Slavs and Tatars: Friendship of Nations

Overview

Beginning as an investigation into the apparently disparate events that bookend the twentieth and twenty-first century – the collapse of Communism and the Islamic Revolution in Iran – Friendship of Nations: Polish Shi’ite Showbiz traces unlikely points of convergence in Iran and Poland’s economic, social, political, religious and cultural histories.

Drawing on Slavs and Tatars’ multi-disciplinary practice encompassing research, installations, lecture-performances and print media, this publication embraces new contributions in the form of essays, interviews, and archival presentation on subjects that range from seventeenth-century Sarmatism to the twenty-first-century Green Movement, taking in along the way, tales of the Polish Exodus, Wojtek the bear, craft, hospitality, Passion plays and taziyeh and the political lessons of a Polish slow burn-revolution for contemporary Iran.

Slavs and Tatars is joined here by Agata Araszkiewicz, Ramin Jahanbegloo and Adam Michnik, Mara Goldwyn, Shiva Balaghi and Michael D Kennedy. The book is designed by Boy Vereecken and Slavs and Tatars with the assistance of Monika Grutize.