Artist Parham Ghalamdar presents a programme of shorts to accompany his exhibition, A Fine Kettle of Fish currently on display in HOME’s Granada Foundation Galleries. We will be joined by artist Parham Ghalamdar for an intro and the screening will be followed by Q&A with one of the filmmakers Martin Cooper.
Programme
Ascending the Persian Mothership, Parham Ghalamdar & Kaveh Soory, GB, 7 mins
‘Ascending the Persian mothership’, is a collaboration between the painter Parham Ghalamdar and sound engineer Kaveh Soory, commissioned by HOME. This experimental Sci-Fi film has been created by training an AI (Artificial Intelligence) engine to study 300 pages of antique Persian Miniature illustrations alongside 30 Star Wars spaceships diagrams/illustrations to find patterns and generate content.
Retention Department Of Perpetual Exhaustion, Martin Cooper, 2 mins 38
The film combines live-action, found footage and Parham Ghalamdar’s animations, to create a quasi-surrealist interpretation of the title Retention Department of Permanent Exhaustion. The film follows a couple watching television who find themselves traumatised by the breaking news coming from America.
How many birds can you hide in your heart?, 1 min 14 and Over the Silver Hills we Wrestled, Parham Ghalamdar, 1 min 23
These stop motion animations are 10 frames per second resulting in hundreds of hand-made drawings. The animations explore the medium of expanded drawing by developing Ghalamdar’s painting practice into the digital realm as a response to inaccessibility to the artist studios during the National Lockdown in 2020.
About the Artists:
Parham Ghalamdar
Parham Ghalamdar is a painter and animator based in MCR. He specialises in oil painting with a background in graffiti and public art. He studied MA Painting at Manchester School Of Art. Since the National Lockdown in 2020 he has been expanding his painting practice into the digital by making stop motion animations and AI-generated works.
Kaveh Soory
Kaveh Soory is a Performance-Driven and Creative Music Composer with various successful tracks for podcasts, short films, adverts, animations, video arts, Pop/Rock music. A designer of original sounds and videos Tailored for any type of Multimedia. Kaveh’s recent album “Situation Number One”, which is consisted of soundtracks for an animation under the same title, was released by the underground Industrial Coast label.
Martin Cooper
Martin Cooper has over 25 years experience as a film editor within the British television industry. In 2018 Martin directed his first feature documentary: Traces of The Soul, a film looking at contemporary calligraphy across the globe. This film won ‘First Prize’ at two international arts film festivals, and won ‘Best First Feature’ award at Washington International Film Festival. Retention Department of Perpetual Exhaustion is a short live action/animation film, commissioned by Joan C Gratz who is a renowned animator.
Image credit: Parham Ghalamdar, Ascending the Persian Mothership, 2021