BAST (بسط) 

As part of PUBLICS parahosting programme we are thrilled to host the launch of Bast platform on 21 October, 2026 from 17.30-19.00.

Reyhaneh Mirjahani will introduce Bast, a curatorial and research platform for studying, documenting and rethinking participatory art in Iran. The launch will be followed by a conversation with Bast’s co-founders Reyhaneh Mirjahani and Amirali Ghasemi with Aman Askarizad.

Bast (بسط, from an Arabic root meaning “to expand” or “to unfold”) is a curatorial and research platform for the study, documentation, and rethinking of participatory art in Iran. On 21.10 PUBLICS hosts the launch of Bast, with an introduction to the platform and its repository by co-founders Reyhaneh Mirjahani and Amirali Ghasemi, followed by a conversation with Aman Askarizad.

Participatory practices in Iran have largely developed outside institutional frameworks, taking place in streets, neighbourhoods, workshops, and private homes, from brief interventions to collaborations sustained over years. Their histories are often dispersed across informal forms of documentation and circulation, including personal networks and short-lived websites. Bast brings these practices together to consider what can be encountered, understood, and unfolded through their gathering, documentation, and discussion. 

The Bast Repository is developed in conversation with the artists and practitioners behind each work — more than 50 so far, and growing. Each work is presented as a dossier, bringing together different aspects of the practice and opening it to further study and discussion. Selected works are extended through a re-reading (خوانش, khanesh): a commissioned text that responds to a work through critique, personal reflection, or continuation by other means. 

The conversation will consider what these works make visible and what remains absent, and what it means to document and re-read participatory art from outside the context in which it was made.

The event is free and open to all, and will be held in English. 

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Reyhaneh Mirjahani is an artist with curatorial practice, working at the intersection of visual art, artistic research, organizing, and publishing, focusing on participatory art. She uses collaborative, interdisciplinary approaches to create dialogic spaces exploring agency, participation, counter-narratives, and spatial politics.

Amirali Ghasemi (b. 1980, Iran) is an independent curator, media artist, and graphic designer based in Berlin. In 1998, he founded Parkingallery, an independent project space in Tehran, and launched its online platform for young Iranian artists in 2002. His photography, video, and design works have been exhibited internationally. He holds a degree in Visual Arts from Central Tehran Azad University (2004) and pursued MA studies in “Art in Context” at the Berlin University of the Arts (2015–2017).

As a curator, Ghasemi has directed numerous Parkingallery initiatives Beyond his ongoing curatorial archive IRAN&CO, he has guest-programmed for major international film festivals in Rotterdam (IFFR), Göteborg, and Beijing.

Ghasemi has consistently built alternative artistic platforms. He co-founded the New Media Society (2014), a research platform and library; the MOTAVALI Performance Platform (2020); and the nomadic artist-run space Room for Doubt, which launched in Tehran in 2022 and relocated to Berlin in May 2023.

Currently, he is developing photographic, archival, and time-based media projects, alongside writing on early Iranian video and new media art. His latest curatorial project, What the Land Remembers: Counter-Archives from Iran, drawn from the Parking Video Library, is currently on view at the Argos Centre for Audiovisual Arts in Brussels (September 2026 – February 2027).