Negin Rezaie

Authoritarianism grows when we forget how to resist. The Library of Civil Disobedience is a reminder and a record. It is a school of disobedience. It s not just an archive, but a shared breath between past and future struggles. Negin Rezaie -This project is part of the Library of Civil Disobedience (LoCD) — a multidimensional and evolving artistic research initiative co-developed by Negin Rezaie and Uni Prof. Andreas Spiegl, in collaboration with Emma Dirnhofer. LoCD encompasses a digital, physical, and mobile archive of various forms of civil disobedience and includes artistic research, artworks, performances, and collective interventions. It is grounded in the belief that resistance is a form of knowledge: embodied, historical, and collective — and thus must be documented, activated, and redistributed. The works presented here are developed based on concepts created by Negin Rezaie. While collective collaboration is central to her artistic practice, these pieces reflect her personal perspective and analysis of power structures and forms of resistance. In this context, authorship is layered and shared — just as victory is always collective. In this presentation,Negin Rezaie uses multimedia forms — including installation, performance, and object-based interventions — to reveal the complex layers of resistance. One of the works in this series occupies the space: a signal-orange inflatable structure and a live performance that serves as a site for political embodiment, collective action, and strategic refusal. The structure is designed in collaboration with Matteo Lacoste and Riin Maide, and its form changes depending on the architecture of the site in which it is installed. Each iteration of the project emerges from Negin Rezaie s collaboration with invited artists and reflects intersectional lived experiences such as exile, marginality, privilege, and solidarity. This time, Negin Rezaie performs with Rozina Patkai, who also creates the soundscape and live electronics, and appears as a co-performer in the performance. This project asks: How do bodies occupy, redefine, and reclaim space? And how can presence, care, and collective movement challenge power? One of the central installations features a hybrid, nameless creature inside a conceptual labyrinth — built from concrete, metal, rebar, surveillance cameras, and spray paint. Visually developed in collaboration with Red Huemer , this creature symbolizes techno-feudalism / techno-fascism: it is a surveillant, shape-shifting controller. Ultimately, what the audience confronts is not only the creature itself but the reflection of their own face. The camera broadcasts the viewer s image, prompting the question: What have we become at the end of this path? And if we blind this eye — does surveillance end, or merely transform? Alongside it, a booklet illustrated by ANIA (she/her), Negin s artistic partner in the N & N Collective, accompanies the installation — acting as a visual guide through the architecture and psychological dimensions of the techno-fascist maze. Another piece is a latex object originally created for the performance Intimacy is Political, developed in collaboration with Emma Dirnhofer and visualised by Heidi. RosenbergerThis work explores the body as a field of resistance. On the latex surface, a henna design drawn ANIA from N & N Collective, evokes a form of protest that is ephemeral yet enduring: the body as an archive of ancestral memory and strategic feminine disobedience.