What drives me - Alireza Taherifard

Alireza Taherifard (34): Social media as spaces of freedom in Iran

I studied architecture and interior design in Iran and am now doing my doctorate in architectural theory with Prof. Philipp Oswalt. We both found the topic of online spaces exciting, which is why I chose the working title "Photo and Video Sharing. Social Media and Urban Space in Tehran" for my dissertation. For many Iranians, visual social media such as Instagram offer the opportunity to add a public aspect to the lives they lead in private spaces. These new "image spaces" offer a certain freedom within the very strict rules of conduct. It is fascinating to observe how young people are using the opportunities offered by the internet to live a certain freedom and thus reclaim a piece of public space. There are examples of young people who have organized a fashion show in a subway station and posted it on social media.

One focus of my work is the analysis of representations and stagings of religious spaces and sacred sites, such as shrines. On the one hand, these places are deliberately staged by the Islamic Republic to reach and influence young people, on the other hand, there are also people who photograph or film themselves in holy places while wearing casual clothes to show a more subversive and modern understanding of religious life. My methodology is closely linked to theories of "social space" and "performance" and combines a visual semiotics with a social semiotics. In addition to platforms such as Twitter, I mainly examine Instagram because, at least before the current protests, it was not blocked by the government. Since the beginning of the protests, however, the content uploaded has been very different from the previous ones, which is why I mainly analyze what was posted before. There is now even a cyber police force that monitors certain platforms. Iranian influencers - especially women - sometimes get into real trouble, even being banned from their profession. It is worth extending the field of (interior) architecture to the largely unexplored area of online image spaces, even if I believe that there are limits to their use. For while they promote personal freedom and expression, unfortunately they often lack an overarching organizational aspect that could lead to socio-political change.

This article was published in the university magazine publik 2023/1. protocol: Sofie Althoff