[NetBehaviour] The Flag: Instruction Manual # 2

[netbehaviour]

The Flag: Instruction Manual # 2

Carlos Noronha Feio, Daria Kirsanova and Sohrab Kashani

@ Sazmanab Platform for Contemporary Arts

#2, No. 99, Pardis St., Ariafar St., Sazman-e ab St., Sheikh Fazlolah 
Nouri Hwy., Tehran, Iran

Private View: 19th of April  16-20  (Tehran Time)
19 April – 2 May 2013


Exhibition, open call for papers and visual material and collateral events.


Sazmanab is proud to present The Flag: Instruction Manual # 2, a 
collaboration between London based artist Carlos Noronha Feio, curator 
Daria Kirsanova and Tehran based curator Sohrab Kashani. This exhibition 
is the second interpretation of the project started as a 
performance/event entitled Instruction Manual Number One: Washing the 
Flags for a Peaceful Revolution in Vienna, December 2011. Conceived by 
Carlos Noronha Feio, the work is a multimedia performance conducted via 
Internet that also includes an actual physical action/performance in the 
gallery space. The conceptual core of this project is constructed 
utilising the protest action ‘Lava la bandera’ (Wash the flag) by 
Colectivo Sociedad Civil, but it is also rooted in the proposal by the 
socialist American politician Norman Thomas who called for an 
alternative to the burning of the flag during the Vietnam War,  a silent 
(non violent) protest -a washing of the flag.


The project presents a matrix, modular flexible conceptual construction 
that can be shaped according to specific concerns relevant to the place 
where it is performed. This unusual structure operates on multiple 
layers of meaning and references. The most obvious reading would be to 
look at the project in light of the notions of authority and authorship. 
Yet, it is much broader in its critique. The use of Internet here, for 
example, is an attempt to construct multiple layers of detachment and 
separation within the cyber space. This action aims to create a 
distance, a conceptual detachment from the actual geographical locations 
of either participants of the action/performance. Through this 
abstraction Noronha Feio seeks to transcend well-known post-colonial 
theory concepts of ‘centre’ and ‘periphery’ of cultural production. 
Noronha Feio’s practice is operating within the so-called post 
post-colonial theoretical field. He is opening spaces for an assumption 
that equality is a certainty and that constructed social environments 
have to be respected but not at the expense of creation of division. He 
is as an example, defending ideas as borderlessness.

The Flag: Instruction Manual # 2 is the result of months of exchanging 
ideas, where the artist’s perspective and knowledge related to the 
previous event has been transformed by all three intervenients. It is 
not just a one off performance, but a two-week exhibition that includes: 
sculptural objects – flag and bucket; a video – documentation of the 
process of making of the flag and a series of video instructions in 
English, Portuguese, Russian and Persian.

Sazmanab will host two collateral events during the course of the 
exhibition:

- 26 April 2013:  Screening of a documentary AGAINST THE GRAIN: An 
Artist's Survival Guide to Peruby Ann Kaneko (2008) color, 65 mins.
- 1 May 2013: Carlos Noronha Feio in conversation with Daria Kirsanova 
and the audience at Sazmanab. The event is conducted via Internet from 
London.

Open Call

As part of the exhibition a book will be assembled, this work will be 
composed of archival information of the making of the exhibition, as 
well as being open to information gathered by the spectators and other 
collaborators. Information on the original action as well as other 
manifestations of the same or different actions with the same end game: 
a re-empowerment of the individual in relation to the state apparatus. 
To this effect we are here calling for your contribution. Contributions 
will be accepted in any manifestation that is possible to put down in a 
piece of paper ( i.e: essays, found, poetry, comments, photo, code, 
collage, etc...)


Please send your contribution via email to info at sazmanab.org.

by post to #2, No. 99, Pardis St., Ariafar St., Sazman-e ab St., Sheikh 
Fazlolah Nouri Hwy., Tehran, Iran.

or drop them by the gallery.

A pdf and print on demand book will be compiled and placed on the 
Sazmanab website at the end of the show.

Opening 1st of May:

‘THIS THIS MONSTER THIS THINGS', (group), Ikon Gallery,  1st May 2013
http://www.ikon-gallery.co.uk/programme/current/event/767/this_this_monster_this_things/



Best regards

Carlos Noronha Feio
www.carlosnoronhafeio.co.uk


Next Shows:
Carlos Noronha Feio (solo), MOCA London, 2013
http://www.mocalondon.co.uk/



Current shows:

Flat Pack Native and Other Pacific Constructions, (solo), Carlos 
Carvalho Contemporary Art, until the 27th of April, Lisbon, Portugal
http://www.carloscarvalho-ac.com/


Recent shows:

É um mundo novo! / It's a new world!, (Solo), Museu da Luz, Until the 
14th of April 2013, Portugal
http://www.museudaluz.org.pt/

You Are Now Entering_____. , (group) Centre for Contemporary Art 
Derry~Londonderry
http://cca-derry-londonderry.org/a-second-upcoming-exhibition/

‘THIS THIS MONSTER THIS THINGS', (group), Focal Point Gallery
http://www.focalpoint.org.uk/exhibitions/current/40/