STATEMENT

This project is an interdisciplinary artwork situated at the intersection of Art, Artisan and Craft, digital platforms, games, and industry. It emerges from an inquiry into the relationship between contemporary life and cultural memory, asking how cultural elements and symbols acquire meaning in the present and whether a meaningful connection between cultural memory and contemporary intellectual and digital life is still possible.

The project is based on the reinterpretation and re-creation of Iranian motifs as forms of cultural memory. These motifs have historically existed within carpets and handicrafts—objects and practices that carry significant parts of cultural and artistic history. This raises questions about their relationship to the contemporary concept of “Art.” At a time when the modern concept of art had not yet been established, how were these objects and forms of making understood? And today, how can the relationship between Art, Artisan, and Craft be reconsidered? Can the contemporary use of these motifs and crafts still carry meaning, or does it risk becoming merely decorative—a reconstruction or model of cultural heritage rather than a living connection to it?

Rather than directly reconstructing the past, the project approaches these motifs through a participatory and digital system. It is based on the idea that the reinterpretation and re-creation of cultural memory cannot be the product of a single individual perspective alone, but requires a form of collective thinking: an accumulation of individual perspectives, choices, and experiences through which a shared heritage can be read and reimagined anew.

Participants, referred to as “Performers,” engage in a seven-stage digital and conceptual performance. Each stage functions as an act within a journey. Through each participant’s performance, a unique motif is generated, and multiple motifs are brought together to form the final artwork. The work therefore emerges not solely from the decision of a single author, but from the accumulation and interaction of multiple individual actions and interpretations—a form of collective thinking that becomes visible through the final composition.

The number seven is itself part of the conceptual structure of the project. Seven is a number that has acquired numerous meanings across Iranian culture and literature, from the Seven Heavens to Attar’s Seven Cities of Love. It serves here as an example of how humans assign meaning to numbers, symbols, and structures. The seven stages therefore function not only as a formal structure for the performance, but also as a reflection on the human tendency to construct meaning.

Performance in this project is not understood solely as a physical act. It can be mental, verbal, conceptual, or digital. The choices, actions, and participation of each individual contribute to the generation of a unique motif, transforming the participant from a passive observer into an active component of the production of the artwork. In this process, the traditional motif shifts from being a fixed inherited image into a variable and generative possibility.

The project seeks to create a space for redefining and reconsidering the relationship between cultural memory and contemporary life, analogue and digital worlds, tradition and modernity, and Art and Craft. My concern is not to preserve the past in an untouched form, but to investigate how we might enter into a contemporary relationship with it without reducing cultural memory to decoration, reconstruction, or nostalgia. Culture is approached here not as a fixed archive, but as material that can be produced, reinterpreted, and lived again within the contemporary world.

In this sense, the interdisciplinary artwork is not merely a finished object, but a process and participatory system designed to enable collective thinking, collective participation, and the shared production of meaning. Through this system, cultural memory is revisited and re-created through the multiple experiences, interpretations, and actions of its participants.