If Need Be by Pejvak

If Need Be presents a constellation of stories about water scarcity in the arid regions of Central Asia, ancient Persia, and the American Great Plains.

Artist duo Pejvak strings together a series of hallucinatory events involving artificial glaciers, dams and other human attempts to bring water under control. Giving equal weight to gossip, legend and historical fact, Peivak takes the role of an unreliable narrator, situating the struggle for water within the struggle for the historical record. This publication was made as a continuation of Peivak's solo exhibition at Z33 House for Contemporary Art, Design & Architecture in Hasselt, Belgium. The book launch will be accompanied by a presentation and listening session.

Pejvakis the long-term collaboration between Felix Kalmenson (b. Saint Petersburg, 1987) and Rouzbeh Akhbari (b. Tehran, 1992) since 2014. Through their multivalent, intuitive approach to research and living they find themselves in a convergence and entanglement with like minded collaborators, histories and various geographies. Their collective work has been exhibited at museums and galleries internationally, including; MAC VAL (Paris), Van Abbemuseum (Eindhoven), M HKA (Antwerp), Villa Arson (Nice), Z33 (Hasselt) and Si Shang Art Museum (Beijing).

Their films have screened in numerous international film festivals including at São Paulo International Film Festival, Doclisboa, Arkipel, Sharjah Film Platform, Media City Film Festival, and Kasseler Dokfest, winning awards including the Prix George at Internationale Kurzfilmtage Winterthur, 2020. They were residents of the Jan Van Evck Academie in 2021 and research fellows for M HKA and Van Abbemuseum Research Fellowship within the framework of The L'internationale Our Many Europes Programme in 2021/22. They were also long listed for Canada's prestigious Sobey Art Award in 2023. Pejvak has also contributed various articles and book chapters to various volumes, including the Funambulist, Unsettling Colonial Modernity: Islamicate Contexts in Focus, C Magazine and The Work of Wind. If Need Be (Building Fictions, 2024) is their first monograph.