Memorial

Project made @ ITP - October 2022

Memorial was created in collaboration with Sarah Elix, fellow ITP ‘23 student for a class called Print and Code by Tega Brain.

Materials used:

Yellow legal envelope
Red acrylic
Red cotton string
Paper
Metal fasteners
Cardboard

Technologies used:

RiSO printer
Color printer
Laser cutter

Memorial is an experimental zine created in support of the protests that happened in Iran during September & October 2022.

The protests began as an outrage and response to the capture and death of Mahsa Amini in a detention center. People in Iran have taken the streets, burning hijabs, and posting videos of cutting their hair in response to the policing of women’s appearances.

Therefore, Memorial works as a response to these protests. It memorializes Mahsa Amini, the woman with whom the protests began and 5 others - Mahsa Mougouyi, Hadis Najafi, Nika Shakarami, Sarina Esmailzadeh, and Hannaneh Kia.

The zine experiments with a legal envelope. Pulling on the idea of length and memorial, a long string is weaved through many buttons on the back of a legal envelope. At the end of each string is a small mini-zine. On the right (with a black jacket), the zine has faces of the 6 women. On the left (with a white jacket), the corresponding names to the faces.

Inside the envelope are contact sheets of videos of the protest, of people gathered burning hijabs, and women facing a camera, cutting their hair in sign of solidarity.

The zine can be consumed in 2 ways:

The first and the way that most will consume it is by looking at the piece as it stands — tied together with two small zines on each end. People are invited to flip through the faces, and then look at the other book to find the woman’s name. In matching the face to the name and vice-versa, people are invited to remember the people that begun this movement.

The second is by engaging in the process of untying and tying the envelope as a way of joining the performance. In the process of untying to reach the inside, people are given the time to reflect. Once inside, and seeing the contents, people are invited to re-tie the envelope in their own way.

Together, this zine gives a physicality of length and urges agency within the reader.

Conception

When thinking about an experimental zine, Sarah and I wanted to create a sculpture that invited space for memory and told stories in a non-linear way.

Inspired by the Vietnam Wall Memorial, Sarah and I began to think about memory about current events and protests. The legal envelope was born out of the thought of taking agency over an object involved in the legal process.

The small zines were inspired by Neta Bomani’s teabag zine and the idea that stories can be told in the most obscure places.

Megha Goel

MEGHA GOEL