Tehran Hidden Scars

“There are sores which slowly erode the mind in solitude like a kind of canker. It is impossible to convey a just idea of the agony which this disease can inflict. In general, people are apt to relegate such inconceivable sufferings to the category of the incredible. Any mention of them in conversation or in writing is considered in the light of current beliefs, the individual’s personal beliefs in particular, and tends to provoke a smile of incredulity and derision.

The reason for this incomprehension is that mankind has not yet discovered a cure for this disease. Relief from it is to be found only in the oblivion brought about by wine and in the artificial sleep induced by opium and similar narcotics. Alas, the effects of such medicines are only temporary. After a certain point, instead of alleviating the pain, they only intensify it.” (The Blind Owl – Sadegh Hedayat)

Tehran is not only a city, but also a body to thousands of hidden scars. From the beginning of the deterministic entry of modernity into Iran and the reign of capital, fledgling capitalism has imposed a new hierarchy that has never been able to cover cultural and romantic relationships as well as the impact of history on everyday life to cover wounds that reflect the real situation of the people. Besides, mounting gigantic objects on the urban surface, which we pronounce high-rise buildings.

These gigantic objects, which generally work in a top-to-bottom process in the capital accumulation as a symbol of the glory of modernity and state capital, are essentially neutral to the population of humans living beneath them and in the city. They are not meant to establish a dialogue with urban everyday life but to serve as tools for nourishing and ensuring the life cycle of production and consumption. But where are the people’s scars? Those real signs of life, signs of historical anger, anxiety, excitement, love, fear and apprehension, sadness and in other words a “romantic experience”.

The modern city negates all the chaos and inanity, and this seems natural, since the existential philosophy of capital society is based on optimizing the power of production and encouraging as much consumer society as possible. Accordingly, buildings and social systems in general will be the ones that bring the most capital reproduction and encouragement to consumption. Such systems negate and even forbid genuine human and romantic experiences since “romantic experience” has not essentially a producer-consumer nature, but rather seeks “pleasure” in the existential sense of the word.

In a space full of integrated machine systems serving the production and supply of goods and services, how can you have a truly romantic experience? Through the collapse of the vicious and fully functional shell of the modern city, and the removal of scars beneath this cover, a parasitic, non-hierarchical, networked, and organic growth, organized not from top to bottom but from the heart of homes, neighborhoods, and streets. Shouting at whatever is imposed on the city and the accumulation of capital and pure functionalism. Resilient textures or merely non-functional symbols that add to the city’s romantic experience, emerge as a plant from the heart of the city, grow in parallel with the real wants and needs of the people, and thus become a complete mirror of current realities, In the heart of the city. Mother Tehran and the purely nourishing fetuses who are its citizens have shaped the iron structure of current modernity. “Scars hidden in the womb of mother Tehran.”