Celebration of Ashes

Tehran Contemporary Sounds Festival, Kunstraum Bethanien, Berlin, 2024

Celebration of Ashes is a collaborative audiovisual performance created by Mahtab Sabetara (music) and Baharan Eghbalzadeh (visuals). It was first presented at the Tehran Contemporary Sounds Festival in November 2024 at Kunstraum Bethanien, Berlin.

For the visuals, I programmed interactive 3D particle systems and three-dimensional objects, layered with glitch art, archival footage of World War bombings and nuclear test-site explosions, and anime sequences, including mushroom cloud scenes from Barefoot Gen. The performance unfolds in a visual arc that moves from stylized destruction to documentary imagery, before looping back into the kaleidoscopic fireworks of the Fourth of July.

This audiovisual set is a direct response to pro war rhetoric in Germany and the United States and to the systemic inertia around the genocide in Gaza. It lays bare the aesthetic of annihilation: what we choose to celebrate, what we ignore, and how easily one becomes the other.