Wildflowers

thirteen words, thrown like wildflower seeds through a world becoming undone. (and maybe some of them grow into spells.)

In this artist talk, visual artist and choreographer Reza Mirabi shares thirteen words he has collected over the past two decades – during an anarchist youth in working-class Germany, in an ashram in the forests of South India, on Berlin’s dance floors, and beside the grave of his best friend, where he threw wildflower seeds.

With these thirteen words, Reza moves through fragments of autobiography, the imaginary and storytelling. Along the way, he draws on the 12th-century birds of Sufi mystic Attar of Nishapur, a poem by Mahmoud Darwish, and graffiti from a small side street in Tehran that has long since been painted over.

The talk moves along the lines between text and choreography, exploring everyday myths, minor sorcery, and our strange ways of rehearsing new socialities-in-the-making.

About Reza Mirabi

Reza Mirabi is a visual artist and choreographer. He also collects seeds and makes vegetable gardens.

His work starts from the idea that the cosmos is speaking: every being, material and place is telling a story of its own. Rather than overwriting these stories with new narratives, he looks for ways of listening to what is already there – often somewhere beyond so-called intellectual registers – in an attempt to enter into strange conversations with the world.

Working across performance, installation and storytelling, his practice traces how personal memories, pop-cultural artefacts, mythological sediments and socio-political contingencies entangle until they become indistinguishable in the making of everyday life.

Reza studied Fine Arts at the University of Mumbai and completed a Master’s in Choreography at DAS Graduate School, Amsterdam University of the Arts.