…. .. - virtual reality installation performance (2024)

“.... ..” is a virtual reality installation performance immersing the viewer into the harrowing tale of everyday extreme censorship.

Virtual Reality

Built in Unreal Engine, and experienced in Oculus Quest 3, the narration is an orchestrated blend of distorted auditory clues manipulated in Adobe Audition, allowing for a truly intimate, immersive and secretive experience. Set within the confines of a seemingly normal contemporary apartment - for the entirety of the experience - I, as your host, am physically absent from your presence. You, as my guest, are a passive participant, as I update you on life, and brew us tea in the kitchen. The 7-minute experience draws from my own girlhood in Tehran: Watching women’s hair and skin be covered by grey rectangles in The Titanic on our national TV, Stories about us as Iranians having to cross the boarder to be told, and the confiscation of my abstract collages from an exhibition, on the day of the opening, for no explanation at all.

As these everyday facets are stripped away, you are gradually enveloped in absolute darkness of a once brightly lit apartment; left to confront the haunting aftermath of censorship's grip, confused as to what happened.

Performance

Performance, as a medium, allowed for the absence of my presence to happen gradually, while creating a personal and direct on-boarding of the narrative immediately, upon entrance.

Installation

A few subtle changes have taken place in the physical space while guests are in the headset; a wall is now blocking them from their counterpart, and they’re being closely watched by strangers’ eyes - all a metaphor of the isolation and unsafety stemming from extreme censorship.

After a few seconds in the new physical reality, guests are welcomed into my pretend kitchen, where the installation took place.

This space was crucial to the experience in creating a holistic, immersive, and most importantly safe space to decompress.

Here, unlike the virtual space, the guests are free to roam, to read, to write, to think.