“Simurgh Self-Help” Merch Drop

Part of the show Simurgh Self-​Help is the new merch drop py Slavs and Tatars, inc­luding caps, T-shirts and leg­gings in various colour­ways, featuring themes and slogans from the show: Simurgh—See More. Merch is available exc­lusively at Raster during the exhibition, until July 6, 2024.

Sanft Power

This not that

Samovar

Astaneh (Persian)

Astaneh (English)

Astaneh (Ukrainian)

Stilettos

Duck’s Blood

Azbuka Strikes Back

Sometimes the shapes given to sounds can be more like a prison than a place to call home. Between 1927 and 1991, the lan­guages of 25 mil­lion peoples in the Soviet empire chan­ged alphabets once, twice, and sometimes even three times. This is the story of fugitive sounds in search of shelter… 

Noblesse Oblige (pumpkin seed)

The new­spaper headline tells us: “Noblesse oblige, précariat exige” – nobility obliges, precariat requires.

Qatalogue

A fully func­tional wool carpet serves as an emblem of the artists’ interest in lan­guage and the relation­ship between speech and the body.

The Inrising

The mythical Per­sian bird replaced the Polish royal eagle in a symbol of solidarity.

Naughty Nasals

The Rus­sian Cyril­lization of Polish was introduced in the Rus­sian par­tition in the nineteenth cen­tury. Two Polish let­ters in par­ticular were problematic: the “ą” and the “ę.” These nasals had disap­peared from
most other Slavic lan­guages. The solution came via let­ters from the Old Slavonic lan­guage, Ѫѫ (big yus) and Ѧѧ (little yus): Naughty Nasals under­line the affront of Orthodox- Cyril­lic on a Catholic-​Latin iden­tity. Slavs and Tatars have trans­for­med
the let­ters into fur­niture resem­bling por­table con­fes­sion booths.

Pavement Prose: Język lata jak łopata

The shovel, as the cen­trepiece of the Towarzystwo Szubrawców logo, is used to parody the parasitism of the nobility who rides it like a witch.

Figa

An obscene hand gesture specific to Turkic and Slavic cul­tures, “Figa” revisits the old Egyp­tian proverb: “Life is like a cucum­ber: one day in your hand and one day in your ass.”

Hammer and Nipple

Whether in North America, Europe, the Middle East or Asia, we’re increasin­gly sour on power.

Pan Chrzan

Pan Chrzan is the main hero of Slavs and Tatars’ body of work on Pickle Politics.

Vacuums

The conver­sion of a lan­guage from one script to another is a routine act of alphabet penitence. The reason we do so hurriedly—with a dose of chagrin, hol­ding our noses, on the back of a scrap of paper—stems in part from transliteration’s maligned status. One thing is clear: trans­lation it is not. Alas, trans­literation is the trashier youn­ger sibling of trans­lation, its more prestigious, older sister.

Hung and Tart

Hung and Tart features a heart that becomes a tongue, enac­ting a synap­sis, or short cut between the con­cep­tion of speech, sym­bolic and sin­cere, and its delivery.

Irokez

The daily taming of hair is an act of civilization, bat­tling the frizzy and curly unruliness of the body.

AÂ AÂ AÂ UR

AÂ AÂ AÂ UR is the original ancient Egyp­tian demotic text, meaning literally “big, big, very big”, from which the Greeks conceived/translated the name of Hermes Trismegistis (Thrice Great), the author/ foun­der of Her­meticism, an esoteric body of know­ledge that speaks to the great tradition of inter­faith dialogue and mysticism.

Ezan Çılgıŋŋŋŋŋları

Prepared for and first exhibited during 8th Berlin Bien­nale, Ezan Çılgıŋŋŋŋŋları con­sists of two out­sized speakers set up in the form of a rahlé (or stand for holy books) onto which visitors were invited to sit, lie down, relax and reflect.

Lahestan Nesfeh Jahan

Lahestan Nesfeh Jahan (literally, “Poland, Half the World”) com­memorates the for­got­ten World War II episode of Polish refugees to Iran when Esfahan came to be known as the City of Polish Chil­dren. The text is a revision of the city’s legen­dary slogan, per­haps one of the most famous in Per­sian, “Esfahan Nesfeh Jahan” (“Esfahan, Half the World”).

Larry Nixed, Trachea Trixed

Larry nixed, Trachea trixed looks at various attempts to Cyril­licize sounds or phonemes that did not previously exist in the Rus­sian Cyril­lic alphabet, one of many attempts to extend or embed Soviet influence.

Bandari String Fingerling

The daily taming of hair is an act of civilization, bat­tling the unruliness of the body. In this sense the rituals of daily existence, such as com­bing one’s hair, echo as objects the coun­sel of the Mir­rors for Prin­ces genre.

Swinging Septum

Long eclip­sed by the mouth, as source of libidinal lin­guistics, Swin­ging Septum restores the nose as an equally discur­sive and desirous organ of lan­guage. A flat sil­houette nose sways from left to right, evocative of the facial acrobatics the septum must per­form to reach the sonorous heights of /ɛ/ or /ɔ̃/.

Tongue Twist Her

The pole exchan­ges its topless dancer for something no less racy: a giant, fleshy tongue twir­ling around and down the pole, a nod to the 60 odd years of chan­ges in parts of the former-​Soviet, Tur­kophone world from Arabic to Latin to Cyril­lic back to Latin.

Madame MMMorphologie

Standing tall book greets its visitors as a madame. A love story come to life, Madame MMMor­phologie winks at her pas­sersby, her long eyelashes linked to the quasi-​illicit amorous rap­port the book can compel in people.

Love Letters

Love Let­ters series of car­pets address the issue of manipulation of alphabets across Arabic, Latin and Cyril­lic, through the Rus­sian Revolution’s most well-​known, if con­flic­ted, poet-​champion, Vladimir Mayakovsky.

Other Peoples’ Prepositions

Prepositions are a class of words that explain relation­ship; though per­haps no preposition is as cen­tral to Slavs and Tatars’ cosmology as ѿ [ot], literally ‘from’ in several Slavic lan­guages. Other People’s Prepositions attempts to restore this litur­gical indul­gence ѿ, com­bining the Greek omega and theta through a meditation on the preposition’s more car­nivalesque implications.

Reverse Joy

Reverse Joy looks at the role of mysticism in the per­petual protest movement at the heart of the Shi’a faith for its radical recon­sideration of history and thus justice.

Pająk study No. 9 (for Friendship of Nations: Polish Shi’ite Showbiz)

The han­ging, meticulous object made of copper tubes relates to the traditional form of popular Polish folk spiders. These decorations, made out of straw, tissue-​paper and fabric were hung from the ceiling of coun­try houses.

Kitab Kebab

A traditional kebab skewer pier­ces through a selec­tion of the collective’s books, creating a mash-​up of a traditional reading list and sug­gesting a lateral reading or wander through books simultaneously.

Régions d’etre

A jungle gym for chil­dren and adults alike, Régions d’etre celebrates the pluralist and lateral approach to iden­tity found across Slavs and Tatars’ work.

Nations

A series of aphorisms celebrating the lin­guistic, ethnic, and political com­plexity at the heart of Eurasia.

Mother Tongues and Father Throats

A piece in the form of a monumen­tal rug, which relates to gut­tural mat­ters in a direct and indirect way. It was created while wor­king on “Khhhhhh”, a book dedicated to [kh] and [gh] – vowels which do not exist in the Western languages.

Man of Iran

“Man of Iran” is an Iranian adap­tation (not to men­tion a trans­crip­tion into Per­sian) of the legen­dary Andrzej Wajda film “Man of Iron”.

Self Management Body: Your Fate in Your Hands

The banner is from Slavs and Tatars’ Friend­ship of Nations: Polish Shi’ite Show­biz project, looking at the unlikely common heritage between Poland and Iran from 17th cen­tury Sar­matism to the 21st cen­tury Green movement.

Beware the Anti-Imperialist Imperialist

Beware the Anti-​Imperialist Imperialist touches upon the similarities between the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and the Rus­sian Revolution of 1917.

Simorgh Solidarność

Simorgh Solidarność puts the mythical Per­sian bird at the heart of the Polish Resistance movement’s S as anchor.

Help the Militia, Beat Yourself Up

Sardonic humour placed in a squarely Muslim context.

Long Live the Syncretics

Long Live the Syn­cretics dan­gles rib­bons delicately as a nod to the progres­sive, syn­thetic approach to Islam in Cen­tral Asia, where Bud­dhist, Hindu, and pan­theist rituals are incor­porated into the belief systems.

PrayWay

A col­lision of the sacred and the profane – the rahlé, the traditional book stand used for holy books, and the takht (or river-​bed), ver­nacular seating areas used in tea-​salons – PrayWay is part instal­lation, part sculp­ture, part seating area, and all polemical platform.

Hip to be Square

Hip to Be Square is a redemp­tion of the nor­malcy, methodology, and per­sistence key to the suc­cess of Poland’s Solidarność.

Hanging Low (Bitter Sweet)

Hanging Low pays homage to the con­flic­ted relation­ship to memory, to pluralism, to joy thru mour­ning through the puc­kered lips of someone who smiles backwards.

Triangulation

Inspired by General Komarov’s policy to separate the Cen­tral Asian population of the Soviet Union from Islam, called ‘To Moscow Not Mecca’, chooses not to choose between the two major nar­ratives of the 20th and 21st cen­turies, that of revolutionary Com­munism and of political Islam, or even between secular rage and religious fundamentals.

When in Rome

A deliberate slip­page of ter­minology allows for a moment that is equally com­memorative and confused.

Dunjas, Donyas, Dinias

Long-standing Serbo-​Turkic enmity make peace in Dunjas, Donyas, Dinias.

Death without Death, Youth without Youth

Death without Death, Youth without Youth, Age without Age invokes the Sufi spirit of complexity.

Molla Nasreddin the antimodern

Slavs and Tatars’ favorite dervish and retroac­tive mascot, the Sufi super-​hero faces the past but trots into the future on his donkey, like any wise man would and should. By requiring chil­dren and adults alike to hold his belly instead of his back, Molla Nasred­din the antimodern offers les­sons on time, progress, and history at no extra cost for those looking for a simple ride.