Celebration of Ashes (2024)
Tehran Contemporary Sounds Festival, Kunstraum Bethanien, Berlin
Celebration of Ashes is a collaborative audiovisual performance created by Mahtab Sabetara (music) and Baharan Eghbalzadeh (visuals).
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.
Indoor scene showing a large screen projecting an image of trees with branches and leaves, and a woman walking outdoors near fallen branches and debris, indicating a storm or natural disaster scene.
A black and white photograph of soldiers in uniform, some sitting and some standing, with a background of trees and a brick building. Text overlay reads: "Just like my legs and my eyes, so wie meine Beine und meine Augen."
A person working with a shovel in front of a large backdrop displaying a forest scene, with text in English and German faintly visible, surrounded by stage equipment in a dark indoor environment. 
You and I Have Seen the Garden from That Cold Sullen Crack (2025-2026)

Premiered at Belluard Bollwerk, Fribourg; subsequently presented at Sophiensæle, Berlin.

In her research-based cinematic performance, Azade Shahmiri, theater and performance artist, revisits the garden as a Living Archive of collective resistance within transformative moments of Iranian society. Wandering around the invisible or documented, repurposed or erased gardens, You and I Have Seen the Garden from That Cold Sullen Crack reclaims the peripheries, reassembling the ruptured narratives buried beneath vegetation and soil, flowing through dying water channels—qanats. It maps and tracks the layered agency and performativity of gardens by interweaving visual archives, found footage, and soundscapes with woman-to-woman letters, fragmented biographies, the performer’s ambivalent presence, and a self-reflective voice.
Gardens, bound to land and labor, remain contested. The performance, likewise unfinished and growing, stands as testimony to internal struggles and to Western interventions and orientalist framings embedded within and through them—grounds of grief and loss, and of resilience and hope.
sample
A flyer promoting a feminist movement event in Berlin, featuring black and white photos of women and a group gathering. The event is a film screening of 'überLEBEN im exile|LasOtrasFrauenLesbenFilm-Collectif Berlin, 2013, 40 Min.' scheduled for May 17 at 7 PM, along with a panel discussion with Mit Saideh Saadat-Lende and Alja Gudzēvič.
Event poster for 'Daadkhahi,' a film screening and panel discussion, scheduled for April 19th at 7 PM. The poster features black-and-white photos of women, along with information about the event in German, including a list of speakers Mihan Rousta, Parastoo Forouhar, Maryam Palizban, and Sanaz Azimipour, and discusses the story of Daadkhah in exile.
A printed document in Persian and German with details about a women's guidance event organized by the Iranian Women's Autonomous Movement abroad, including date, time, and contact information.

Archiv der Leerstellen: Leben und Widerstände der iranischen Diaspora in Berlin 1970–2000. (2025-2026)

presented at Volksbühne Berlin.

This interdisciplinary archival and oral-history project curated by Sanaz Azimipour traces the lives, political activities and forms of resistance of the Iranian diaspora in West Berlin between 1970 and 2000 through personal testimonies, archival material and historical research. I was the composer and sound designer and produced podcast episodes based on the recorded interviews and archival material.

A woman with shoulder-length hair at a podium speaking into multiple microphones, with four women and two men seated behind her during a press conference or public speaking event.
Sample 1
Sample 2
A stage set up for a performance with a large projection screen showing two women with curly hair sitting and smiling. The stage has microphones and musical instruments, including a keyboard. The room has pink and black walls with ceiling-mounted speakers and lighting.
A stage with purple lighting, a large blank screen in the center, two people sitting on chairs on the right, and a person with equipment on the left, likely in a rehearsal or performance setting. 
Readings Through the Revolution (2023- 2024)
Premiered at Goethe-Institut im Exil, Berlin; subsequently presented at Theater der Welt, Frankfurt, and Kampnagel, Hamburg
This lecture performance series reflected on the first 100 days of the Jina Revolution through the narratives, texts, and literary fragments produced during that period.
If history could be understood as a hegemonic distortion of occurred events, then narration became a tool for intervention: a way to question, rewrite, and re-remember the past and present. Each narrative of what had occurred opened the possibility of imagining different versions of history, memory, and the future. Embodied experience and written language became instruments in this ongoing struggle over meaning.
The texts for this series were gathered through different channels, both oral and written, from authors inside and outside Iran. Together, they formed a fragmented archive of witnessing, resistance, grief, and imagination.
In collaboration with Sanaz Azimipour and Tanasgol Sabbagh, I shaped these narratives through sound and created a musical space for the stories to be heard. The music was developed alongside the readings and performed live.