Nazanin Noori‘s new exhibition asks us to reflect on an alternative political reality

In her first UK exhibition, THE ECHO OF PROTEST IS DISTANT TO THE PROTEST, multidisciplinary artist, DJ and ambient hardcore producer Nazanin Noori uses a cacophony of sound and visuals to shock us into imagining a vastly different alternative political present.

Entering the debut UK exhibition from Berlin-based Iranian interdisciplinary artist Nazanin Noori, THE ECHO OF PROTEST IS DISTANT TO THE PROTEST, you are immediately confronted by a wall of sound – the wailing and recitation of poetry bursting from speakers in a distant room. To your left, you’re greeted by an expansive curtain of green adorned with yellow Farsi lettering. Beneath your feet, the carpets are a rich blood red. The overall effect is a vivid and visceral assault on the senses. 

This is entirely intentional. Like so much of Noori’s work, the exhibition draws on her background in theatre, film and experimental music to bring the viewer deep into her world. From this vantage point, we are asked to question complex themes around political protest and spectatorship, from rupture to aftermath, and reflect on a vastly different alternative political present.

THE ECHO OF PROTEST IS DISTANT TO THE PROTEST was created in response to the death in 2022 of Jina Amini, and the uprisings that followed in the Islamic Republic of Iran. As such, the works on display reflect on the country’s sociopolitical landscape and – crucially – the experience of witnessing political events from afar, as captured by the exhibition’s title. “I think about the phrase televised revolution and what it means nowadays. Being a sound artist, I translate my thought processes into sound, as everything comes back to it. What resonates the most with me, therefore, is the sound of protest and how it is captured, how it resonates, especially from a diasporic perspective,” she explains, sitting on a windowsill at Auto Italia, the non-profit contemporary art gallery in Bethnal Green. “We perceive bits and pieces of big protests, of big movements, of big social energy that happens, but only resonate in pieces, because we’re not there. We are not close. With this title, I’m affirming that I only have the echo of their protest, as I can’t capture it all. My attempt still is to be a bit careful, because things unfold very quickly and we don’t know where they go. Also, as an Iranian who doesn’t live in Iran, you are suddenly expected to become the spokesperson of a group you see from afar and are connected to, but in a distant way.”

Noori’s practice is wide-reaching, encompassing sound, sculpture, installation, theatre and even DJing. On her social platforms, she describes herself as making ambient hardcore, and she’s a fixture on platforms like Mutant Radio, Deep House Tehran and Refuge Worldwide, while her work has been shown at Berghain, Museum Angewandte Kunst, CTM Festival and the ICA. Unsurprisingly, it is the idea and use of noise that fascinates her most. When we pause the speakers to conduct our interview, the exhibition space is filled with an eerie silence, aside from our own echoing words, which feels apt. Noori is captivated by how sound moves through space, seeing this as a kind of metaphor for protest. Surveying the exhibition, Noori ponders my question, considering whether there is a distance between the act of protest and what we experience afterwards. The execution of change, she believes, is a “revolutionary process”, a movement which takes time. “It’s a bit delusional to think that one demonstration can make a change, which is why I like to frame it as a process. It’s a revolutionary process, and within that process, there is protest,” she says. Noori elaborates that the impact of sound can be revolutionary, as it can sway an audience, while silence allows a message to sink in. She believes noise and quiet both play a pivotal role in the action of protest, claiming that “it’s [all] part of a longer dialogue”. 

Intriguingly, it is one of Noori’s visual pieces in the show that perhaps shouts the loudest. Beside us, a neon green curtain hangs, with a bright yellow Farsi word suspended from the ceiling and centred against the fabric. “It’s my proposed redesign for the Hezbollah flag. The original is a yellow flag with a fist holding an assault rifle, and it says ‘Hezbollah,’ which translates to the ‘Party of God.’ I shifted the colours and reimagined the flag as an apology. It now says معذرت, which is ‘I’m sorry’ in Farsi. I’m imagining that, in a post-fascist scenario, where Hezbollah become so conscious of their Islamofascist, oppressive legacy, they publicly admit their wrongdoings on their flag with an apology.” This forthright work is connected to her previous off-site Auto Italia exhibition, in collaboration with CCA Berlin. Here, in London, she presents a post-fascist scenario that zooms in on atonement and the collapse of power, once again focusing her lens on an outcome that imagines a peaceful resolution. “In what scenario do we hear the aggressors in an intersectional feminist revolution that is not bloody, and give them the space to apologise and to reflect, and we bring them to the point where they reflect?”

Further on in the exhibition, treading on a bright red carpet, Noori has staged a dramatic circle of white plastic chairs beside speakers. It’s here that the ideas coalescing around the self-assigned tag ‘ambient hardcore’ take on a different resonance, in her centrepiece sound installation, IF THERE IS GOD NO ONE WILL BE DAMNED / A HOLLOW SONG SUSPENDED. The project features the voice of Berlin-based performer and artist Rupert Enticknap performing a rendition of T.S. Eliot’s World War One poem, The Hollow Men. “We also hear Samin Ghorbani, a classical Iranian singer, singing fragments of a Shia chant that was sung in the Muharram ceremonies in Iran in 2012, which carried a maybe low-key, maybe high-key critique of the government,” she says. The placed chairs, Noori notes, are so visitors must sit in discomfort against the overlapping lines and lyrics, as the experience washes over them. The chant is a political marker, which Noori utilised after realising the power of “using the language of the oppressor against the oppressor”.

Walking through THE ECHO OF PROTEST IS DISTANT TO THE PROTEST, it’s hard not to be engulfed in the work. Everything here is purposeful, from the space Noori picked for this debut London exhibition, right down to the seating placements. “What’s super important for this kind of work is that you need to let yourself immerse in it, otherwise it doesn’t make sense,” she says. “What I want to challenge is: would you allow yourself, as a person in a post-fascist scenario, to be able to forgive everyone, forgive each other? I think the work revolves around forgiving, apology and remorse.” 

As we walk back to the entrance of the exhibition, standing in front of her looming redesign of the Hezbollah flag, I ask what this forgiveness looks like to her. “To make peace with what has been, and to understand each other,” she muses. “If a hardcore patriarch lived his entire life with, in my viewpoint, the wrong values, then realises that patriarchy didn’t save the world, am I able to forgive? Do I give him the space to see that? I can’t give the answer to it. I am just opening a chapter. I’m not saying that I would be able to forgive – I’m just imagining a scenario like that within the settings that I create… I just try to shift parameters and create situations in which a discourse can take place. I’m not almighty or anything, I just create a scenario.”