In the following text, I endeavour to argue for microhistory in artistic practice in relation to politics from three perspectives: individual, structural and artistic. In the third and final part of the text, I bring together parts one and two and discuss how they play out in the filmmaker, photographer and writer Pirooz Kalantari’s films.

The first section begins with how I first encountered the concept of microhistory – a combination of words that caught my interest. It presents microhistory from the perspective of the individual in accordance with the microhistorical method of investigation1. In other words, I aim to argue from my individual political and social agency and explain the understanding of the concept of microhistory from the perspective of an Iranian artist from Tehran who works in Stockholm.

In the second part of the text I will present my individualized understanding of microhistory in relation to the theories of microhistory as formulated by Carlo Ginzburg (1993), as a vital aspect of microhistorical narrativity in relation to macrohistory. I challenge and reject the notion that microhistory should be regarded as the branches of the macrohistorical tree trunk. Instead, I perceive it as “elseness” and attempt to explain the invisibility and hiddenness of the macrohistory as a doxa, or a part of habitual everyday life that eludes identification.

The third part of my text approaches microhistory in an Iranian context and elaborates this relationship and the necessity of microhistorical narrativity in the hyper-politicized time, place and body in Pirooz Kalantari’s films.

Between 1956 and 1968, the photographer Gholamreza Amirbegi captured a wealth of images from around his neighborhood in southwestern Tehran. At the time the city had just seen a major influx of working-class immigrants from the country’s smaller municipalities. By re-narrating these materials, which evoke not only particular, local memories, but also distinct subaltern histories, this overlooked archive tells stories of social change from below in Iran, as seen in Gholamreza’s subjects: global cinematic images, and unconscious colonial memory. By applying a comparative historical-material analysis, Khosravi Noori’s aim here is to develop a practice based, multi-sited archaeology of contemporary history. This approach begins with an excavation of the historical materials themselves, in order to both discover lost identities in these images, and to displace them from sedimented historical positions. In doing this, he asks the question: What happens to the past from the vantage point of the future?

This book documents and reflects on three artistic projects and their processes. As a “marginalia” to the projects I also presents arguments, stories and ir/ relevant discourses. What I call marginalia extends to aspects of a historical backdrop of these three projects and the stories behind them. It is partly a reflection on my process and experiences, but, more crucially for me, it is what I would like to call marginalia. It extends to aspects of a historical backdrop that were not necessarily present in the process of exhibition making. 

In this book, I reflect upon different modes of exhibition making and artistic research practices, however, this book is not simply a postscript to those works. It also serves as a form of marginalia to my artistic explorations in relation to art, history, and global politics. 

Combining fragments of histories, it constitutes a bricolage of things, events, and narratives. The book itself comprises the fourth and final story. 

“Three or Four Ir/relevant Stories” here mirrors the conjunction of some historical and cultural cases that, in my point of view, need to be acknowledged. It is an artistic research investigation, proposing a multi-sited, archaeological approach to histories of art and life that also constitute part of my lived experience in the Global South and the Global North. By bringing multiple subjects into my study, as well as historical reenactment in the form of a review of archival materials in the exhibition space, I explore possible correspondences, seen through the lenses of contemporary art practice, subalternity, and the technology of image production. 

In my investigations of certain artworks and their histories, I aim to develop everyday observations into archaeological interpretations to displace the image from its past historical location and bring forth the question: What will happen to our collective past in the future? 

The exhibitions themselves embody a hybrid approach, an expression that portrays multiple combinations and interpretations of various art genres and subject matters. By their very nature, the works present multiplicities of materials, which in their collection into an exhibition amount to a sort of cabinet of curiosities. 

I neither stick to one method of artistic investigation, nor focus on a single medium. Instead I aim to reconnoiter the possibilities that inhere an artistic survey. At no point do I follow any fixed blueprint for, or definition of, artistic production; in short, I might argue that in my artistic practices, I attempt to avoid dividing method from life’s experiences. It is, in part, the narrative fluidity of such a microhistorical investigation that enables me to imagine the exhibition as a point of departure of my artistic exploration and research of such micro elements of contemporary history. I aim to investigate whether it was possible establish a storytelling structure that would mirror the branching paths of the archaeological trace and its background—a transdisciplinary materialism that brings multiple dimensions of history into one temporary place called an exhibition. In so doing, I have sought to produce a cross-generational platform where the audience can engage with the multiplicity of the contemporary past, and per- haps also revisit their own memories.