Artist Residency at the Ethnological Museum and the Museum of Asian Art at the Humboldt Forum Berlin, 2023-2024
During the residency, they reflect on the concept of “origin,” questioning its significance and the intersections between what is termed the West and the East. Their reflections reveal a process of encounters, forgotten hybridizations, and layered histories. To their insight, the term “origin” inherently implies a meeting—a genealogy of interactions that refer to diverse places, times, languages, and cultures. Through displacement and history, humans have met, exchanged, merged, clashed, forgotten, and redefined themselves. Themes of identity, memory, and language are central to their research, resonating deeply with posthuman theories.
We were fellows at the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (Ethnological and Asian Arts), where we had the opportunity to explore human and cultural encounters within the framework of the exhibition “Discovering the West”, a post-colonial framework in which it was necessary to rethink relational systems and explore new directions. As transcultural artists (Ahad-Iranian and Alice-Italian) we embrace this theme and even more, our personal heterogeneity, exploring the hybrid and interconnected origins of our cultures and working on a meeting place where humanity is invited to gather and rediscuss our life in the world. The result is PARADEISOS, a shared space that combines the form and ancient function of carpets with fenced gardens, the Garden of Eden, an immortal interspecies place.
What does it mean to meet? How does such an encounter occur? What are the entities involved?
Alice and Ahad conceptualize the encounter as relational—a dynamic interplay between systems that are both situated and situatable. Etymologically, “to meet” signifies coming into the presence of someone or something, encountering, and inevitably facing it. Examining such terms allows for an archaeological and interpretative spirit, where one subject observes the other and vice versa. To meet is to engage temporally, geographically, and locally. It involves two forces, two entities—at least one of which moves toward the other. Yet everything in the world seemingly meets, clashes, hybridizes, and transforms, narrating stories of evolution. The meeting is not merely a clash but a convergence, a moment in a broader process, creating a shared space where dialogue and understanding can unfold.
The phrase “discovering the West” evokes an archaeological journey stretching from the earliest civilizations to the present. Terms like North, South, East, and West—or Far East and Middle East—highlight the evolving human perception of the world and the relational systems it encompasses. Time and space are human constructs, relational and therefore subjective. These terms have often been employed to express power dynamics woven through centuries of interaction. Today’s world must acknowledge the existence and coexistence of multiple worlds. Humanity must envision new systems of relations—embracing hybridity and stratified identities we have long obscured or “forgotten.”
For Alice and Ahad, memory is not ephemeral or intangible. It is ever-present, incarnate in the world, objects, architecture, and environments—constantly transforming. Memory persists unconsciously yet actively, expressed through its traces. In nature, phenomena overlap, stratify, and transform in an endless cycle of interaction and chemical reaction. This process reflects the hybrid and stratified nature of origins. The world’s fragments constitute a “plastic memory,” embodying the aesthetics of immortality. These fragments, through their transformative processes, reveal the persistence of memory. The farther back we look, the more we uncover a genealogy of meetings and forgotten hybridizations. Humanity and its cultures have always been medleyed—a fusion of encounters and transformations.
Alice and Ahad associate this framework with the properties of Dust. Dust collects, stores, and preserves fragments and memories within its structure. It is a moving environment that traverses time and space, enriching itself with the world while preserving history. Dust embodies hybridity and stratification, much like ethnology and archaeology, which trace human journeys and fusions through comparative study. For the artists, Dust is a collective noun, a misunderstood symbol overshadowed by its negative connotations. In reality, it represents a space of coexistence, transformation, and future possibilities. Dust is not synonymous with death—a human construct—but reflects the ceaseless vitality of matter. It transcends language, offering a new symbolic form that demands a fresh perspective: the “fly’s eye” view. Dust is a repository of memory, narrative, and relational potential—a place where hybridity and coexistence prevail. It challenges hierarchies and fosters dialogue across cultures and species.
Inspired by the concept of Dust, PARADEISOS takes shape as a metaphorical and literal space for social and cultural rethinking. The term traces back to Xenophon’s neologism, combining words from ancient Avestan and Greek to describe a “protected garden.” Over time, this imagery evolved into the Garden of Eden—a space of life, peace, and coexistence. The artists envision PARADEISOS as a “carpet of Dust,” symbolizing eternal transformation and coexistence. This dust-carpet embodies memory, life, and the world’s dynamics, encouraging dialogue and exchange. Like the Persian Chahar Bagh carpet, representing four gardens and the mechanics of the world (four seasons, four elements), PARADEISOS is a communal, non-hierarchical space. Dust is a meeting place, a microcosm of the larger world where interactions, movements, and transformations occur. It is a collective portrait of coexistence—an emblem of hope and a starting point for rethinking relationships in a stratified, hybridized world.
The artist book “PARADEISOS. A Stratification of Memory” and “Integrated and Discontinuous” are the result of our fellowship programme at the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin in the context of the exhibition “Discovery of the West”, Where we went backwards and tried to bring the hybrid concept of origin to the surface.
As Pascal observed:
“A city, a countryside, from afar are a city or a countryside; but, the closer we get, they are houses, trees, tiles, leaves, grasses, ants, ants’ legs, ad infinitum. All this is understood under the name of ‘countryside’.”
Perhaps PARADEISOS is a utopia. Dust, however, is not.
