Vol. 1, Ch. I: What is her project about?

“The art of Parvaneh Farid celebrates the unity of religion as expressed by Bahá’u’lláh, the all-embr-acing religion... This notion of the unity of religion finds expression
in the unifying elements of her work in both a formal
and spiritual sense.In a formal sense, creativity ignores boundaries.
Thus photography, music, dance, performance,
together with any material that can be usefully employed, are all used as one to make powerful art
not easily forgotten.The belief in the unity of religion grows,
of course, out of a belief in the unity of God
and extend in a notion of the unity of mankind
in all its diversity.The spiritual content in Parvaneh Farid’s work
is universal, yet it finds its home
and, in deed, ruthless suppression
in Parvaneh’s native Iran...Parvaneh Farid’s recent statements are an impassioned and articulate rebuke ... in the form of eloquent and original works of art."
(Grylls 1997)

Project Title: The title of Parvaneh’s Project for PhD is “Translating the Lines”, which is an ongoing artistic documentation and analysis of self observation within the context of some aspects of the journey of her life.

“…I congratulate you on having invented a very distinctive new form
for presenting your research in an exciting and stimulating way
that captures the nature of your thinking beautifully"(Boyce-Tillman 2008)

This project has two aspect or wings; the First Wing is the format of the Artistic Language which is employed as means of expression and the Second Wing is the Theme of the content of the project.
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First Wing – using an Artistic Language: A stylish and metaphoric language is applied, in order to express the theme of the project. This method of expression pays attention to the interdisciplinary features of the organic nature, appearance, and the style of progression of the visible and invisible lines across the axis of time (dance and music) and space (dance and visual art) in Persian art media, such as calligraphy, painting, architecture, artefacts, music, dance and poetry.
Various conventional techniques will be explored and examined, as well as newly developed IT, to highlight the visible and invisible lines of various applied media which are used to express the theme of the project.
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Second Wing - The Theme; “Licensed to Live”. This project is a “Practice as Research” (Trimingham 2000) attempt in rewriting oneself, using “Autoethnography” (Tieney 1977) as a strategy. In doing that the life experiences and experiments, “Genetic Epistemology” (Jean Piaget 1968), are understood and interpreted, "Interpretive Interactionism” (Denzin 1989), within the “Hegelian Dialectic” framework of “Thesis”, “Antithesis” and “Synthesis”, while the findings are heavily relying on epistemology of the “Subjugated Ways of Knowing” (Boyce-Tillman 2005) using “Qualitative Image-Based” (Prosser 1998) techniques. The stages of this journey towards its final mystical destination, however, are directed according to the roadmap which is laid out in “The Seven Valleys” (Bahá’u’lláh 1986).

This Project looks into the development of one’s “Physical”, “Cognitive” and “Spiritual” identity, as if it is approached via three parallel avenues throughout the journey of life, while looking at contributing factors to these developments and manifestations in the Persian culture particularly in the area of gender and identity.
The wayfarer is required to travel through all these three avenues of existence spontaneously, though not necessarily with a constant rate or the same degree of enthusiasm. One aspect of development does not end its progress before the next one begins, and these avenues do not always remain in parallel with each other, as many junctions and joint roads are on the way, which on one hand could cause collisions and on the other could augment the speed of the journey in one or all avenues.
The wayfarer could also perform several u-turns on her/his way and/or decide to remain stationary in one place for a while. S/he may even travel the same part of the same avenue several times over. At the end the pattern of her/his journey will forms her/his travel history or in other words her/his portfolio of life experiences, hence her/his authentic identity. That notion suggests as if the entire journey of one’s life is the intended destination, rather than the final valley.
On the basis of this argument, one could understand that a restricted pigeonhole system to study the “Physical”, “Cognitive” and “Spiritual” aspects of one’s identity is not a realistic approach, however, for the sake of practicality, a schema is needed; hence looking at these parallel aspects of developments as three separate entities at times. As result, different aspects of this project may develop in isolation, before they eventually come together to form the pattern of a single tapestry of one’s identity.