A supporter of defeated Iranian presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi shouts slogans during riots in Tehran on June 13, 2009. Hardline incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared winner by a landslide in Iran’s hotly-disputed presidential vote, triggering riots by opposition supporters and furious complaints of cheating from his defeated rivals. (OLIVIER LABAN-MATTEI/AFP/Getty Images)
Medium Religion artist Barbad Golshiri, who was in Sligo for the installation of his work mAmi and the Exhibition opening on May 23rd, is unlikely to make a planned return visit to Sligo this weekend to participate in the Medium Religion Symposium: Religious Challenges, Challenging Religions, due to the current political situation in Tehran. We are looking at ways to involve Barbad remotely, or his work, in Saturdays Symposium and we’ll keep you posted on what might be possible.
Until today many emails and websites were blocked in Iran so international correspondents found it hard to file reports. Email, blogs and twitter were, and still are, the best methods to communicate information, and twitter is still the most immediate way to follow what is happening just employ the hashtag #iranelection or follow one of the tweeters idenitified by channel 4 here>
There is so much coverage right now on the leading news sites like the BBC and Channel 4 that there is no shortage of information avialable, but we wanted to share with you the links Barbad has emailed to us so far so you can get a sense his perspective.
We received an email from Barbad on Sunday morning with a link to this iranian blog page and the comment:
Dear FriendsPlease ask your governments not to recognize the newly “selected” president of the Islamic Republic or Iran.
We then received a number of links to the following sites this morning with the subject line:
“Yesterday at least 8 people were killed near my house”http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8102224.stm
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/06/irans_disputed_election.html
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/06/2009615204230704188.html
this is the YouTube that appears above
http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1184614595?bctid=26415347001
this is not a great host site and the video stalls- best to go straight to channel 4 who have excellent coverage
Naturally communication with Barbad is difficult at the present time but we’ll keep you posted on any developments he sends through and how we might involve him in Saturdays Symposium. This iranian blogis also an excellent collator of on the ground info and reports.
BBC update on unconfirmed reports of today’s march.