Of the City of Na-Koja Abad
May 18–April 25, 2026, 8:30pm
In collaboration with BO – The Association of Visual Artists Oslo, The Tehran Summit proudly announces the lineup for its fifth edition, titled “Of the City of Na-Koja-Abad.” Fusing Calvino’s Invisible Cities with Shahab-Al Din Suhrawardi's Illuminationist philosophy, the fifth edition of The Tehran Summit turns toward the concept of nationhood—not as a border, but as a fiction continually rewritten in the deserts of Na-Koja-Abad: that imaginal, luminous space “of nowhere” where metaphysics and materiality converge. This edition invites artists, thinkers, and scholars to map the interzones between myth and state, belonging and exile, visibility and disappearance. How might we inhabit multiple worlds at once? How can art perform the labor of speculating worlds that do not yet exist or that remain dormant within the cracks of dominant reality?
Scheduled from May 18–24, the audience is invited to a series of talks by distinguished practitioners exploring entangled layers of geography, imagination, time, and space. Unfolding as a collective act of world-building, Of the City of Na-Koja-Abad is a gathering across geographies, languages, and temporalities. It proposes a nation without walls, an unfinished cartography where voices resonate like distant cities across the sand: cities made of air, mirages, and light.
Speakers: Binna Choi, Nicholas Bourriaud, Slavs and Tatars, Franco “Bifo” Berardi, Avery Gordon, Mi You, and Terry Smith. This year’s summit will be followed by an extended roundtable with Perpetuum Mobilε (PM) on May 25th.
Curated by Erfan Ghiasi and Una Mathiesen Gjerde, the Director of BO.
The Tehran Summit and BO are inviting audiences from different fields of the arts and philosophy to register to join each talk digitally.
For Oslo-based audiences, the program will also be screened live in BO’s loft.
Program:
Binna Choi: "How can I ever possibly love this country?”: Liberation as Space, Sovereignty as Practice
May 18, 8:30pm (Tehran time)
Nicolas Bourriaud: GAPS, CRACKS, INTERSTICES. A TOPOLOGY OF THE ANTHROPOCENE
May 19, 8:30pm (Tehran time) / 7pm CET
Slavs and Tatars: THE SERVICE INDUSTRY
May 20, 8:30pm (Tehran time) / 7pm CET
Franco “Bifo” Berardi: How can we contribute to the termination of human History?
May 21, 8:30pm (Tehran time) / 7pm CET
Avery Gordon: already present in this instant inextricable: some thoughts on imagining worlds
May 22, 8:30pm (Tehran time) / 7pm CET
Mi You: Vaster than Empire, Deeper than Multipolarity
May 23, 8:30pm (Tehran time) / 7pm CET
Terry Smith: ART AGAINST CONTEMPORARY AUTHORITARIANISM
May 24, 1pm (Tehran time) / 10:30 CET
A roundtable with Perpetuum Mobilε (PM): On recent developments
May 25, 8:30pm (Tehran time) / 7pm CET
About The Tehran Summit
Co-founded by Erfan Ghiasi and Ghazel in 2022, the Tehran Summit is an annual online event that takes place each May during the absence of the Sun in the Middle East. Emerging from the same cultural soil that once nurtured the Shiraz Arts Festival (1967–1977), a revolutionary meeting point for global avant-garde artists, The Tehran Summit continues that spirit of experimentation and exchange, yet transforms its framework to respond to contemporary realities of Iran.
About Bo
BO – The Association of Visual Artists Oslo is an artist union and exhibition space for contemporary art. Through promoting the work of established and emerging artists, BO’s artistic program is dedicated to strengthening and supporting a vibrant art scene in Oslo. Since its establishment in 1976, BO has held a key position in the artistic ecosystem of Oslo, fostering a space where the free, inclusive, and social potential of art can thrive beyond and outside of capitalist market conditions.
Acknowledgements
The fifth Tehran Summit has been made possible with the generous support of the Fritt Ord Foundation and the Arts Council Norway.
