The current video production touches upon a related thematic complex: “i?” consists of ten episodes describing a day in the life of the protagonist O, played by Shahram Entekhabi. The video is inspired by Samuel Beckett’s film Film, starring Buster Keaton, a work already evoked by Gilles Deleuze in reference to his subdividing the moving image into images of action, images of perception, and images of affect. Like in Film, its predecessor, “i?” deals with the complex of seeing and being seen, observing and perceiving, and reflects on the famous dictum of the Irish bishop Berkeley: “Esse est percipi” (To be is to be perceived). In Entekhabi’s interpretation of the theme, however, the complex is expanded around the self and foreign perception through both a migratory perspective and the question of identity between two cultures. Therefore, in the film, the perspectives of the protagonist and camera continually alternate; and apart from the final scene, O’s face (and later the appearance of his “twin”) is never shown. The film begins and ends in a closed cycle within the protagonist’s apartment, with the action revolving at all times around O’s reflection.
The 12 minute video-film „Herr Karl aus Nemsa“ (Mr. Karl from Nemsa) is presented as being Shahram Entekhabis and Helmut Kandl joint project. Historic archive material from the beginning of the
20th Century taken from the Austrian State Museum displays images of the Islamic world. Paired with the sequence of pictures are quotations from the writer Karl May*. Prayer and religious chants make up the background soundtrack. Again, the differentiation within the specific nationalities and the prejudices against them, are examined.
As closing part of the project, the results of a five-day workshop that Shahram Entekhabi did together with nine youths and the "Next-Interkulturelle Projekte" are presented. Three video films were produced that reflect on Shahram Entekhabi work “i?” and deal with questions of identity as well as topics such as self-image, voyeurism and being the object of observation.
The exhibition takes place parallel to the project Far Near Distance: Contemporary Positions of Iranian Artists, on view at the House of World Cultures (March 20 to May 9, 2004), where Shahram Entekhabi participates with the installation Kilid.

*(Karl May is a German writer popular for his cowboy and Indian novels.)

Thanks to Helmut Kandl; Next. Interkulturelle Projekte; Hermann-Köhl-Oberschule,
Berlin-Tempelhof; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Niederöstereichisches Landesmuseum