The Pit Dorsa Basij

My approach and thought process are based on continuous interaction with my environment and its attributes. This has led my work to not be confined to a single medium, utilizing photography, video, sound and multimedia installations.

Whenever I find myself in a new environment or condition— often unpredictable in this land—I begin by observing and absorbing the influences of that space on myself. In this phase, the space, being dynamic, shapes my perception. Gradually, I add something from my experience to the space, and this process repeats over and over until the work slowly finds its final form. In this process, details always serve as my main sources of inspiration.

Although in the long-term most of my ideas and projects are influenced by the environment in which I work and live in, those that start with a spontaneous event or encounter generally interest me more. In such conditions, an unnoticed moment strikes my thoughts and imagination, becoming a fresh beginning. The process thus initiated often leads to both internal and external changes in vision, thought, and approach, hence it is sometimes better not to bring too much prior knowledge into the work and allow the environment to become a source of inspiration. In such a process, not everything can be precisely planned.

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One reason for my interest in site-specific projects is that these types of works often challenge rigidity and stability, leading to transformation. Moreover, working in large open spaces involves its unique challenges and requires managing many factors, while many of those factors are beyond our control. These unknowns and unexpected changes sometimes work in favor of the project, turning each project into an experience and a source of inspiration for future projects.

In “Industrial Heritage Project” (October 2021, Dayhim Factory), I followed this approach. I decided to use what was left behind; remnants that carried forgotten memories and histories. With the awareness of their history, my view of them transformed, and these remains became part of the creative process.

Later during my starting a studio residency at the factory, one day while photographing the sunset, I noticed a “place”: a pit where something that no longer existed had left a trace of time—walls that had absorbed the layers of time. This space deeply impacted me and became the starting point of the project in my mind.

This pit and the path later prepared for us to enter it served as a realm of interaction between place and time for me. From the beginning, the factory in my mind belonged to the realm of “the picturesque”; a space whose ruins held a unique aesthetic. A factory that, after bankruptcy and nearly ten years of abandonment, was reopened to a group of artists had the same attraction of contrast and discordant beauty for me: a space where the passage of time and the collapse of structures intertwined as aesthetic elements. Therefore, the aesthetics of ruins, which is part of the picturesque, became the focal point of my project.

Decay and disintegration are key themes in my work. Generally, my works are process-oriented and gradually emerge from my experiences. In expressing this idea, I am indebted to the book, “Natural History of Decay” by Baraneh Emadian, where it is written, “Natural history demonstrates the life of an object as its destruction by the universal and turns the historical process into a kind of lived experience.”

Artistic projects are to me never predetermined and planned from the start; rather, parts of the work emerge during the process. In “The Pit”, I added signs of my presence and the passage of time to the space. Therefore, through an experimental process, I printed photographs of sunsets I

captured daily from the same location on backlight paper and laid them on the ground so that wind, rain, and sun would naturally affect them. These elements eroded part of my image and confronted me with a page that, although marred, carried new layers of meaning.

These images, influenced by environmental factors, transformed into something else; the traces of nature were etched onto them, and the object and nature impacted each other in the process of destruction. I attempted to use the sedimented images in the location to build an unstable and temporary structure, as if I had accumulated time in this pit.

Part of my daily records carrying a history was placed in this pit to be marred, and then I tried to turn that space into a safe yet temporary shelter by wrapping these images around it. The juxtaposition of fragile and perishable materials with sturdy rebar was of special importance to me, as if these two materials experienced a kind of violence and pressure together.

Fragility and aggression simultaneously, though neither overcoming the other, resemble grappling with current conditions to me. Yi-Fu Tuan, the late Chinese-American writer, writes, “Place is security, space is freedom: we are attached to the one and long for the other. There is no place like home.” This sentence has always been in my mind throughout this project and has inspired questions such as how to turn space into place, how to live temporarily, and how memories and stories affect our perception in places, giving them new meaning.

In planning and shaping this project, the constant tension between being present in this world and continuously being erased, between the transcendent and the mortal, has been a central focus. By observing ruins, one can grasp the passage of time, and I have tried, through a process-oriented and time- bound project that is part of my daily record, to mar them and create something new from the remnants. Throughout the work, contemplation of the transcendent and eternal has only been possible through the transient and ruined.

My attention to an object and its daily recording has focused on repetition; a repetition that arises from life itself but is different each time. The more this continuity, the greater meaning it creates within itself. Thus, photographing the sunset for me began with going to the factory and recording the sky daily at a specific hour, gradually, the sunset replaced that hour and became the focal point; seeing a grandeur that vanishes before the eyes, yet knowing it will remain and hoping for its repetition. The sunset and the time between the presence and absence of the sun, while signifying the passage of time and the continuity of life, also reminds us of its loss. Following this view, the photos are presented as scrolls to symbolize accumulation and the effort to preserve time.

As the process continued, with mutual influence and impact, both the project progressed and I became more influenced by the environment. The photos were placed in the environment, entering a reciprocal relationship with it. In this work, the trace of the environment was imprinted on them, and simultaneously, their trace remained on the ground. When I was not present in that place, they continued their mutual impact, and upon encountering them again, only traces of how and the quality of this impact remained.

This accumulation of time and influences gradually led to the creation of models that, through successive changes, turned into rough and metal sculptures that had a nature influenced by the reactions of materials in the pit but were independent. These sculptures, shaped by positive and negative spaces, absence, loss, decay, and a re-examination of place and time, were inspired by the movement of objects under natural processes like the wind. They are, in a way, temporary shelters that, while sedimented and residual, also protect remnants of the past.