Admiror, Or Revolutionary Sentiments

To mark the opening of Bahar Noorizadeh’s solo exhibition, FACT and The Otolith Collective are pleased to present a live performance of Admiror, Or Revolutionary Sentiments. This multi-sensory experience aims to articulate new ways of thinking through the subject of revolution, featuring spoken word, live drums, and CGI animation.

Following performances at the Bergen Senter for Elektronisk Kunst (Bergen, Norway) and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York, USA), Bahar Noorizadeh, FACT, and The Otolith Collective are delighted to present the UK premiere of the audiovisual performance Admiror, Or Revolutionary Sentiments at Invisible Wind Factory.

Admiror, Or Revolutionary Sentiments is produced in collaboration with opera maker Klara Kofen, with drums and sound design by composer Cameron Graham and CGI design and animation from Rudá Babau. In Admiror, Or Revolutionary Sentiments, Bahar Noorizadeh and opera maker Klara Kofen narrate the manual rhetoric of character and comportment that enact the emotions of sympathy and ethics of imagination proposed by Adam Smith in The Theory of Moral Sentiments in 1759.

Admiror – the Latin verb for ‘to admire’ – alludes to the Baroque gesture of palms raised in admiration or wonderment catalogued by the natural philosopher John Bulwer in Chirologia, or the Natural Language of the Hand in 1644. In its disorienting CGI choreography of body language and operatic recitation, Admiror, Or Revolutionary Sentiments discloses actions of the past that assign and frustrate the roles through which logics of liberalism and feelings of liberation conduct themselves in the future of our present.

Following the performance, please join us for a Q&A with Bahar Noorizadeh, Klara Kofen, Cameron Graham and Kodwo Eshun (The Otolith Collective).

This event takes place Invisible Wind Factory on Friday 21 February 2025 to mark the opening of Bahar Noorizadeh’s solo exhibition at FACT. Discover more about Bahar Noorizadeh’s exhibition Free to Choose →

The exhibition continues until Sunday 11 May 2025. Free entry.

About Bahar Noorizadeh

Bahar Noorizadeh is an artist, writer and filmmaker. Her research examines the historical advance of speculative activity and its derivative politics in art, urban life, and finance and economics. Noorizadeh is the founder of Weird Economies, an online art platform that traces economic imaginaries extraordinary to financial arrangements of our time. Her work has appeared at the German Pavilion, Venice Architecture Biennial 2021, Tate Modern Artists’ Cinema Program, Transmediale Festival, DIS Art platform, Berlinale Forum Expanded, and Geneva Biennale of Moving Images among others. Noorizadeh has contributed essays to e-flux Architecture, Journal of Visual Culture, and forthcoming anthologies from Duke University Press and Sternberg Press. She is pursuing her work as a PhD candidate in Art at Goldsmiths, University of London where she holds a SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship.

About Rudá Babau

About Rudá Babau is a filmmaker and artist based in Brasilia and São Paulo, Brazil. They work with the virtuality of reality and the fuzziness between digital and material as code.

About Cameron Graham

Cameron Graham’s practice straddles the space between the composed and the installed, drawing on philosophies of sound and acoustical experience to expand the performative affordances of intermedia. His work unfolds between the studio and a sensory percussion drum kit. His electronic music is released on the Phantom Limb label.

About Klara Kofen

Klara Kofen is an artist, writer and researcher. She is the co-artistic director of Waste Paper Opera. Her work is concerned with histories, speculative, counterfactual, real and imagined and the way technological interfaces shape our relation to time and affect.

About FACT

FACT is the UK’s leading centre for art, film and the creative use of technology. Located in the heart of Liverpool city centre, FACT creates transformative experiences that spark the imagination and enrich lives. Home to three art galleries, four cinema screens and a Studio/Lab for artists, the centre provides platforms and opportunities for people to create, learn, experience and make sense of the world today. In 2023, FACT celebrated 20 years of groundbreaking moments and unforgettable memories shaped by over 500 artists and more than 5 million visitors.

About The Otolith Collective

The Otolith Collective is a long-standing artist-led organisation supporting intergenerational art practice, research-led projects and process-based forms of development. The Otolith Collective create environments that nourish discourse and discussion, co-commission art practices and curate exhibitions and programmes with a wide range of collaborators, organisations and institutions here and elsewhere. Their platforms emerge as workshops, reading groups, gatherings, panels, book launches, exhibitions, events, discussions, publications and screening programmes.

CREDITS

Concept, Creative Direction, Text, Narrative: Bahar Noorizadeh and Klara Kofen
Sound and Composition: Cameron Graham
Design and Animation: Rudá Babau
Additional voice: Nick Houde
Baroque Movement Consultant: Dionysios Kyropoulos

Admiror, Or Revolutionary Sentiments is presented at Invisible Wind Factory by FACT and The Otolith Collective. FACT is supported by public funding from the Arts Council England and the Liverpool City Council.