by: Gelareh Reihani
Continues project is a practice in fact that I started from beginning of Pandemic at same time with deforming the structure of the routine life. Continuous project is a practice based on people's lived experience. This practice seeks to experience disruption and occasional departure from the dominance of the general (and collective) rhythm, scrutinizing the details of how to perform daily behaviors, and allowing the individual actions of each person to emerge in relation to their surroundings. Meaning creating a connection and participation of each person with their surroundings based on their own unique and real rhythm. The focus of our project is on how we enter the environment around us and participate in it; How am I a participant in my surroundings and not merely an observer!? In other words, the question is relying on individual characteristics, without judgment and regardless of general patterns, how can we pass what we receive from the environment through our mental filter, reproduce it and share it with the environment? In our opinion, this is the simplest and most basic step to create and build a communication. In fact, our goal in doing this practice is to establish communication (and expand communication). Communicating with consideration of all differences, disputes and disagreements and without insisting on uniformity. Therefore, we chose "lived experience" as the main element and component of the practice. The "lived experience" of each person is the most unique thing that they can choose as a medium (tool) to communicate with others. And since no one can be similar to another, it is an element that can't be presented as a commodity of any sort.
During this project, several persons had attend to the project and shared their experiences. Through the practices people changed and got deeper:
Step 1
How am I living? / Pandemic duration / 2020
1. Document of observation (text, image, video, …) sharing and expressing with others
2. Once a week in a specific time we turned on the camera for ten minutes, we recorded our routine life then we share with each other.
Step 2
Passing unknown people beside me / The beginning of 2021
We experience presence and passing through the different places daily. We pass by many people or even we stand near them without least connection between us or sometimes we don’t even notice each other's presence. We spend moments alone or with peoples and ... this is a general and usual rhythm and in fact it’s a kind of our daily movement around us. Now we want to step out of that general and usual rhythm for a specific and short moment and observe a person passing by us accidently. We record her/his movement by a camera. By getting out of general rhythm we testify an occurrence: passing an unknown person by us. Now we are the survivor of it.
Step 3
I practice to listen / The beginning of 2023
The start of making conversation with random people about their everyday life.
Step 4
I interact with another one / the End of 2023
In this step I interact with another one and we create a flow and experience it.
