Whispered Dreams is a new project in collaboration with Aria Baghestani, a writer/actor based in Tehran, Iran. They are exploring ways of remote-collaboration mostly through different approaches to co-writing performative text. They are interested in different forms of text such as printed text, texting, writing letters, live text generating, participatory text writing, handwriting, and so on. The aim is to invite audience members to actively read and participate through scores, and be playful with their imagination. In this performance they are working on the notions of collaboration/ friendship/ care, and privacy/censorship, in different contexts through their documentary and dream-like narratives.

Aria Baghestani, born in 1993, is an artist, writer, and dramaturge from Tehran whose works integrate literature, performing arts and film. He started his career in Tehran’s independent theater scene in the 2010s, working as a playwright and director in mainly student projects. After graduating from the University of Tehran with a degree in dramatic literature, he completed a master’s in Dramaturgy at Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main. Throughout his time in Frankfurt, Baghestani’s projects have been presented in venues such as Künstlerhaus Mousonturm and Frankfurt Lab. His artistic and research interests are focused on text-based performance, collective writing, storytelling, and memory. Besides his career as an artist, Baghestani has also worked as a producer with other artists in Berlin.

Fariborz Karimi (IR)

Fariborz Karimi (Tehran, Iran 1990) is a theater maker, performer, and writer based in Amsterdam. He earned his bachelor’s in Theater directing and acting from the University of Tehran in 2013 and completed his master’s at DAS Theatre in 2023.

Fariborz explores reality and dreams, inspired by experiencing censorship in Iran and Western Europe. In his artistic practice, he questions the meanings of self-censorship by living in totalitarian countries and capitalistic contexts. In his recent performances, he tries to overlap spaces through remote collaboration, collective making, and working with sound, text and video to activate the spectator’s imagination. He brings social-political questions within his auto-biographical and fictional narratives and thus fading the border between reality and dream.