LACMA
A thousand-year-old poem and a past that is forever present brings contemporary Iranian art to the LACMA
In 2018 LACMA opened a show of 125 works about anachronism: kings who never quite die, martyrs who never quite stay buried, the past walking into the present uninvited.
They asked us for something that was not an audio tour. We went looking for the ground underneath it: a book of kings that Persians of every background know well, the hero Rostam, a Shi'ite passion play, a 2014 billboard in Tehran that stood Barack Obama beside the man who killed Imam Husain, Game of Thrones, rap, a Qajar shah's court photographed with cell phones, ATMs and Cartier bags.
Poetry, heroism, and the fluidity of time. You know, the light stuff.
The result was LACMA's very first podcast: four episodes, just under an hour, hosted by Maz Jobrani with the exhibition's curator, Linda Komaroff. Shirin Neshat, Nicky Nodjoumi, Sheila Blair, Massumeh Farhad, Homa Sarshar, Anahita Ghazvinizadeh and Persis Karim speak across it, and Siamak Filizadeh joins us from Tehran.
Client
LACMA
Project
In the Fields of Empty Days
Services
Concept Development - Creative Direction - Production - Interviews - Post Production
Voices
Maz Jobrani, Linda Komaroff, Shirin Neshat, Nicky Nodjoumi, Siamak Filizadeh, Sheila Blair, Massumeh Farhad, Homa Sarshar, Anahita Ghazvinizadeh, Persis Karim
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Our Process
Poetry, heroism, and the fluidity of time.
Opportunity
LACMA's first podcast, and an exhibition about time. A medium with no walls suits a show where the past refuses to stay put.
Insight
A show about anachronism needs a format that moves freely between centuries. Voices do that. A comedian, a curator, a painter and a poet can all be in the same conversation, a thousand years apart.
Outcome
LACMA's first podcast series: a teaser and four episodes, Poetry on the Tip of the Tongue, An Epic Poem, We Can Be Heroes and The Past Is Present, The Present Is Past. It was released in July 2018 and is still on Apple Podcasts.
