SIAHKAL 2.0:
A.I. Resurrected Discourse on Marxism & A.I. (2025)
by “Bizhan Jazani”, Parham Ghalamdar & Parsa Esmaeilzadeh
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E-book available via Metalabel
Authored by "Bizhan Jazani"
Translated and Edited by Parham Ghalamdar
Foreword by Parham Ghalamdar
Afterword by Parsa Esmaeilzadeh
Illustrations by Parham Ghalamdar and "Bizhan Jazani"
Design & Typography by Palais Sinclaire and Parham Ghalamdar
Metadata:
Cat#: BECOMING011
Dimensions: 10.8x14.8
Binding: Perfect Bound
Pages: 126 pages
ISBN: 978-9925-8207-7-1 (Print), 978-9925-8207-8-8 (Digital)
Language: English
Edition: First
About:
At the core of this project is a translation of “Marxist Islam or Islamic Marxism,” a groundbreaking text written by Bizhan Jazani during his imprisonment in the 1970s under the Shah’s oppressive regime. Translated by Parham Ghalamdar, this work is accompanied by an introduction contextualizing Jazani’s radical vision. Ghalamdar also contributes a series of ASCII-style illustrations and diagrams—AI-assisted reinterpretations of Jazani’s original paintings and photographs—that bridge the past and present, offering a new perspective on his revolutionary artistry.
The foundation of this project, then, involved the training of an LLM on the works of Jazani—Bijan Jazani GPT—thus partially resurrecting a fallen revolutionary in order to employ their assistance in the production of translations, figures and diagrams, and so on. Thus, the book is replete with scores of ASCII-style illustrations, developed by the author alongside their ghostly, electronic mentor. This is a very sincere attempt to reconsider the possibilities of A.I., which presumably OpenAI never anticipated.
The project will be available to read via a free PDF edition which you will be able to access via Metalabel, but we wanted to commemorate this work with a limited edition print run, also available via Metalabel or our webstore.
“Siahkal names a place in the forests of Gilan and a threshold in revolutionary time. In 1971 a guerrilla action near Siahkal shook the order of the Shah. The action failed militarily yet seeded a myth for the People’s Fedai Guerrillas. Bizhan Jazani, a founding thinker, wrote and painted in prison and was executed in 1975. His work teaches that strategy rather than sentiment endures.
This book treats Siahkal as a Deep Object, a persistent attractor that gathers memory, images, and tactics. An AI model trained on Jazani’s writings and paintings translates his essay on Islamic Marxism and proposes annotations. The machine functions as a probe that widens attention while remaining accountable to the source. Parham Ghalamdar trained the AI, wrote the introduction, and composed ASCII diagrams and diagrammatic readings from Jazani’s artworks. Parsa Esmaeilzadeh contributes an essay that reads Jazani through Karatani and left accelerationism.
It is a call to reimagine and export revolution as a Deep Object that asks for Deep Time to unfold. This clandestine edition invites the reader to study, test, and build strategy that can outlast the news cycle and meet the future head on.”