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ANCESTRAL COMPUTATION assembles works that counter the epistemes of Western technoscience, from across the SWANA region and its diasporic time-spaces. These works call forth ancestral intelligences, inheriting forms of worldmaking surfaced from the lacunae of omissive datasets and archives of dispossession. They traverse algorithmic dream divination; develop tools for upending classificatory protocols; evade technologies of capture; and conjure precolonial deities through radio transmissions. They invoke alternate temporalities, rejecting the consignment of non-Western technologies to the dustbins of media history.
ANCESTRAL COMPUTATION is curated by Mashinka Firunts Hakopian and is co-presented by ArteEast and e-flux. This program is part of the legacy program Unpacking the ArteArchive, which preserves and presents over 20 years of film and video programming by ArteEast. The program will be presented in-person at e-flux, on October 21st starting at 7 pm, for more information visit e-flux.com. The screening will be followed by a discussion between artist Nouf Aljowaysir and the curator. The full ANCESTRAL INTELLIGENCES program will be available online on artearchive.org from October 21 - 31, 2025. This program expands on the screening Ancestral Intelligences, hosted at Cambridge University by Cambridge Film & Screen and Cambridge Visual Culture. Ancestral Intelligences was curated by Mashinka Hakopian in conversation with Kareem Estefan.
Allahyari’s poetic film explores the stories of astronomical instruments made in Iran and Pakistan and now held at the V&A. Dating from the 1200s to the 1700s, each object was modelled in 3D specifically for this project and features in the film alongside archival documents and related photographs. The museum’s archives capture only fragments of these objects’ histories. Documents record their arrival between about 1865 and 1930, but there is little sense of how their displacement impacted their places of origin and the people living there. Their journeys reflect imperial histories that have shaped the V&A’s collections.
About the Filmmaker
Morehshin Allahyari (Persian: مورهشین اللهیاری), is a Bay Area based Iranian-Kurdish artist, using 3D simulation, video, sculpture, and digital fabrication as tools to re-figure myth and history. Through archival practices and storytelling, her work weaves together complex counternarratives in opposition to the lasting influence of Western technological colonialism in the context of MENA (Middle East and North Africa). Morehshin has been part of numerous exhibitions, festivals, and workshops around the world including Venice Biennale di Architettura, New Museum, The Whitney Museum of American Art, Pompidou Center, MoMa, Victoria and Albert Museum, Queens Museum, and Museum of Modern Art, Taipei. She has been an artist in residence at Carnegie Mellon University’s STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, Autodesk Pier9 Workshop in San Francisco, the Vilém Flusser Residency Program for Artistic Research in association with Transmediale, Berlin, Eyebeam’s one year Research Residency, Pioneer Works, and Harvest Works.
Photo by Niloufar Emamifar, 2024
- Year2024
- Runtime36:42
- LanguagePersian, English
- CountryIran, United States
- Subtitle LanguageEnglish
- DirectorMorehshin Allahyari
- FilmmakerMorehshin Allahyari
ANCESTRAL COMPUTATION assembles works that counter the epistemes of Western technoscience, from across the SWANA region and its diasporic time-spaces. These works call forth ancestral intelligences, inheriting forms of worldmaking surfaced from the lacunae of omissive datasets and archives of dispossession. They traverse algorithmic dream divination; develop tools for upending classificatory protocols; evade technologies of capture; and conjure precolonial deities through radio transmissions. They invoke alternate temporalities, rejecting the consignment of non-Western technologies to the dustbins of media history.
ANCESTRAL COMPUTATION is curated by Mashinka Firunts Hakopian and is co-presented by ArteEast and e-flux. This program is part of the legacy program Unpacking the ArteArchive, which preserves and presents over 20 years of film and video programming by ArteEast. The program will be presented in-person at e-flux, on October 21st starting at 7 pm, for more information visit e-flux.com. The screening will be followed by a discussion between artist Nouf Aljowaysir and the curator. The full ANCESTRAL INTELLIGENCES program will be available online on artearchive.org from October 21 - 31, 2025. This program expands on the screening Ancestral Intelligences, hosted at Cambridge University by Cambridge Film & Screen and Cambridge Visual Culture. Ancestral Intelligences was curated by Mashinka Hakopian in conversation with Kareem Estefan.
Allahyari’s poetic film explores the stories of astronomical instruments made in Iran and Pakistan and now held at the V&A. Dating from the 1200s to the 1700s, each object was modelled in 3D specifically for this project and features in the film alongside archival documents and related photographs. The museum’s archives capture only fragments of these objects’ histories. Documents record their arrival between about 1865 and 1930, but there is little sense of how their displacement impacted their places of origin and the people living there. Their journeys reflect imperial histories that have shaped the V&A’s collections.
About the Filmmaker
Morehshin Allahyari (Persian: مورهشین اللهیاری), is a Bay Area based Iranian-Kurdish artist, using 3D simulation, video, sculpture, and digital fabrication as tools to re-figure myth and history. Through archival practices and storytelling, her work weaves together complex counternarratives in opposition to the lasting influence of Western technological colonialism in the context of MENA (Middle East and North Africa). Morehshin has been part of numerous exhibitions, festivals, and workshops around the world including Venice Biennale di Architettura, New Museum, The Whitney Museum of American Art, Pompidou Center, MoMa, Victoria and Albert Museum, Queens Museum, and Museum of Modern Art, Taipei. She has been an artist in residence at Carnegie Mellon University’s STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, Autodesk Pier9 Workshop in San Francisco, the Vilém Flusser Residency Program for Artistic Research in association with Transmediale, Berlin, Eyebeam’s one year Research Residency, Pioneer Works, and Harvest Works.
Photo by Niloufar Emamifar, 2024
- Year2024
- Runtime36:42
- LanguagePersian, English
- CountryIran, United States
- Subtitle LanguageEnglish
- DirectorMorehshin Allahyari
- FilmmakerMorehshin Allahyari