Iman Tajik

Under One Sky

Press and Article:

Creative Scotland -features 2020

Press and journal - 30 May 2020

Iman Tajik
Under One Sky
2020

بنی‌آدم اعضای یک پیکرند که در آفرينش ز یک گوهرند
Human beings are members of a whole, since in their creation they are of one essence.
Saadi Shirazi

Wherever you are in the world, we are all under one sky

In this current climate we are asked to adopt an increasing fear of the outsider into our lives and homes. Donald Trump’s rhetoric about being a ‘foreign virus’; the closing of borders – they all play into existing xenophobia but with an ironic edge: The virus doesn’t acknowledge borders; we are all affected in a pandemic. Between us we have diverse experiences of the freedoms and containment which have come into focus during national and international efforts to control the spread of the coronavirus. But whatever our different circumstances, we all live under the same sky.

Iman Tajik is exploring this message of global solidarity through the reimagining of annual Slow Marathon walking event by Deveron Project. Rather than the place-based mass walk we had planned for June 2020, this year’s Slow Marathon: Under One Sky will instead take place collaboratively - by myriad participants in numerous locations around the globe. Cumulatively, mile by mile, we will wend our human trail across the surface of our planet and through as many borders as we can.

Iman will forge a digitally collaborative relationship with many walkers, exploring the ideological interplay/conflict of borders and the virus; the lines we humans create traversing the landscape when free to do so; and the plight of those being denied that freedom – by the virus or by socio-political means. For this he is collecting images from walkers of the sky they see while walking. These will be brought together in a massive artwork of all of us under one sky.