Collective Traumas and Future Fantasies

First comprehensive study on the role of art, visual culture, and activism for socio-political transition in Iran since the Woman, Life, Freedom protests.

Art and visual culture, artistic creativity and art activism have played a significant role in protesting against the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran and amplifying the voices of millions of Iranians seeking self-determination. Resisting arts have fostered international solidarity, created diasporic re-collectivity and inspired fantasies of an alternative future for Iran. Since the beginning of the Woman, Life, Freedom movement in September 2022, artistic forms of protest have raised public awareness on the streets, through mass and social media, and at festivals and exhibitions, both inside and outside Iran.

This volume investigates how visual and performing arts have resisted the oppression, divisive propaganda, severe censorship and mass surveillance in Iran, while inviting Iranians to share their traumas, imagine alternative futures and broaden their perspectives through rereadings of Iran’s contested history. The interdisciplinary contributions by established scholars, emerging researchers, independent writers and artists bring together insights from artivism and (visual) protest cultures, democracy studies, diasporic aesthetics, trauma research, memory studies and futurism. Together, they examine how artistic practices contribute to processes of resistance, remembrance and future-making across Iran and its diasporas.

"Collective Traumas and Future Fantasies" was written by Julia Allerstorfer, Sussan Babaie, Shahram Entekhabi, Ramin Etemadi-Bozorg, Hannah Jacobi, Pamela Karimi, Simin Keramati, Raha Khademi, Mirjam Künkler, Shirin Naef and Esha Sadr.

Pamela Karimi is an associate professor of history of art and architecture at Cornell University. Her expertise lies primarily in the art, architecture and visual culture of the modern and contemporary Middle East. She is the author of Domesticity and Consumer Culture in Iran: Interior Revolutions of the Modern Era (2013) and Alternative Iran: Contemporary Art and Critical Spatial Practice (2022).

"Collective Traumas and Future Fantasies" was edited by Raika Khorshidian, Birgit Mersmann, Cathrine Bublatzky and Julia Stenzel.

Raika Khorshidian is an art historian and curator interested in future fantasies, art-political activism, and digital culture. Since 2023, she is Alexander-von-Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Bonn.

Birgit Mersmann is Professor of Contemporary Art and Digital Image Cultures at the University of Bonn. Her transcultural and transmedial research covers global contemporary art, media art from photography to AI art, and the history and theory of museums.

Cathrine Bublatzky is a photographer and social and cultural anthropologist. As Senior Lecturer at University of Tübingen, she teaches on visual, digital and media cultures, migration, and ethnographic methods.

Julia Stenzel is Heisenberg Professor of Theatre and Literature at Leibniz University Hannover. Her research interests include theatre and media history, theatre and/as religion, and theatre philosophy.

Yes, "Collective Traumas and Future Fantasies" is published Open Access. It is available under a BY-NC-ND license.

The Digital Object Identifier (DOI) for "Collective Traumas and Future Fantasies" is 10.11116/9789461668158.