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Sarmad Platform

. 2012 – ongoing
. With Alireza Abbasy, Golnar Abbasi and more.

Sarmad is an independent, non-profit interdisciplinary platform for research, publishing, collective thinking, and education in the fields of art, architecture and design.

Based in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, Sarmad has been evolving since its foundation in 2012. It started as a magazine for experimental photography and evolved into a platform working across different disciplines from photography, visual arts and architecture to writing, performance art and film.

Themes

The following would give you an idea of our current thematic interests:

Image
. Sociopolitical importance and influences of various forms of image making
. Image and power
. Visual and non-visual image making (verbal, mental and perceptual images)
. Walking on the border of the visual and the non-visual

Otherness
. What/who is “other”?
. Whiteness
. The non-normative
. minoritized and majoritized groups
. Queerness
. Identity-based forms of oppression
. Moving the center

Precarity
. Nomadic life
. Autonomy
. The self-employed, the freelancer
. Exhaustion and comfort
. Burnouts
. Domesticity

And:
Persian cats
Buddhist thought
No-mind
No-self
Mattresses
Back pain
Talisman
non-duality

Sarmad consists of various interrelated activities: we organize public events, lectures and screenings, curate exhibitions, publish books, make podcasts and organize workshops. We cooperate with national and international art institutions, universities, art collectives and individual artists.