Let’s Talk About … Iran. Women. Life. Freedom.

Close out International Women’s Month with this event spotlighting the ongoing struggle for women’s rights and human rights in Iran, as lived by two members of the Emerson community. 
Rashin Fahandej | Assistant Professor, Emerson College
Rashin Fahandej is an Iranian-American immersive filmmaker, futurist, and cultural activist. Her projects center on marginalized voices and the role of media, technology, and public collaboration in generating social change. Fahandej’s projects have been awarded and exhibited internationally including the Prix Ars Electronica Award of Distinction, the Institute of Contemporary Arts’ Foster Prize Biannual, Boston Mayor’s Office Artist Residency, and Mass Cultural Council Artist Fellowship.
A propagator of “art as Ecosystem,” she defines her projects as a “poetic cyber movement for social justice”. She cultivates processes that democratize access to technology and storytelling, using community co-creation as a central methodology to shift the traditional power dynamics toward equity and justice. Fahandej is the founder of A Father’s Lullaby, a multifaceted immersive media initiative that interrogates racial bias and structural racism in the criminal justice system. She also founded Future Inclusion Lab in partnership with ZERO1, and the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affair; an experimental virtual laboratory for collective imagination of our social systems, centered on art, emerging technology, and community co-creation. 
Fahandej is a senior co-creation research-practitioner at MIT Open Documentary Lab where she mentors fellows internationally.  As an assistant professor of emerging and interactive media at Emerson College she has launched a pioneering pedagogy that brings together students with formerly incarcerated fathers, probation officers, and their children to co-create personal documentary projects that speak to the social challenge of mass incarceration using AR, VR, and 360° technology.
Asma Khoshmehr | Emerson MFA Student, Film and Media Art
Asma Khoshmehr is an interdisciplinary artist involved in filmmaking, hybrid documentary, and immersive storytelling to facilitate real-world deep emotional connections leading to a change in society by means of the new media art. Her works largely focus on social issues such as generational trauma, forced displacement, forced marriage, and political sexual violence under the dictatorship with the goal of amplifying marginalized women’s voices. 
Coming from a multicultural background, raised by an Iranian father and Tanzanian mother, her projects are inspired and rooted in East African and Middle East cultures, particularly the myths and folklore stories from the “One Thousand and One Nights” book. As a filmmaker and tech enthusiast, she bridges the gap between film and new media by promoting hybrid documentaries while telling the stories of the underrepresented and suffering women and families.
 
Hosted by: International Student Affairs
Additional Information can be found at: https://emconnect.emerson.edu/event/9004923