Tirdad Zolghadr Boeken

Schnell, clever, komisch – Teheran revisitedTeheran, ein Vierteljahrhundert nach der Revolution: Ein junger Iraner kommt aus dem Ausland zurück, um das Promessa – in den 70er-Jahren eine glamouröse Cocktailbar – als Galerie wiederzueröffnen. Aber er hat keine Ahnung, worauf er sich einlässt. Er taucht ein in die Welt der Teheraner Kulturindustrie, in der sich Politik, Drogen und Markenartikel problemlos miteinander verbinden lassen. Auf der Suche nach Geld, Talent und Bildern für das Promessa eilt unser Protagonist durch Teheran und wird dabei verhaftet, verhört, erpresst und von seinen eigenen Gefährten betrogen. Zum Nachdenken bleibt jedoch keine Zeit, denn die Eröffnung rückt immer näher. Zolghadr schreibt mit Witz und Hintergründigkeit über den Kunstbetrieb, über Pop und Verschwörungstheorien, über Teheran, Hamburg und Beirut. Sein rasanter Roman über die Eröffnung einer Galerie ist zugleich das schillernde Porträt einer Stadt, die so kein Europäer kennt.

How to transcend land grab economies, even by means of art? The reader REALTY moves from the safety of critique to the vulgarity of suggestions. The pandemic?s effect on mobility presents a historic opportunity. Rarely has criticism of our extractive artworld logic of one-place-after-another been louder. REALTY is a long-term curatorial program by Tirdad Zolghadr (*1973), initially commissioned by the KW Institute for Contemporary Art. With the help of numerous artists and experts who contributed over 2017?2020, this reader revisits how contemporary art can contribute to decisive conversations on urbanism.00TIRDAD ZOLGHADR (*1973) is a curator and writer. He is currently artistic director of the Sommerakademie Paul Klee. Curatorial work over the last two decades includes biennial settings as well as long-term, research-driven efforts, most recently as associate curator at KW Institute for Contemporary Art Berlin, 2016-20

A speculative, existentialist fiction on the melancholia of revolutionary politics and good intentions, Tirdad Zolghadr's novel is composed of the logorrhea of online communication and unpublished manuscripts. At the start of the New Zion Empire in 2016--a time of unprecedented dystopic stability with superpower coalitions, generous drone regiments, awesome capital investments, and more soft-power propaganda than ever employed in modern history--Sergeant Jim of the United States is taken hostage in Yazd, once the proud seat of the Persian Empire, and becomes a wildly popular mouthpiece for Third World rhetoric, postcolonial jingles, anti-imperial anecdotes, and anti-Zionist mottos. The abductors (a ghostwriter, an aspiring self-help guru, and an academic) invite trusted celebrity blogger Claude Mann to their suburban compound to generate more hype for their cause and to possibly replace Jim as their new abductee. A few years later, the ex-terrorists reconnect when one of them decides to author a memoir of their exploits and gain fame; all the while, Sergeant Jim haunts them with cryptic, tender, frenzied e-mails. Plot is a paranoiac-futuristic novel and exercise in satire and ontology.

The first in a new series of readers from the Carpenter Center for Visual Arts at

"Solution 168-185: America is the fourth book in the Solution series. Opting for the United States of America--which the author says is "still the most proficiently colonial place" [he knows]--Tirdad Zolghadr provides a compilation of highly entertaining "solutions" for a nation suspicious of progressive politics yet rich in its history of harboring and cultivating the avant-garde." --Publisher

This rich and extensive collection of writings, interviews, image spreads, letters,graphic essays and Skype conversations is the product of 2009's fertile''summer academy'' at the Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern. Guest curator, the Berlinbasedwriter/curator Tirdad Zolghadr, surprised participants by canceling thescheduled annual ''fellow exhibition'' that summer. Instead, participants were askedto contribute to this book, which makes a strong argument for print publicationsas equally worthy sites of art production alongside studio practice and exhibitions.The cancellation ''did not stem from a boredom with art, nor even with its rituals,but simply from an impatience with the unquestioning exhibition routine that predominates,''writes Zolghadr. Featured writings include Bruce Hainley, Los Angleles,a contributing editor at ArtForum and professor at Art Center College of Design,Mmariangela Mendez Prencke, Bogota, Columbia, curator, professor and graduatefrom BARD College, Uriel Orslow, Swiss artist, and many, many more.