Schedule

About the performance

In partnership with The Polygon, Unheld II brings together Iranian artists Saghi Ehteshamzadeh and Kimia Koochakzadeh-Yazdi in an experimental audio-visual performance exploring dissociation, dislocation, and the quiet liberations that emerge at a distance from home. This event also features Saghi’s installation Holding On, a meditation on memory and depression built from incomplete scans of a single moment, and Pillow Talk by Fashion x Electronics (FXE), with seven haptic garment-based sound sculptures that turn fashion into interactive instruments. This programme moves between installation, performance, and wearable technology to ask how bodies, memories, and materials hold and transform experience.

Unheld II
Performance by Saghi Ehteshamzadeh and Kimia Koochakzadeh-Yazdi

Unheld II is an experimental audio-visual piece that explores tender moments of disassociation and dislocation in female bodies—gestures of release that signal a quiet liberation from systems of oppression. It serves as a requiem for displacement, holding on to fragments of home while embracing an identity that can only begin to emerge at a distance from the homeland.

Unheld II is rooted in the shared emotional landscape of Kimia Koochakzadeh-Yazdi and Saghi Ehteshamzadeh, and the deep sense of mutuality and connection they bring to performing together.

Pillow Talk
Sound sculptures by Fashion x Electronics (FXE)

Seven haptic, garment-based sound sculptures, each with its own sound world, visuals, and mode of interaction. Fashion becomes functional art, a wearable instrument, and a different form of sonic and visual expression rooted in human touch. Bridging the art of fashion with electroacoustic music production technique and physical interaction, each of these sculptures are focused on the integration of specific sensors, used to trigger different sounds and audio processing. The garments/sculptures use conductive materials, such as conductive fibre to fully integrate the human touch. All sounds are created through an embedded system, using specific microcontrollers for each sculpture.

Pillow Talk Team
Kayla Yazdi – Co-Founder of FXE & Fashion designer
Kimia Koochakzadeh-Yazdi – Co-Founder of FXE, composer, & technologist
Mike Mulshine – Technology specialist