September–December 2020

Pedagogical partner for the course Recording Violence (BA) in Social Practice, Willem de Kooning Academie

July – September 2020

Participation in the exhibition Fictioning Comfort at Showroom MAMA Rotterdam and online at fictioningcomfort.space

June 2020

Sarmad received the Project Subsidie Cultuur, Gemeente Rotterdam, for the one-year project Image-Norms-Power

May 2020

Workshop with 2nd year students at MIARD, Piet Zwart Instituut

November 2nd 2019

Stall @ Zinecamp 2019, Rotterdam

Sarmad shows its serial publications of Sarmad Books, as well as the publications of the ongoing project Un–Making Image that focuses on the interrelation of image and power.
We also present a series of experimental publications and zines that are produced on a variety of subjects ranging from whiteness, otherness, and precarity to bodily pain, settling down in the space of the mattress, and Persian cats!

November 2nd and 3rd 2019

A HOLE IS ALL THERE IS TO PHOTOGRAPHY
Installation @ Zinecamp 2019, Rotterdam

For the occasion of Zine Camp 2019, Sarmad makes a camera (obscura) installation in which you can go inside! So imagine a box which can accommodate one human body, you go inside, it’s absolute darkness, you open the shutter and see the projected image inside, you can turn and see other things, you will also have to do the “focusing” from the inside.
It deals with the subjects which we work on; the various forms of imagery, and absolute darkness being an essential part of it.

November 1st 2019

Un-Making Image #10 - Prince, a Dialogue for One Voice (Alireza Abbasy)

In this 10th session of the “Un-Making Image” project, Sarmad editor Alireza Abbasy will perform a theater piece, followed by a discussion with the audience.

The piece, written and performed by Alireza, titled “Prince, a Dialogue for One Voice” is part of his growing repertoire of theatrical plays in which there is no spectacle.

Happening in total darkness, this particular piece is in form of a dialogue between a man and a woman, while both roles are performed with the same voice, making the two characters totally indistinguishable. It takes the audience on a mind trip through the fantasy of one of the characters

September 21st 2019

Sarmad @ Unseen Amsterdam
Sarmad editor Alireza Abbasy is part of the panel in the event titled “For Your Convenience” organised by UNSEEN Amsterdam and ARIAS, at Spui25.

“Large-scale agriculture, feasting on exhausted land, plants and animal life, makes it increasingly difficult to choose what to drop into our shopping baskets. "What is it that we should be eating?" is a crucial daily decision, affecting some of the biggest issues of today; from climate change, to workers’ or animal rights and public health. At the front line of these cultural narratives, artists find themselves in a vortex of web 2.0 social and political struggle. An evening on image-making in a time of food ignorance and ecological imbalance. With: Jordi Ruiz Cirera, Sheng-Wen Lo, Alena Alexandrova, Alireza Abbasy and Saba Askary.”

September 7th 2019

Un-Making Image #9 - The Authentic Bedouin, Sedntarized Sonics

The Authentic Bedouin traces the shifts in the music and programs broadcasted by the Jordanian radio since 1959, to explore the influence of Black September (1970) on forming Jordan’s national image and the effects this had on cultural production, specifically the music industry. This included rewriting songs and composing music with a Bedouin flavour, as a way of inventing a shared history.

Early attempts to popularise Bedouin music via the Jordanian radio had been unsuccessful and could not compete with music from other parts of the Arab world. By 1970, ‘a semi Westernized musical genre’ was invented and lyrics were sung in an urban accent but with specific Bedouin pronunciations to produce an authentic sound.

April 23th 2019

Seminar Leiden University

Sarmad co-organises a one-day seminar on Normativity and Othering in research practices for MA students in Film and Photographic Studies, University of Leiden on 23rd of April, together with assistant professor at the university, Ali Shobeiri, in Rotterdam.

The seminar takes on alternating practices and research methods in visual production. Here, discussions were focused on developing and problematising conventional methods in visual practice with a critical eye using the book Strange Encounters by Sarah Ahmed as a starting point – whereby notions of normativity, encounter, estrangement, and othering were discussed.

The seminar takes place at 11:00 AM, at Stokerij (Stad in de Maak)- Pieter de Raadtstraat 35, as to take such sessions of collective thinking outside of the university spaces so that a sense of autonomy could become part of the discussion.

April 29th 2019

Workshop Leiden University

Sarmad co-organises a one-day seminar and hands-on workshop on alternating photographic methods and the coloniality of photography (industry). The workshop is organised for BA students in the course of Arts, Media, and Society, University of Leiden, together with assistant professor at the university, Ali Shobeiri.

The seminar discussed the principle of camera obscura in an experimental format as simply the only basic principle of photography / photographic devices.

The workshop takes place at TENT Rotterdam, at 3:00 PM.