1967–77
The festival took place in Iran between 1967 and 1977 and became a progressive nexus of artistic exchange that introduced distant voices from Asia and Africa into the international cultural discourse and juxtaposed them alongside experimental and neo-avant-garde expressions in the immediate aftermath of decolonisation.
Digitisation of Festival Archives
AOTFD unearths and digitises the banned archive of materials, audio recordings and film footage on Shiraz-Persepolis. It pieces together the landscape of this radical, virtually forgotten decade-long festival.
Contemporary Audiences
AOTFD takes the Festival of Arts as its point of departure to explore the implications of modernist ambitions. It uses the festival as a lens through which to reconsider the legacies of modernisms’ radical, progressive arc.
AOTFD online publishing
AOTFD critically evaluates the artistic landscape of the festival in a series of published essays. It considers it to be one of the most uniquely transformative inter-cultural experiences, perhaps the most radical multi-disciplinary crucible of any commissioning performance festival in modern history. It conceptualised its aesthetic and political genealogies across various themes.