unguided tour

On June 20, 2009 Neda Agha-Soltan, a student at Teheran’s Islamic Azad University is shot by Iranian police on her way to join an antigovernment protest march. She is 26 years old. Someone films her dying on the street, and immediately uploads the video on Youtube making Neda Agha-Soltan the symbol of the student protests and a martyr for democratic reform in Iran.

On June 20, 2009 Neda Soltani, a lecturer of English literature at Teheran’s Islamic Azad University, is in her office revising a book manuscript. She does not join the protesters on their march. It doesn’t matter that Neda Soltani does not know Neda Agha-Soltan, the identities of the two women are about to merge.

Western media hungry for images need a face to go with the story — they find it on Neda Soltani’s facebook page. To our disinterested ears the names sound close enough. Why double check the spelling? It is the icon we’re interested in, who cares about the identity of the individual woman? CNN, BBC, CBS, ARD, ZDF, major newspapers — they all use Neda Soltani’s portrait. Sometimes her name is given with Neda Agha-Soltan’s image. For several weeks — until the government breaks down the opposition — Neda Soltani’s portrait can be seen on banners and posters mourning the shooting of Neda Agha-Soltan.

Neda Soltani tries everything to reclaim her image. She calls TV stations and news channels, she writes follow-up emails and letters explaining the mix-up, demanding that her image be removed, stating over and over again that she is neither dead nor Neda Agha-Soltan. It’s too late, her image has become the face of a brutally crushed struggle for freedom.

Neda Soltani’s photograph has been circulating in the mass media and on social networking sites for over a week when the Iranian government pressures her to denounce the shooting of Neda Agha-Soltan as a hoax instigated by the student protesters in conjunction with Western media. Frightened she flees the country for Germany where she seeks political asylum. Since her arrival in July Ms Soltani has been confined to a dismal refugee detention center waiting to be granted refugee status. No one has apologized to her.

To be robbed of one’s image can destroy a life. Neda Agha-Soltan’s publicized death and Neda Soltani’s loss of control over her image demonstrate how difficult it is for women to protect themselves from the intrusion + manipulation of Western media and their shameless consumers? We condemn the burkha as symbol and instrument of female oppression, we advocate the forced unveiling of Muslim women, we assume we alone know the truth. When will we explain to them we consider their naked faces our property?

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links

The New York Times reports on June 22, 2009 getting the facts right;

The Guardian reports on June 22, 2009 the death of Neda Soltani using Neda Agha-Soltan’s photograph;

An article in the German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung tells Neda Soltani’s story of how the ‘false’ image destroyed her life;

A Wikipedia entry on Neda Agha-Soltan’s death.

The primal screen is a Christian fantasma.
I must be careful not to impose it onto cultures which have incorporated their own religious beliefs, and which have developed ideas of the nature of woman as well as the function of visual images different from mine.

The Christian veil marks the beginning of the history of the primal screen. A history that is not over yet.

“Men look at women, women watch themselves being looked at.” (John Berger)  The wish to see her naked — not as she would see herself but as he wants to see her. Nude. The convention of the female nude, unique to European art, presents a form of nakedness that reduces the lived diversity of women’s bodies to an idealized surface, a screen. The nude wears her nudity like a garment. A naked veil. A sight to be looked at by others and by herself. The female nude is never a mother.

The saturation of public spaces with images of the nude affect me. I begin to imitate the image. I have shed the veil long ago. Over the centuries layer after layer of clothing has disappeared. When in the 1960s the bikini becomes an acceptable form of dress, I have mastered the art of likening myself to the image of the nude. I rarely talk about this part of my history when I revile the Muslim woman’s veil.

Much pleasure & satisfaction can be found in turning myself into a sight. It makes me feel seductive & desirable, powerful, in control. But this should not lead me to conclude that the veiled Muslim woman lacks the freedom to experience pleasure. Her pleasures may be different from mine. It is that difference I perceive as a provocation to my hard-won freedom.

The veiled Muslim woman does not pretend she’s flat. There is a female body underneath the veil. A sexual body. It is this body I’m obsessed with, want to drag into the open, expose, defile. This is my wish: to reduce her to an image, a nude, a flat screen. Why? Because her presence forces me to acknowledge that not only am I less secular than I pretend to be, I am also not as free and liberated as I want to be.

The other day I appeared on Austria’s national public radio, ORF. I was invited to talk about Austria’s increasingly stereotypical + despiteful perception of foreigners, especially those from muslim countries. I stated the obvious: in the current political climate ‘the foreigner’ + ‘the orient’ are projections of our difficulties to come to terms with changes in our own societies. Once we understand that we are strangers to ourselves, once we comprehend that the foreign dwells within ourselves, we will be able to create a platform for a dialogue with immigrants from muslim (and other foreign) countries. (more…)