Many worlds collide in Razmi’s work: cultural spheres, semantic frameworks, art history, politics, and some of them together. Through appropriation of heritage, symbols, and even other artists ideas, contexts are redefined and concepts juxtaposed. Razmi attacks these systems directly, honestly and relentlessly. Free from conceptual restraints; any surplus is discarded until only the message itself remains.
Introspection and agitation are the two columns of Razmi’s work that are in constant oscillation: creating a tension, where reconciliation is often only possible on a metaphorical meta-level. Boundaries are ignored and borders are crossed: the personal and the political are not to be distinguished, while the modes of production speak for themselves. The title ‘Automatic Assembly Actions’ is a direct reflection of Razmi’s approach. Pictures and artifacts from very different cultural, artistic and social contexts are remixed, almost automatically, to form new layers of meaning and to further deconstruct their inherent mediated presumptions.
The very precise conceptual frameworks lead to stringent choices of media: the video installation ‘Arsenal’ for example can be read as a critical investigation of today’s image machinery: mundane actions collide with Hollywoodesque sound-tracks, creating tension and revealing mechanisms. Works like ‘HELLTERFUCKINGSKELTER’, on the other hand, are deeply related to their original material context, raising very basic questions about culture and transcending the personal towards the universal in their appropriative manner.
In a world constantly shifting between post-globalized and hyper-cultural paradigms, Razmi’s idea of passive automatism versus action as active intervention, does not create a one-way paradox, but rather ignites discursive friction: test drillings at the cutting edge. The borders between the art world and the real world are declared null and void, but the distinction between art and society is re-appropriated for its own sake. Anahita Razmi’s ‘Automatic Assembly Actions’ paces out new domains and shakes foundations alike: because the map is not the territory.
