TechniCowlour

Produced by The Biting School
Co-produced by battery opera
Presented by Vancouver Asian Canadian Theatre in partnership with Centre A: Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art

Concept and creation by elika mojtabaei and Aryo Khakpour
In collaboration with Alanna Ho, ellis cheadle, Jaewoo Kang, SF Ho

Exhibition:
January 18 – March 15 
Location: Centre A (205-268 Keefer Street)
Tickets:

• Free admission for the installation component during Centre A’s regular gallery hours, Wed to Sat, 12-6pm
• Free admission on opening night (Jan 18, 5-8pm), featuring a performance by Aryo Khakpour at 6:30pm
• Pay-what-you-choose for featured performance nights on Feb 12, Mar 1 & Mar 15, 6:30pm – ticket link here

i just want to be a cow
in full colour
in full house
in full surround sound
free from all that makes me sad

— by Arika Mōjpour (6th-century Persia)

TechniCowlour is an installation and performance exploring the intersections of mythology, memory, and sensory experience. At its core, the project queers and remixes materials—scents; fabrics; songs; gestures; and Iranian mythologies and architectural references—into a fragmented experience of longing; and questions the preservation of culture that persists in diasporic living, blurring the lines between the nostalgic and the immediate.

Across its three interconnected spaces, TechniCowlour invites viewers into a sensory dialogue that traverses the ancient past, the near past, and the present. One room binds light with absence; and houses retellings of pre-Zoroastrian deities in the form of costumes created from second-hand clothing. Another space envelops the audience in near darkness, where the intimate terrains of scent memories and tactile interactions take precedence over sight. The third space centres water, grounding us in the present—a momentary refuge entwined with the poetics of displacement and loss.

Our process began as a response to the Iranian film, The Cow (1969), which tells the story of a man’s unparalleled love for his cow, and his immense grief upon her death—an event that leads him to believe he has become his cow. TechniCowlour is an invocation of the body and the senses, undermining the customary cultural inertias in favour of an experimental adaptation. Here, nostalgia becomes an entry to presence rather than a retreat from it. Through the interplay of mythology, cinema, and haptic exploration, the piece asks: What does it mean to live between worlds that carry us across times?

— The TechniCowlour creative team