A collaborative audiovisual work by Saint Abdullah, Eomac & Rebecca Salvadori

A Forbidden Distance weaves intimate narratives of displacement into a mesmerizing audiovisual dialogue. Bringing together Iranian-Canadian brothers Mohammad and Mehdi (Saint Abdullah), Irish sound designer and musician Ian McDonnell (Eomac), and London-based Italo-Australian filmmaker Rebecca Salvadori in their first collaboration, the work embodies the very transcendence of borders it examines.

Live, all three artists share the stage: Saint Abdullah and Eomac build the music while Salvadori conducts the visuals in real time. Rather than treating one as illustration of the other, the performance holds sound and image as equal, independent voices in dialogue — weaving Mohammad's family archive, artist interviews, spoken word, and behind-the-scenes footage into a layered meditation on fragmentation and the threads of connection that outlast it.

Since premiering at Berlin Atonal in 2024, A Forbidden Distance has toured extensively across Europe's leading festivals and institutions — Semibreve (Braga), Unsound (Kraków), Sonic Acts (Amsterdam), Sonar (Barcelona), FOG Triennale (Milan), Next (Bratislava), Lunchmeat (Prague), Nest (The Hague), OPERA Festival (Poznań), and WOS (Santiago de Compostela) — and, most recently, Bristol New Music's sixth edition (April 2026), where it was presented alongside KMRU and YUNIS at Bristol Beacon and Arnolfini.

The project continues to expand into museum, biennial, and black-box contexts through winter 2026 and into 2027, with upcoming presentations at Hangar (Barcelona), Bozar (Brussels), PAF (Olomouc), and De Singel (Antwerp).

Saint Abdullah (Mohammad and Mehdi) are Tehran-born, New York-based brothers whose practice moves between sonic storytelling and media, folding geopolitics, religion, and social behaviour into a body of work — including their ongoing collaborative discography with Eomac, most recently Of No Fixed Abode (The Trilogy Tapes, 2025) — that resists fixed narratives about Iranian identity.

Eomac is the solo and collaborative project of Irish composer, producer and DJ Ian McDonnell, known for raw synthesis and obscure sampling in the service of intense, visceral electronic music.

Rebecca Salvadori is a London-based Italo-Australian video artist and filmmaker whose non-hierarchical approach to image and sound has made her a key visual collaborator within experimental music for over fifteen years.

Borshch Magazine — On Choosing Hope with Saint Abdullah, Eomac and Rebecca Salvadori

STXDYOZ — In Conversation with A Forbidden Distance (Berlin Atonal Openless)