Listening to Stone Beings

First a farmer in Kermanshah Province in East Kurdistan and then a plumber in the South of Tehran, Javad developed a form of vascular dementia late in his life. A slow period over several years in which Javad uses less and less words, becomes more and more distant, and seems as if stuck between times.

A decade after his death now, Reza still hears his grandfather’s voice through several reoccurring memories as if Javad keeps trying to tell him something. With 7 stones, a piece of thread, a few stories, a song, a scent, melodies of a cello, rhythms of a tombek, electronics, and field recordings from his phone, Reza now tries to reconstruct these memories of his grandfather in an attempt to decipher what his message might be.

By tracing threads from Past to Present, Reza Mirabi inevitably confronts political and social realities that have deviated not just his own and his family’s but the narratives of millions of people.Now that we are at the end of the rope, how can we find radically different ways to move on from here? Now that this moment invites us to be in protest - how can our ways of protest relate directly to the complexities of our times?