video trailer


Lost in Space
Shahram Entekhabi with Mieke Bal, 2005
PaL video, 18:00 min., Stereo, Multilingual with English subtitles
Cameras: Mieke Bal and Shahram Entekhabi

Lost in Space is an 18-minute video created through the collaboration of artist Shahram Entekhabi and Dutch cultural theorist Mieke Bal. The video explores the challenges of communication in an anglicized world and the experiences of individuals living international lives. It highlights the limitations faced in communication while also acknowledging the sense of freedom that comes with a more interconnected global society.

The film emphasizes the collision between the global and the local, reflecting the contemporary "glocal" world we live in. It delves into the problem of communication that arises in a world characterized by displacement and cultural diversity.

The central theme of the film is revealed when an Iranian long-term asylum seeker, when asked in English about what he misses most about being away from home, passionately responds in his native Farsi, expressing that his language is what he sorely misses. This remark serves as a catalyst for the aesthetic of the experimental film.

The video deconstructs language in various ways. Initially, during an extensive credit sequence, individuals are shown speaking, but their voices are silenced, and only their mouths and hands are visible, accompanied by ambient street noise. When the film proper begins, the voices become audible, and the translated utterances are displayed on the screen in large typographic form, creating yet another manifestation of speech.

The intentional disconnect between what is seen, read, and heard within the film directly addresses the issue of language in our contemporary world of displacement. It highlights the inherent disharmony and fragmentation that can arise in communication, paralleling the disconnected nature of the globalized world we inhabit.

Lost in Space ultimately serves as a visual exploration and commentary on the complexities of language and communication in a world marked by cultural displacement, where the experience of individuals may be out of sync with the dominant linguistic and cultural norms.

Thanks to: University of Amsterdam, the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA) and Baker Nord Center for the Humanities, Case Western Reserve Univeristy, Cleveland, Ohio, USA

Lost in Space appeared at the following exhibitions, festivals and Lectures, among others:

2017: Employment History, Royal Dutch Institute Rome, Italy
2017: Mieke Bal Film Day, Munch Museum, Oslo, Norway
2014: Trauma and Art, by Gannit Ankori, Brandeis University, Waltham, Mass., USA
2010: Auto-theory. Audio-visual thinking and migratory culture. Kunsthaus Graz, Graz, Austria
2009: Writing with Images, Lecture, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK
2009: Nothing is Missing, European University, St. Petersburg, Russia
2009: Going the Distance: Video Works in Migratory Aesthetics., Tampere Art Museum, Tampere, Finland
2008: Culture and Citizenship, Conference “, CRESC, Hugh College, Open University, Oxford, UK
2008: Visual essentialism and the object of visual culture, University of Washington, USA
2006: 10th International Documentary Film Festival Jihlava, Jihlava, Czech Republic
2006: 19th Annual Images Festival of Independent Film & Video, Vtape, Toronto, Canada
2006: Lost in Space, MASS MoCA Museum for Contemporary Arts, North Adams, Massachusetts, USA
2006: Lost in Space, International Contemporary Art Experts Forum (ARCO), Madrid, Spain
2006: The Role of Humanities in Society Today conference, Oslo, Norway
2005: Codification of Violence in Medial Transformation, graduate seminar, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany
2005: Contemporary Art and Globalization: Issues, Research, Resources and Networks in Europe, INHA European Symposium, Paris, France
2005: BEOGRAD NEKAD I SAD, exhibition, Galerija Beograd, Belgrade, Serbia
2005: Borders, Markets, Movements, CASA meeting 2005, Amsterdam, Netherlands
2005: Sonic Interventions, conference, Amsterdam, Netherlands


شهرام  انتخابی    尚莱姆_恩特卡比
Shahram Entekhabi is an German-Iranian- artist, curator & architect, currently living & working across Tehran, Iran - Berlin, Germany and Europe.