BORDERS

A collaborative artistic research project

2026 — Ongoing

Four Iranian artists across Scotland, England, Sweden and Norway are exploring what happens when bodies, materials and artistic practices cross borders.

Hoda Arbabi - Yasamin Rashidi - Maunya D. Moghadam - Ayda Pakzad Afshar

About BORDERS

BORDERS is a long-term collaborative artistic research project by four Iranian artists living across Scotland, England, Sweden and Norway.

The project began with a shared interest in borders, initially geographical borders and our different experiences of migration, movement and belonging. But as our conversations developed, the idea of a border began to move elsewhere: between bodies and places, people and relationships, languages, memories, identities and artistic practices.

Rather than trying to arrive at a single definition of what a border is, BORDERS stays with these different and sometimes contradictory understandings. We are interested in how borders are made and experienced; who or what creates them; what happens when we cross them; what changes in the crossing; what we carry with us; and what may not be able to cross at all.

Our different practices are part of this research. Working across visual and spatial practice, performance, writing, documentary and dramaturgical research, we allow material to move between us. An image may become a text, a story may enter a performance, an object may be reinterpreted, or something may be resisted, rejected or leave only a trace.

In this sense, crossing is not only what BORDERS investigates.

It is also how we work.

What is a border?

What does it mean to cross one?

Maybe a border is not something we leave behind.

Can we carry a border with us?

مرز برای من با تغییر زبان معنی می‌کنه

For me, a border begins to mean something when the language changes.

من زبان شهر رو بلد بودم

I knew the language of the city.

من یک غریبه بودم تو کشور خودم

I was a stranger in my own country.

For me, the body is the first border.

A border that is always with me.

Or maybe it is me.

مرزی که همیشه با منه

یا اصلاً خود منه

شاید هم یه بخشی از منه

Sometimes the body crosses the border,
but I don't.

بعضی وقت‌ها بدن از مرز رد میشه

ولی من رد نمیشم

When something crosses a border, what changes?

US

THE BORDER

THE OTHER SIDE

The border remains where it is.
The worlds on either side have changed.

مرز سر جاشه

ولی دو تا جهانی که از هم جداشون کرده بود تغییر کردن

“ما علمداری هستیم”

We are from Alamdar.

Thousands of kilometres away,
they still say:
“We are from Alamdar.”

THIS SIDE: ALAMDAR
THAT SIDE: GARGAR

THIS SIDE: US
THAT SIDE: THEM

Maybe we keep drawing lines in the smallest places.

از وقتی شروع کردم به مرز فکر کردن

مرز همه‌جا پیداش می‌شه

Since I started thinking about borders, I keep finding them everywhere.

Am I finding a geography for my own sense of not belonging?

I don't know if this line really exists
or if I'm the one drawing it.

Maybe drawing the line is the most interesting part.

من تبدیل شدم به یک مرز بین دو گروه

I became a border between two groups.

من همش دارم توضیح میدم

I am always explaining.

و متعلق به هیچ‌کدوم از این گروه‌ها نیستم

And I belong to neither of them.

“Has there ever been something
you couldn’t translate?”
“Or chose not to?”

نه گفتن و مرز گذاشتن با آدمی که ظرفیت نداره، برام ترسناکه

Saying no and setting boundaries with someone who lacks the capacity to handle it feels scary to me.

وقتی کسی مرزت رو رد می‌کنه

یعنی مرزبندی تو محکم نبوده

یا اون یک متجاوز حرفه‌ایه؟

When someone crosses your boundary, does it mean you failed to make it firm enough, or that they crossed it anyway?

I cross from Sweden into Denmark
and I start smiling without meaning to.

It's only forty minutes.
Somehow the bridge makes me another person.

My grandfather crossed the Aras.

Years later, he told me to come back.
“Nowhere is like your own country.”

Can we carry a border with us,
even across generations?

geographical

bodily

psychological

visible

invisible

social

moral

What do these borders have in common?

What cannot cross?

Current Focus

  • WHAT CROSSES BETWEEN US?

    Collaborative R&D · January–April 2027 (proposed)

    Material moves between four artists, four practices and four locations. What is translated, altered, resisted, rejected, carried forward, or left behind?

    Proposed development:

    Remote collaborative R&D → three digital research experiments on Creativitism → one-week physical R&D and public research sharing at STPLN, Malmö.

    Funding proposal submitted to:

    Nordisk Kulturfond - NEMO (Northern European Mobility Opportunity)

  • PHYSICAL / DIGITAL PRESENCE

    Technical performance research · 2027 (proposed)

    What happens when a body crosses from physical into digital space? What can multiply, travel or appear elsewhere — and what remains stubbornly physical?

    Proposed experiment:

    Two artists physically present / two remotely present. Live-feed video, projection, spatial audio and time delay are used to test how bodies can be multiplied, displaced, fragmented and present across physical and digital space. __borders

    Technical Residency proposal submitted to:

    PTEQ / Central & New Diorama Theatre Technical Residency Programme

Artists

Hoda Arbabi
Sweden
Writing · Documentary Theatre · Performance · Dramaturgy

Yasamin Rashidi
England
Performance · Devised & Participatory Practice · Dramaturgical Research

Maunya Doroudi Moghadam
Norway
Writing · Research

Ayda Pakzad Afshar
Scotland
Visual · Spatial · Image-based · Archival Practice