What attracted me to this piece were the photos. Amazing surreal pictures:
In the website introducing this program, we can read:
“Musical forms and echoes of the Islamic culture and religion intersect with elements of the Christian culture and religion in an experience of genuine artistic and creative crossover, a real reverse shot to the echo of dramatic events of violence and intolerance that bring bloodshed to our days.”
It is about pilgrimage:” a spiritual and cathartic path through the territories intersecting the visions of the passion and contemporary suffering”.
Shirin Neshat, Namjoo, Shoja Azari are all immigrants. Is immigration a form of pilgrimage? Granted pilgrimage has always religious connotation associated with it. Pilgrimage is for a purpose. It is a journey in hopes of finding something lost or asking for help in troubled times. Immigrants follow the same path. They move, hoping that the new space gives them opportunities they did not have in their own turf. They leave because they have no other choice. They are in trouble. Like Namjoo who is forced to stay in exile after in 2006, the Iranian judicial system sentenced him in absentia to a five-year jail term for allegedly ridiculing the ash-Shams, a surah of the Quran, in his song “Shams”.
It is one of those pieces that I wish I could see live. The content seems to be too esoteric to describe it in words.
Words do not seem capable of conveying the feelings behind these images.
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