🧭 Process Diary

2026 01 31 ✯ Extra Credit Problem (The Asterisk Problem). Iran – Persia: From the Dismantling of a Regime to the Revival of Civilization#

This series did not begin with Persia.

It began with an attempt to understand why certain systems continue to exist long after most people have stopped believing in them.

The initial focus was on the mechanics of fear. On how an ethical vacuum emerges, how the imitation of a state gradually replaces reality, and how a human being becomes a resource of the system. Step by step, the research moved from tragedy to diagnosis, and from diagnosis to the search for vulnerability. At some point, however, another question appeared. If fear is dismantled, what remains afterward? What fills the space once a system built on coercion collapses?

That was when Persia began to emerge. Not as a political project. Not as nostalgia. Not as an attempt to replace one form of power with another. Persia appeared as civilizational memory. As evidence that the history of a people is far greater than any regime.

First came the symbols. Then the calendar. Then the ethical foundation. Then the architecture of space. Gradually it became clear that renewal begins not with institutions but with the recovery of one’s own name, one’s own time, and one’s own dignity.

The greatest surprise was that the series ceased to be about Iran. It became a model of civilizational transition. Trauma. Awareness. Dismantling. Identity revival. Transition. A new system of coordinates. The sequence proved to be universal.

The final works were no longer about the past. They were about the future. An open ecosystem. An architecture of peace. The human being as the highest value of the system.

The final image was a person holding a star.
Not a hero. Not a ruler. Not a savior.
Simply a human being who has regained the right to become the subject of their own history.

That was the moment when the research reached completion. Persia ceased to be a problem. And became a possibility.

Alt-text:
A collage of 30 works from the Iran – Persia: From the dismantling of a regime to the revival of civilization block of ✯ Extra Credit Problem (The Asterisk Problem) series.
Center caption: Process Diary. 31.01.2026.

Process Diary. ✯ Extra Credit Problem (The Asterisk Problem). Iran – Persia: From the dismantling of a regime to the revival of civilization. AP | Pivtorak.Studio. 31.01.2026
© Anna Pivtorak (Kostyuk)