“REMOooOTE” “ریموت”
THE FIRST TELEPRESENCE
FESTIVAL OF THE GLOBE
2017-PRESENT
“SALTED: DETROIT-PALESTINE”
Saturday, Summer, 2021, 12-3 PM | JAM3A Festival
The fifth edition of REMOooOTE is focused on the strategies of healing justice in relation to water and salt in Detroit, Flint, and Paletine. The festival is scheduled to kick-off the JAM3A festival of our longlasting partner, the Arab American National Museum (AANM). “REMOooOTE: Detroit-Palestine” will connect Detroit and Palestine and will be an opportunnity for performers, healers, and actvists in both locations to connect and share strategies of healing justice. Stay tuned!
“FORGOTTEN NETWORKS: DETROIT-TEHRAN-BEYOND”
Sun-Mon., May 24,25 2020, 11AM-1AM
Envisioned as a transmedia participatory healing space for sharing celebratory survival tactics, cultivating transnational celebratory memories, and practicing poetic-living, “Forgotten Networks” will be the fourth edition of its “REMOooOTE Telepresence Festival” that has been bringing distant bodies together since 2017. The 48-hour multiaccess celebration is a protest against the bombardments of the commercial telepresence platforms and mainstream media post-COVID19. It presents an incredible array of artists, musicians, and healers in Detroit, Tehran, and beyond through antidisciplinary workshops, somatic and sonic meditative performances, and translocational parties. We will celebrate the radical poetic lives of the marginalized communities by embodying “practo-poetic” methods of survival and pleasure. The last day of the festival includes a series of hands-on discursive sessions for conceptualizing and rehearsing choreographic policies for social distancing and designing ethical and responsive urban and cyber architecture. Curated by Poetic Societies Founding Director, Ava Ansari, the two-day festival will end on May 25 the Prisoner’s Family Day in Iran.
“MAGICITY: DETROIT-TEHRAN”
Saturday, December 22, 2018, 2-5 PM | JAM3A Festival
Produced by Poetic Societies in partnership with Xcept Studio + Analog Room + the Arab American National Museum (AANM), the celebratory event brought together performers and audiences in Detroit and Tehran to connect and collaborate against the geographical and political borders between their countries.
We, the marginalized creative communities, are intuitively creative with creating space. It is our survival technique. We maximize what is available. We exhaust, flip, and twist difficulties. We appreciate the beauty of old technologies. We merge available with wonder. From Detroit, Dearborn, and Tehran, we invite you to MagiCity, a telepresence journey to the world of blue of Detroiter poet, writer, and performer Salakastar [suh-LAY-kuh-star] (aka Aja Salakastar Dier) as she will be performing selections from ALL BLUE: PART ONE (MAJORELLE!)
Your presence and energy are the ingredients we seek to deepen the shades of this blue. Our bodies, hearts, and minds will groove across oceans and skies between our cities. A much needed multisensorial space to stretch our existence. Our one and only request for you is that you wear the blue that deeply moves you! We invite you to Dress-to-express! As we will shoot MagiCity’s music video during the event so by accepting the invitation and joining us at the party, you agree to be one of the stars of the music video. If you would like to join but wish not be recorded, please inform Ava Ansari at the event. If you are not able to join us but would like to support the event, you can donate your preferred amount here.
MagiCity is the 2nd edition of the REMOooOTE telepresence parties that is produced by Poetic Societies. The event is named after the song, MagiCity, created through the remote collaboration of Salakastar and Tehran based DJ and musician, Xcept who first met at [] the line خط [] telepresence performance workshop cocurated by Poetic Societies and The Hinterlands in 2017. MagiCity, the song, is featured on Salakastar’s debut project ALL BLUE: PART ONE (MAJORELLE!). The duo will perform live at the event along with A/V artist Shaheen Aghdam, DJ and musician Salar Ansari, keyboardist Ian Finkelstein, and singer Supercoolwicked + a surprize act in Tehran. Considering the recent U.S. Travel Bans on Iran, the only possible way for the artists to perform together is through telepresence technologies.
Special thanks to our magical team who worked hard in Tehran and Detroit to make this ambitious project come true. Additional thanks to The Arab American National Museum and Xcept Studios for hosting the event and Analog Room for their nonstop love and support. Produced by Poetic Societies, the 2nd edition of the REMOooOTE Telepresence Festival, MagiCity, is a cross-cultural celebration of the performing arts of Detroit and Tehran. Featured artist: Salakastar, Participating artists: Salakastar, Xcept, Shaheen Aghdam, Mehdi Ansari (Shemroon), Salar Ansari, Ian Finkelstein, Supercoolwicked, and Veneice Session.
“OVER-SUSPENCE: DETROIT-DUBAI”
Friday, August 3, 2017, 12-2 PM | Sidewalk Festival
Ava Ansari invited her sound engineer/DJ brothers, one in Dubai, one in Detroit, to play a bi-locational public set with the iad of telepresence technologies. This was the first time the brothers played together after one moved to the US in 2015. They used the live-streaming delay of eight seconds to exhasut and heal traumas of migration by recreating familiar celebratory memories. The audience enjoyed dancing to the sounds of the both performers.