Disco Islam

Set in the not-so-distant future, Disco Islam is a sci-fi corporate video inaugurating the opening of the biggest nightclub in the Middle East. Using CGI, live-action and music, Disco Islam appropriates the aesthetics of the world of advertising and commerce in order to shed a light on issues created by the implementation of neo-liberal policies in the Middle East and the dystopian techno-capitalist solutions towards them.

The film begins with boasting about a life-changing investment in the nightlife industry by the ‘Future-Islam™ start-up company’ which is going to deliver world standard entertainment in Iran within the legal confines of this Islamic country. The talking-head character in the film who introduces himself as a ‘Muslim entrepreneur and an Islamic futurist’ then continues to describe Disco Islam as a ‘state-of-the-art cultural project’ which has come together in response to an ‘Iranian dream for luxury and freedom’. He also argues that the project is meant to bring about economic and political stability in a country which is going through some sort of a revolution.

By juxtaposing fact and fiction as the story moves forward, Disco Islam unravels the economic, environmental and human rights issues caused by the implementation of neo-liberal policies in Iran and the senseless techno-capitalist solutions employed by the fictional start-up company to deal with them. Disco Islam ultimately pictures a dystopian vision of the Middle East in which the market ideology of free-trade and boundless profit-making has resulted in economic injustices, environmental catastrophes and the abandonment of the humanist project in Iran.

Disco Islam was supported and developed through the LCN (London Creative Network) program at The SPACE (London), Forecast Platform (Berlin) and an artist in residence program at the Delfina Foundation (London) and it was premiered at the Visions in the Nunnery exhibition at the Nunnery Gallery in London during autumn 2020.