Defiance Through Performance in the Ruins of Iranian Pedagogy

Hamidreza Afarideh has performed among the ruins of an Iranian music school, an act that asserts the permanence of the Persian musical tradition against a state that views it with fluctuating suspicion. The ruins are not merely a backdrop for sentiment; they are a site of reclamation. By sounding the Kamancheh in a space intended for its study, Afarideh transforms a symbol of institutional failure into an arena of cultural defiance. The performance is a direct rejection of the state’s power to define the parameters of artistic life.