Lecture-Performance
Slavs and Tatars have consistently materialised various aspects of languages and the systems that produce them, including utterances, sounds, and even speech organs. 'The Transliterative Tease’ took a performative look at the graphic and often imperial legacies of certain unruly phonemes. To do so, the lecture asked us to go behind the sounds and letters. Literally. To use the back door, in all its architectural and euphemistic guises – a space where the immigrant, coloured and queer groups gather.
This keynote session was chaired by Dr Sussan Babaie, who is Professor in Islamic and Iranian Arts at The Courtauld, University of London. Born in Iran, Sussan attended the University of Tehran’s Faculty of Fine Arts (Graphic Design) and earned her PhD from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. Her publications include Isfahan and Its Palaces: Statecraft, Shi‘ism and the Architecture of Conviviality in Early Modern Iran (Edinburgh University Press, 2008), Persian Kingship and Architecture (IB Taurus, 2015), The Afkhami Collection of Modern and Contemporary Iranian Art (Phaidon, 2017), and Geometry and Art in the Modern Middle East (Skira, 2019). Sussan is currently working on a book about Persian art, food and taste, and on an exhibition about arts of the Great Mongol State.
Related Resources
Read
Red-Black Thread
Slavs and Tatars interviewed by Aryn Beitz, discussing their practice and influences, published by the Walker Art Center in September 2018.
Read
Love Me, Love Me Not
Slavs and Tatars' 2010 book about the history of power and politics in Eurasia, told through the changing names of 150 cities in the region, for download as a free PDF.
Read
Khhhhhhh
Slavs and Tatars' 2012 book about transliteration and the social history of dialect sounds, published by the Moravian Gallery (Brno), here made available as a PDF.
Watch
Mouth to Mouth
Slavs and Tatars in discussion at Ujazdowski Castle (Warsaw) to mark the launch of their solo survey exhibition, 'Mouth to Mouth' in 2017, and the publication of a titular catalogue by Koenig Books.