Rashin Fahandej is an Iranian-American futurist, immersive storyteller, and cultural activist. Fahandej’s artistic initiatives are multiyear experimental laboratories for collective radical reimaginations of social systems, using counter-narratives of care and community co-creation to design equitable futures. Her projects center on marginalized voices and the role of media, technology, and public collaboration in generating emotional connections to drive social change. A proponent of “Art as Ecosystem,” she defines her projects as “Poetic Cyber Movement for Social Justice,” where art mobilizes a plethora of voices by creating connections between public places and virtual spaces. As a 2020 lead artist at American Arts Incubator-Austria with ZERO1 and the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, Fahandej launched “Future of Inclusion Lab” in partnership with Ars Electronica; an experimental virtual laboratory to incubate ideas and project prototypes that aim for collective and radical imaginations of our social systems, centered on art, emerging technology, and community co-creation.
She is the founder of “A Father’s Lullaby, “ a multi-platform, co-creative initiative that highlights the role of men in raising children and their absence due to racial disparities in the criminal justice system. This work was incubated as part of the Boston Mayor’s Office Artist-In-Residence (2017) and a multi-year research fellowship with the MIT Open Documentary Lab. It won the 2021 Prix Ars Electronica Festival Award of Distinction in Digital Musics & Sound Ars and the Institute of Contemporary Arts’ James and Audrey Foster Prize (2019), Mass Cultural Council Artist Fellowship (2019), and was further supported by residencies and fellowships with ThoughtWorks Arts and Scatter VR Volumetric Filmmaking (2019), Framingham Cultural Council (2019), and Boston Center for the Arts Public Art Residency (2018).
In Spring of 2020, as Assistant Professor of Emerging and Interactive Media at Emerson College and in further extending the work of A Father’s Lullaby, Fahandej launched a pioneering XR Co-Creation initiative at the college where students, formerly incarcerated fathers, probation officers, and their children co-create personal documentary projects to speak to the social challenge of mass incarceration using AR, VR, and 360° technology. This initiative includes a long-term collaboration with the Federal Probation Office’s Nurturing Fathers program, materializes immersive storytelling, and explores alternative methodologies of media/documentary production that break away from conventional single authorship and center on access and equity.
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
Goethe-Institut, interview with Rashin Fahandej about A Father’s Lullaby, its philosophy, and co-creation methodology, Kultur Symposium 2021
“What motivates my artistic practice is my life investment in social justice. I interrogate oppressive systems to give voice to marginalized narratives and personal stories, and to propagate poetic expressions of local and global perspectives. My approach to artmaking is deeply informed by my passion for social justice and my personal experience as a woman and a member of persecuted Baha’i minority in Iran, as an immigrant in Boston, and as an educator. I consider my art a voice for the margins communicated through the poetry of visuals.”
”My practice builds upon what I call “Art as Ecosystem,” a network of collaborations with multiplicity of narratives that investigate social systems and occupy public sites as a critical discourse.”
”My process of artmaking provides an avenue for studying social, cultural, and political issues and engagements. Installations provide the third space to bring a variety of mediums together with audiences in order to create a place for contemplation; a place for re/defining our definitions of self and others. The artwork itself is complete only within the dialogue and conversations created as a result of audience interaction and participation.”
”I am interested in the fluctuating space of cross-cultural encounter; as a result, I create collaborative projects, physically bringing artists from different backgrounds together to co-create works that reflect our shared concerns as they transform and fuse together in the creative process. ”