October. 16th, 2025
The Polygon Gallery
7:00pm
Saghi Ehteshamzadeh and Kimia Koochakzadeh-Yazdi’s Unheld II is an experimental audio-visual performance exploring dissociation, dislocation, and the quiet liberations that emerge when there is distance between one’s place of residence and where they call home. Developed through international remote collaboration and culminating in a live performance, Unheld II utilizes sound and mediated visuals to ask how bodies, memories, and materials hold and transform experiences. For the event, two installations were presented in conjunction with Unheld II: Holding On, Ehteshamzadeh’s intermedia meditation on memory and depression built from incomplete scans of a single moment, and Pillow Talk by Fashion x Electronics (FXE) consisting of seven haptic garment-based sound sculptures that turn fashion into interactive instruments.
Description
Positioned across from one another, Saghi Ehteshamzadeh and Kimia Koochakzadeh-Yazdi began Unheld II with a nod. As Ehteshamzadeh faded in colorful visuals of overlapping plants and hand gestures in greens, purples and reds, Koochakzadeh-Yazdi eased into her audio work, melding synths and looped recordings with live melodic and percussive elements. Unheld II unfolded organically as the two performers, engaged at their respective stations, remained tethered through periodic glances at one another over the portion of the audience seated on the floor between them. The rest of the audience was seated in chairs on either side of this central set, acting as a physical bracketing for their audio-visual dialogue.
Born from a set of key words which framed their remote collaborative exploration, Ehteshamzadeh and Koochakzadeh-Yazdi’s intermingling work created a full-body sensorial experience. Sourced mainly from their vast video archive, Ehteshamzadeh’s visuals ranged from soft, sinuous scenes of haptic explorations of the surrounding flora to the repetition of a knowing side-eyed glance of a friendly face. Each new image they selected layered in compliment or contrast by way of colour and visual rhythm. In the ladder part of the piece, they included a few media clips from the Woman, Life, Freedom movement in Iran, including footage of Ahoo Daryayi’s protest after being confronted about Iran’s compulsory hijab laws at the Azad University in Tehran. Koochakzadeh-Yazdi’s audio moved through adjacent phases of soft ethereal undulation and deeper resonant tones as she moved between playing synths and midi keyboards to hanging sheets of laser cut metal using rubber tipped mallets equipped with contact mics. The intermingling textures of sound and image lingered in the space between the performers and audience; rousing, hanging and settling in cycles until the piece ended with a closing nod between collaborators.
Before and after the performance of Unheld II, the audience was invited to explore the accompanying installations. Ehteshamzadeh’s Holding On offered a wooden scaffold supporting suspended photos and objects upon which a video was projected. Fashion x Electronics’s (FXE) Pillow Talk presented seven clothing-as-sound sculptures which activated with tactile engagement. Viewers were encouraged to put on headphones plugged into each garment and listen to the ways their haptic exploration triggered new sonic layers in the works.
Performers
Saghi Ehteshamzadeh and Kimia Koochakzadeh-Yazdi. With interactive garment installation by FXE: Kimia Koochakzadeh-Yazdi and Kayla Yazdi (co-founders) with Mike Mulshine (technology specialist) and Leleh Zandi (Illustrator).