“I was born here, in the Alborz Mountains, not far from the Caspian Sea,” says Omid Hashemi, lying against a map of his own history. “The territory of poets and mystics. A land so distant yet so close.” 

In From the Suez Canal to the Persian Gulf, Hashemi details a history of travel, migration, and mapping through the Middle East. He cites the journeys of people like Antoine Poidebard, the French landscape archaeologist and pilot who chartered a path down the Persian Gulf towards the Medeteranian Sea, and Sykes and Picot, the Englishman and the Frenchman who travelled to the Ottoman Territories and hatched a plan to divide the whole region between them. 

The small gap that was left between these new territories, explains Hashemi, was the province of Palestine – a piece of land insincerely promised by Britain to many. On the same day that Britain left Palestine, Israel declared its existence. The neighbouring countries did not agree, and a war began that continues today. 

All the while, Hashemi navigates a map of his own making, projected into the Pepper’s Ghost and manipulated by the roving, digital lines of Marcus Neustetter. Concluding his navigation of this recent and enduring history, Hashemi leaves the audience with a newspaper clipping detailing France’s declaration to “protect its interests” in the Indian Ocean, near the Persian Gulf. His parting words linger and settle, like new lines carved into the landscape, emerging on a map. 

 

CREDITS

CONCEPTUALISER, ARTIST & PERFORMER | Omid Hashemi
ARTWORK | La Fatalité Géographique? Omid Hashemi et Naimeh Ghabaie, 2024
VIDEO ARTIST | Marcus Neustetter
DRAMATURG | Athena Mazarakis

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INSTITUTIONAL PARTNERS

The Centre for the Less Good Idea  
Université Paris 8/Vincennes
Musée départemental Albert Kahn
Projet CINEMAF/Labex les Passés dans le présent
Musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac 

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