Rashin Fahandej

A Father's Lullaby

Co-creating Ecosystems Of Care with Communities, Media, and technology Toward Systemic Change

A Father’s Lullaby is a multi-year, research-based community co-creation initiative that began in 2015. A Father's Lullaby interrogates racial bias and structural racism and acknowledges the role of media and technology in perpetuating this challenge as well as their potential to disrupt historical patterns. We cultivate processes that democratize access to technology and storytelling through community co-creation. A Father’s Lullaby materializes in a vast array of creative and public engagement opportunities, including an ongoing series of public interventions, immersive, interactive, and participatory installations, incubation labs, tech workshops, and a pioneering XR co-creation pedagogy at Emerson College launched in Spring of 2020.

A Father's Lullaby highlights the role of men in raising children and their absence due to the racial disparities in the criminal justice system and its direct impact on children, women, and lower-income communities.  The project is centered on the marginalized voices of absent fathers while inviting all men to participate by singing lullabies and sharing memories of childhood. Explored through the space of love and intimacy, the project is being developed with community members as creative collaborators. Intimate interviews, songs, and lullabies offer poetic meditations on the spaces of love and trauma, presence and absence, and the power of personal memories to interrogate the structural violence of mass incarceration.   Stories and lived experiences of impacted communities acknowledge the current gaps and challenges our society is facing today while, amplifying the collective will for structural shifts needed for inclusive futures centered on justice, equity, and equality.

Disrupting the Traditional Power Dynamics in Media and Tech: In order to reimagine social paradigms and redesign systems, there is a fundamental need to redefine processes so that they become the embodiment of the changes envisioned. Processes are not simply neutral paths but the manifestation of the social and political forces that can perpetuate inequities and amplify the same social constructs that we aim to change. Community Co-Creation processes center on the lived experiences of community members as expertise and disrupt the traditional power dynamics within the traditional media and tech production. This process forms new social structures that make visible unconventional forms of solidarity and criticality across differences toward equitable forms of access and representation. A Father’s Lullaby aims to be a “Poetic Movement” where art and technology mobilize a plethora of voices while utilizing public places and virtual spaces to ignite a more inclusive dialogue to effect social change.

• Boston Globe review, Foster Prize Biennial, and A Father’s Lullaby installation at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in Boston

• Award of Distinction in Digital Musics & Sound Art, Prix Ars Electronica Festival 2021

• CyberArts 2021

• Goethe-Institut, interview with Rashin Fahandej about A Father’s Lullaby, its philosophy, and co-creation methodology, Kultur Symposium 2021

  
  

Cyber Arts, Prix Ars Electronica Festival, 2021

Installation consists of immersive 3-channel video projection and 5-channel spacial audio, composed from documentary recordings gathered from conversations with formerly incarcerated fathers as well as public at large; recordings centered on lullabies, personal stories and childhood memories; images and voices of those who have been incarcerated, those who have not, are in seamless confluence. The second component of the project is a trio of sonic portraits activated through touch, that are centered on the experience of the absent fathers bearing incarceration. “Witnesses,” as I refer to audience members, are invited to sit in front of mirrored panels that, upon their touch, activate intimate audio narratives of formerly incarcerated fathers. This is an intimate space of encounter and deep witnessing.

The final component of the exhibition exists online, a participatory archive and map of people’s geolocated recordings of childhood memories and lullabies. The map continually shifts as people contribute, becoming a metaphor for an expansion of a movement to share responsibility for building a world of care networks.

Video Documentation: Ernesto Galan
Photo Credit: Aram Bogosian

Collaborators:

Audio:  Krista Dragomer (Sound Design), Christian Gentry (Sound Design and Mixing), Halsey Burgund (location-based participatory audio mobile app), Lecolion Washington (Basson), Takayo Lowery (Cello), Daryl Lowery (Saxophone), Charles Coe (Didgeridoo, Poetry), Cornel Coley (Drum), Monica Spencer (Vocal), L’Merchie Frazier (poetry), Wanda Perry-Josephs (Vocal), LaToya Tiffany Spencer (Poetry) 

Video: Sarah Jenkins (Stop Motion Animation), Nick Nerolien (Editor), Alex Ezorsky (Editor), Jonathan Turner, Lizandro Segora, Afshin Saadi (Videographer), Filip Baba (Volumetric Post Production); Xingyu Zou, Toru Nakanishi, Anthony Montuori, Hisham Bedri (Haptic Panels), Fridien Tchoukoua (Dance),

Community collaborators: Kevin Lockhart, Micco Lockhart, Richard Hatcher, Cheryl Pasley, Christopher Pasley, Ronald Scott, Shawn Keefe, John Walsh, Keith Huston, Eugene Bly, Jim Infantino, Augustin, Santiago Hernaiz, Efrain Rivero, Jose Aponte, Edwin, Colin Gaumont, Eladio Alvarez, Drew Carpenter, James Bush, Michael Lewis, Leroy Robinson, Michael P. Dellea, Matthew Hamilton, Morris Robinson, Tyshaun Perryman and many others

Partners: Boston Mayor’s Office, MIT Open Documentary Lab, Institute of Contemporary Arts Boston, MIT Co-Creation Studio, U.S. Federal Probation office Massachusetts, Boston Center for the Arts, Massachusetts Cultural Council, Framingham City Council, ThoughtWork Arts, Scatter VR, Boston Mayor’s office of Returning Citizen, American Arts Incubator,  Emerson College

HUBweek, 2018

At 2018 HUBweek, We The Future conference, Fahandej and her collaborators prototyped an immersive participatory installation inside a shipping container; a self-contained model of a complex interactive media installation that could be accessible at any public site as a low budget traveling exhibit, alternative to a gallery or museum space.

Collaborators: Hisham Bedri (pressure sensor panels with audio playback and light activation), Christian Gentry (live sound composition), Halsey Burgen (geolocated participatory website), Farid Manshadi & Jason Bashaw & Omid Fallahazad & Nedallah Fahandej & Kevin Long (installation), Afshin Fahandezh & Lizandro Segura (documentation)

Boston Center for the Arts, 2018

In 2018, the project expanded through collaboration with local artists and partnership with institutions, such as the Federal Probation Office, the newly formed Office of Returning Citizens, and a commission from the Boston Center for the Arts. The result was a site-responsive public sound installation at the Boston Center for the Arts public plaza, on Tremont St, during July - Oct 2018.

Installation experience consisted of three components: two layers of sound embedded in the physical space and a participatory virtual platform. Physical experience consists of three audio stations on treetops projecting sound composition created from lullabies and memories contributed by fathers in the immediate community; The 2nd layer are three motion activated audio stations located in the garden level; audiences presence prompts multitudes of stories to unfold; audio documentaries, intimate memories and stories shared by formerly incarcerated fathers serving on federal probation. This is a participatory installation, is a growing movement that use the virtual space to connect people. The project invites everyone to record their voice singing Lullaby or sharing memories of childhood, using the participatory website, FathersLullaby.org or by scanning the QR code.

Collaborators: Krista Dragomer & Christian Gentry (sound composition) Xingyu Zou & Hisham Bedri & Paulina Velázquez Solís & Travis Johns (motion sensor audio playback), Halsey Burgen (geolocated participatory website) Lizandro Segura (Artist Assistant) Julia Xu, Michael Papetti (Interns) Omid Fallahazad & Ezat Hosseinnejad (production)

Boston Artist in residence, 2017

The first chapter of the project was launched in 2017, when Fahandej served as the Boston Artist-in-Residence with The Mayor’s Office of Art and Culture and Boston Centers for Youth & Families, in collaboration with Blackstone Community Center in the South End. This was also in connection with her role as Research Fellow at the MIT Open Documentary Lab.

The culmination of these experiences was shared with the public in a participatory media installation at Villa Victoria Center for the Arts, 2017, in the heart of the community where the work was produced.