Hazard / No Entry Shahram, 2008
3000 Meters of Caution Tape, Enclosed the Cathedral Gardens in Manchester city centre
Performance as part of Hazard Festival 2008, presented by hAb and Greenroom, Manchester, UK

While Entekhabi could not get a visa for the UK and thus was not present at the festival, other festival artists performed his Caution piece in an act of solidarity, wearing a special sign on their backs.

The assault to the sense of security that emanates from the arbitrariness of this action represents the opposite of the security this tape is normally representing. Instead of protecting the people from accidents, it pushes them out of the space they consider legitimately theirs. When the act is done, he turns around and walks away, just as briskly as his arrival stride, training the last end of the tape behind him. Mid-path he tosses the remaining spool into the bushes, and he is gone. He comes and goes, but the space definitively alters. Public space is scarred with the passage of one who enters it, legitimately since it is public, yet is clearly not satisfied that this is a place to stay. For those who assume the place is theirs, a disturbance occurs that cuts right through that smug assurance. The public nature of public space is challenged.

Shahram Entekhabi transfers these ideas about confrontation within his sculptures and para-architectural installations (Ongoing Projects since 2001 to date. ). These sculptures/ informal architectures are always constructed in public-spaces and always made from caution tapes suggesting ideas about safety zones and no go areas and importantly who is permitted and not within the public space. These works deal with the dual concept of performance and public space and time.

Organized by "hÅb" Manchester-based producer, developer, and strategic advocate of Live Art, contemporary performance, and sited work in the North of England.
Hazard is a biennial micro-festival of incidental intervention + sited performance, blurring the boundaries between art and activism…
Organized by greenroom and "hÅb", programmed by Tamsin Drury.