Edited by Amir Mogharabi.

Showcasing a diverse selection of work from artists, musicians, and theorists, Farimani treats textual, musical, and image based projects as individual works of art. Focusing on modern and post-modern forms of expression, Farimani assumes the design of a book, while attempting to align its contents with the architecture of a curated space (so as to challenge the parameters of both), whereby each piece is contained under one cover, or as Mogharabi states an “undercover museum.”

Farimani includes contributions by artists Silvia Kolbowski and Olafur Eliasson, musicians Fred Frith and Ikue Mori, and theorists Félix Guattari and Slavoj Zizek. Other contributors include Souheil Abboud, Olafur Eliasson, Madge Gill, Elizabeth Grosz, Grux, Sylvère Lotringer, Amir Mogharabi, Ikue Mori, Michael Paulson, Sean Raspet, and Maja Ratkje.

HA HA Press 2008
224 pp, 17 x 11 cm
Perfect-bound
Edition of 1000
Available at Printed Matter.

FM-2030 (b. Fereidoun M. Esfandiary) pioneered the concept of the Transhuman (transitory human) while teaching at The New School in the mid 1960s. Born in Belgium as the son of a diplomat, FM-2030 lived in 17 countries in the first 11 years of his life–an experience that led him to see himself as a global citizen in a world plagued with irrelevant borders. FM argued that signs of transhumans included physical and mental augmentations including prostheses, reconstructive surgery, intensive use of telecommunications, a cosmopolitan outlook and a globetrotting lifestyle, androgyny (FM predicted gender to be a non-issue by the year 2000), mediated reproduction (such as in vitro fertilisation), absence of religious beliefs, and a rejection of traditional family values. FM emphasized that transhumans are not a movement. Esfandiary legally changed his name in the mid 70s to reinforce his posthuman philosophy:

“conventional names define a person’s past: ancestry, ethnicity, nationality, religion. I am not who I was ten years ago and certainly not who I will be in twenty years. The name 2030 reflects my conviction that the years around 2030 will be a magical time…In 2030 we will be ageless and everyone will have an excellent chance to live forever. 2030 is a dream and a goal.”

FM competed for Iran in the 1948 Olympics in basketball and wrestling. He authored three novels and three futurist books including ”Optimism One,” ”Telespheres” and ”Are You Transhuman?”.

FMs ideas about “nostalgia for the future” are said to have been the inspiration for the stop-motion music video for Ryuichi Sakamoto and Iggy Pop’s song Risky in which director Meiert Avis imagines a love affair between a robot and one of Man Ray’s models in Paris in the late 1930s…

FM-2030 passed away from cancer in 2000, his body was placed in cryonic suspension at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale, Arizona, where it remains today.