Within a collaborative project called ‘The Experience’, a group of Iranian artists have planned to send lanterns containing peace and friendship messages to 16 cafés with a cultural and historical background in France, Turkey, and India, in the first phase.
They lanterns will shine on café tables from January 25 for a month, Honaronline reported.
The innovative project by Mehran Rad was displayed in Etemad Gallery last week, with a number of well known artists Nader Mashayekhi, Omid Rohani, Arash Ziaei, Babak Sobhi, Amir Anoushfar, and Saba Nasiri attending the event.
Detailed explanations about the project will be included in the packages sent to the overseas cafés, said Rad, so as to provide café owners information about the purpose of the project.
The lanterns, each containing a poetic message about peace, “are meant to light the cafés worldwide in a bid to enhance sympathy and understanding among people sitting around café tables.”
The addressees are invited to send their messages to the project team, by uploading 15-second video messages in the Instagram page of the project, entitled ‘The Experience Project’.
Opportunity
The project creates an opportunity to provoke public participation, bringing people from distant cultures and geographical positions close to one another and enabling them to be heard.
‘The Experience’ also aims to make people ponder on “how to enhance and spread sympathy, rather than just directly opposing conflicts.”
Saying “there is no limit for well-wishers” in the project, Rad added that what, however, needs to be observed is “respect to religious and ethnic values.”
In the next phase, peace lanterns will be sent to Palestine, Lebanon, Morocco, England, Spain, Germany, Austria, Russia, China, and Hungary, said Rad. However, he did not say when the second phase is to be implemented.
Hermes Records, Etemad Gallery, Sam Café, and Kodun Group are the sponsors of the project.
