Mr. Farhad Bahram

Mr. Farhad Bahram
Assistant Professor
Communication, Department of
Arts and Sciences, College of
Gillum Hall, Third Floor, #331
Click to view
812-237-3298

Education

  • M.F.A. - Art, University of Oregon - 2015
  • Other - New Media & Culture, University of Oregon - 2015

Professional Webpage

farhadbahram.com

Awards and Honors

  • Sasakawa Young Leaders Fellowship for International Research (Sylff) - 2013

Licensures and Certifications

Teaching Interests

  • As an Iranian artist and educator, I learned very early in my academic journey that establishing an experiential framework for critical analysis of any form of knowledge is especially crucial for my creative practice as it feeds on a culture that is predominantly stereotyped through media coverage and public culture. This understanding eventually led me to become the firm believer of experiential learning, while realizing that education in Western culture is dominantly fixated on propositional form of knowledge. My teaching efforts during past 8 years resulted in framing a model that puts more focus on procedural and participatory forms of knowledge, prior to developing a vocabulary to articulate the propositional knowledge. My teaching philosophy thus revolves around creative practice as a lived experience, and my goal is to challenge students toward personal and individualistic expression of this objective by assuming an active role and participating in the process.

Intellectual Contributions

  • Digital Storytelling and Creative Destruction - Storytelling, Self, Society, Detroit, MI - 2021

Performances and Exhibits

  • New Harmony Gallery of Contemporary Art, University of Indiana
  • Virginia Tech
  • Wadsworth Gallery, Lewis University

Presentations

  • Decodification of the Body. Add+Art 2021 Conference, 2021.
  • Affirmative Negation. Border Control Symposium, 2019.
  • Curating During Pandemics: H/F Gallery. College Art Association (CAA) Annual Conference, 2021.
  • Decodification of the Body. College Art Association (CAA) Annual Conference, 2021.
  • The Impotent Medium. Our Networks, 2019.

Contract, Fellowship, Grant or Sponsored Research

  • Grant: Border Control Symposium Scholarship, - The Office of Research at the University of Michigan - 2019. Funded - $200
  • Grant: The University Arts Endowment Committee (UAEC) - Indiana State University 2019 Funded

Research Interests

  • The diversity of my creative practice and research is augmented by my past upbringing in Iran, a society with stringent regulatory control over the means of communication and media consumption. After moving to the US my practice became more focused on understanding media object as a cultural form and the social contingency of its reception. Though digital and new media art is at the core of my practice, my work and research crosses the boundaries of studio art by involving performance theories, visual communication, immersive user experience, human-computer interfaces, and digital storytelling.

Professional Service

  • Role: Committee Member - College Art Association 2020 - 2023
  • Role: Reviewer, Conference Paper - National Communication Association (NCA) 2021 - 2021
  • Role: Reviewer, Grant Proposal - National Endowment for the Arts 2021 - 2023
  • Role: Board of Directors of a Company - New Media Caucus 2019 - 2023

Bahram‘s interests are formed by his former practice as a photojournalist, an occupation that has permitted him to travel and live across different cultures. This work, for him, has allowed for a nuanced understanding of the individual’s relationship to the globalized culture that governs our critical thinking and social conditions today.

His creative work illuminates how ideas are received and perceived through objects and images. The body is central to the work, becoming a tool for dissecting identity and the imprint of coded cultural language through the amalgamation of theory and practice. Many of his works question the function of viewership and the subjectivity of our interactions with those around us. Through his work, the viewer shifts from passive bystander to willing participant, perpetrator, witness, recorder and storyteller. Simultaneously, his work functions through a lyric poetic form, yet he expands the singular positioning afforded in this framework by collaboration with other creative productions and producers, to position others as participating subjectivities.

He  has shown nationally and internationally ranging from venues such as ArtHelix Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; Gowanus Loft, Brooklyn, NY; East of West Gallery, Santa Fe, NM; Yerba Buena Center For the Arts, San Francisco, CA; Mission Cultural Center, San Francisco, CA; Reed College, Portland, OR; Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, Eugene, OR; Umpqua Valley Arts Center, Roseburg, OR; Plâtre et Moi Gallery, Paris, France; Laatikkomo, Jyväskylä, Finland; Aaran Gallery, Tehran, Iran; Fravahr Art Gallery, Tehran, Iran; Sazmanab Center for Contemporary Art, Tehran, Iran.

Bahram's work has been reviewed and featured in Art Practical, PBS News Hour, Voice of America, The Santa Fe New Mexican, IranWire, among others. His practice and research has been supported by grants and awards from the Tokyo Foundation for International Research, Ford Alumni Center, University of Oregon and Society for Photographic Education. 

 

Digital Storytelling
Visual Communication
Understanding Contemporary Media
The Artist Experience
Digital Imaging
Digital Photography
Interactive Digital Media
New Media Theory
  • 2015 MFA, Photography, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR
  • 2015 GradCert, New Media & Culture, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR
  • 2012 MFA (Transferred), Photography, San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, CA
  • 2010 GradDip, History of Contemporary Art, Mahe Mehr Art & Culture Institute, Tehran, Iran
  • 2009 GradDip, Contemporary Photography, Mahe Mehr Art & Culture Institute, Tehran, Iran
  • 2007 BS, Mining Engineering, Azad University of South Tehran, Iran

Portfolio:
http://farhadbahram.com/

  • Digital media production
  • New Media theories
  • Social practice and performance art

 

Born in Iran, a society with stringent regulatory control over all types of social interactions, as a young artist I developed a profound desire to understand how the performance of actions and the diversity of our social encounters could affect the outcome of our individuality. This social inquiry permeated into my professional practice when in 2009 I formed an international artist collective called Global Mission of Art. GMOA is a curatorial platform and multicultural group of more than thirty artists from various nations of the world. Considering our technologically advancing and culturally diverse societies, I am hoping that in GMOA we could foster the diversity of opinions, ideas and backgrounds which is also the lifeblood of contemporary art practice. In collaboration with non-profit and humanitarian organizations such as UNICEF and UNHCR, our research-based practice at GMOA constructs a grassroots community to address the issues surrounding identity and human rights.

The current trajectory of my research is centered on examining the possibilities for transforming the determined correlation between medium and message into an evermoving chain of social and cultural relations. My attempt is to investigate 'social interaction' as a subjective mechanism that is shaped by a series of social urgencies, such as desire, rejection, or satisfaction, which could also present the inability of the medium to fully express its intended message. I unpack my installations and performances through presenting the concept of impotent medium , such as texts that are incapable of conveying their intended message, destructed photos that are depleted from the iconic value of an image, and bodies that are unable to project the real identity of individuals. Within this destructive space lies an important and affirmative sentiment, which is the main objective in my relational practice: the possibility of relocating the meaning from the art object to the contingency of reception.