2021

Installation, Variable dimensions.
Materials: Steel, clothing, screens, short wave radio receiver, wood, wire

Collection: Courtesy the artist.

Pejvak's newly commissioned project is the first of a two-part video and literary installation collectively titled Scenes Around an Enigma, each representing a chapter exploring narratives surrounding listening and seeing across ideological and technological frontiers.

This first chapter, titled Unfortunately, It Is Not Open to Public considers the sites of Western surveillance in pre-revolution Iran. The video component of the installation was filmed in Behshahr (formerly the village of Safi Abad) in Iran, where CIA listening stations functioned from the late 1950s up until the Islamic revolution of 1979, as part of a chain of surveillance networks throughout northern Iran constructed for the purposes of detecting missile launches in the Soviet Union. Whilst capturing the enigmatic presence of the spy station’s white dome, the video follows several threads relevant for the residents of Behshahr today. Colloquially referring to the military station surrounding the dome as “Merghouneh”, which means chickens’ house due to the egg-like shape of the dome, the local chronicler in the video cites memories of residents going up the hill for the first time after the 1979 Islamic Revolution – an event which forms the backbone of subsequent intergenerational legends and (mis-)remembered micro-histories.

Unfortunately, It Is Not Open to Public also incorporates three metal drying racks that double as antennae. On the racks lay old clothing items that are rusted through, revealing their trues purpose as decoys. A shortwave radio device affixed to one of the structures is picking up on 145.985 MHz: the now-silent channel over which the last communication with the groups working on the ham radio operations aboard the Mir International Space Station took place. The installation also includes a new research-oriented publication which introduces Pejvak’s project within the context of space 40 travel at the height of the Cold-war, and the reimagination of certain regions of Eurasia as buffer zones and sites of intelligence gathering. As a poetic assemblage, the installation brings into focus the narrative capacity of cold war-era espionage missions that gave rise to the complex social and political fabric that dominated contemporary international relations in the region and beyond.

Following an open call for a M HKA / Van Abbemuseum Research Fellowship, Pejvak were invited to develop this research project responding to two forthcoming exhibition frameworks: Eurasia – A Landscape of Mutability at M HKA, and Rewinding Internationalism: The 1990s and Today at Van Abbemuseum. The second chapter of Scenes Around an Enigma will be presented at Van Abbemuseum in 2022, which will focus on the Soviet-era Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.