations and rhythm patterns. In the first selection, the drummer keeps rhythm while the singer stays within the limits of classical poetry. The second poem is written in a free-form, modern style for the singer to improvise upon. The poem is structured around words taken from English and used in Farsi. Written in a free format, its component parts scattered around the page, leaving the performer to interpret based on the visual layout and phonetics. 
Since foreign language functions as music (words are meaningless sounds), it is important to have the Persian language performed by an English speaker singing for the English speaking audience. The performer accepts the role of interpreter and translator of the poetry to the audience. Meaning is derived, not based on the meaning of the words, but the physical and material elements of the words. KHAAREJ aims to blur the line between poetry, music and spoken language. Words become notes and notes become words. Words become self-referential—like musical notes. As Walter Benjamin put it, “though one may glean as much of that subject matter as one can from a translation, and translate that, the element with which the efforts of the real translation were concerned remains at a quite inaccessible remove, because the relationship between content and language is quite different in the original and the translation.” KHAAREJ celebrates the impossibility and failure of translation (especially in poetry), and considers the alternatives in translating a literary text.

* KHAAREJ in Farsi can be translated as: outside, foreign, out of tune/out of key (in music), outer, exterior, abroad, quotient (mathematics), and beyond

Performers: Louisa Brianna Adria, Dylan Cameron

Meganarrative is an interactive installation. Audience walk into the room and pick up the telephone and hear instructions on listening to the previous person's story and continue the story after the beep. 

Meganarrative is inspired by metanarratives* and how they were created. It looks at the nature of storytelling and how stories go through changes through time and get affected by their time and surrounding cultures.

* Metanarrative or grand narrative or mater narrative is a term developed by Jean-François Lyotard to mean a theory that tries to give a totalizing, comprehensive account to various historical events, experiences, and social, cultural phenomena based upon the appeal to universal truth or universal values.

Art Rental is a co-creative intervention, which highlights the relationship between the artist, the artwork, and the audience. The artist, Sahar Te, becomes the object rented to the highest bidder who by signing the rental agreement becomes the artist. All the rights of the art made during the rental time is reserved for the final bidder/artist.

Art Rental considers the nature of the art market, commodification of the art object, the objectification of self, and the politics of ownership. 

To see the second part of Art Rental performance please see:

www.tinyurl.com/artrental