Multiculturalism was arguably a new discourse to ethnically homogenous nations before the emergence of modernity and new media, but geopolitical conditions drew certain countries into the challenge much earlier. Iran – lying at the heart of Eurasia as a junction between several different civilisations – has historically been a phenomenal arena for encounters between different races and cultures. At the height of the Persian Empire, its domain included a major part of Asia as well as territories in Africa and East Europe. The diverse range of cultural influences within these vast geographical limits can be traced in Persian art and architecture. According to archaeological findings, it is well known that Persepolis – as one of the major remnants from the apex of Achaemenid power – is architecturally a hybrid product of aesthetics and techniques originating from extensive Persian territories converging on Parsa.

Even though the country’s boundaries have periodically changed over the last 25 centuries, it has always maintained this characteristic. Frequent wars and incursions between Persians and neighbouring powers have been a significant cause for multiplicity in art and culture. Major invasions by Greeks, Arabs and Mongols introduced a wide range of cultural influences to Persia, turning it into a melting pot of civilisations. The fusion has continued in the course of the centuries, creating a complicated and kaleidoscopic character, rendered in Iran’s rich cultural heritage

Contemporary Iranians are heir to this dramatically complex background. They have been persistently compelled to spend a lot of energy in a struggle to digest these incongruent cultural intakes. But modern media has catapulted this phenomenon onto a higher level. Despite Iran’s troubled condition in the last three decades, which has hindered Iranian zeal for global integration, and although gateways of information exchange have been controlled by governmental power, there is nonetheless a large cultural influx through the media. The Internet and satellite television are important sources of information for many Iranians today. Images and visual information – as a universal language – have had a great impact on contemporary Iranian culture. The current flood of images has formed a new multifaceted and eclectic visual repertoire that has played a substantial role in the formation of contemporary Iranian lifestyles, articulated in visual arts, fashion and architecture.

The Iranian government has developed the concept and rhetoric of a “cultural attack” in the face of western media, suggesting that there is an organised, premeditated effort on their part to culturally corrupt societies. All domestic television channels are exclusively run by the government, and the philosophy has been sternly put into practice through a systematic effort to eliminate “detrimental” messages of the western media. Apart from political criteria of filtration, the censorship also includes all attributes of private or public behaviour which are considered to be against Islamic codes. Some aspects of life and their associated visual content are therefore totally excluded from the official Iranian media. There is a robust monitoring system and even live programmes such as sports broadcasts are subject to a short delay for inspection before being transmitted.

While governmental efforts endeavoured to conceive a so-called “Irano-Islamic identity” in the post-revolution era, images coming from many distant sources have permeated the Iranian visual library in the age of communication technology. Although historically Iranian culture has been capable of mixing diversified cultural elements, this capacity is not actively exploited with the reduced possibility for an unbiased “dialogue between civilisations”.

The challenges of globalisation and multiculturalism are experienced in a specific way in Iran because of differences in controlling governmental policies and the inclinations of many people in culture. Even though Iran is demographically a religious society, there are differences in definitions, practical manners and limits of tolerance among people. Official criteria and strategies, however, do not recognise many of these trends, as a specific spectrum of ideas are accepted and incorporated in course of action. Therefore the process of multicultural synthesis has two different faces between the public and the private domains. While some cultural codes are officially rejected and erased from the public domain, their inevitable influences are observable in the private sphere. Urban space as a major part of the public domain has to comply with the official criteria and thus lacks or ignores a large number of functions, behaviours and visual codes that are usually present in many contemporary cities. These functions have been scaled, transformed and reinterpreted to fit into private spaces and this is one of the fundamental factors in the analysis of specific cultural phenomena in Iran.

However, the mental space in between public and private is developed in a different way. Physical features might easily be controlled, but subliminal cultural impacts on this abstract realm are ultimately experienced by the individual. This space is replete with blended ideas and images originating from diversified sources, where deepseated influences from public and private, material and virtual, past and present are juxtaposed or fused with each other. As the gap between public and private images in the visual library widens, the vastness of this mental space that has to bridge those domains increases. Since entities are not in a concrete, immaculate form in this intermediary mental space, it could be the scene for creativity and novel ideas. But without possibilities to associate this abstract space with reality, it will continue to lack substantial manifestation.

As visual codes from both sides are projected onto this intermediary space, the gap is filled with mixed feelings of desire, nostalgia, fantasy or hallucination. Influences and sentiments disassociated from materiality are blended there to cook up a cross-spatial, cross-cultural psychedelic soup, resembling recipes of globalisation with specific local alterations and additional spices, cooked in pressurised pots.