![]() So, what can we do?’ And he was like, ‘Alright, so, I’ll teach you.’ Basically the head of the art department became my mentor as far as photography was concerned.” When he was in the sixth grade he met with the head of the art department to plea his case. ![]() It doesn’t necessarily have to be fine art but the creative world - and the visual creative world.” Film and photography were of particular interest and his school in Germany offered photography classes and taught dark room processing, but not until ninth grade. “It was clear to me that art is where I’m going. Drawing, painting, sculpting… All forms of visual media. In school, even in the earliest years, art was where Rad excelled. The visual part helped me understand the whole story. It just shows that even something so hard for me to understand, even when somebody is speaking it to me, with all of the visuals and the understanding and the body language and… I was there. It wasn’t like they changed it to normal English. And the language they were talking in the movie, it was also the old Shakespearean English. I would have had an F if I didn’t watch that movie. It might help you for your test.’ So the night before my exam I literally shot out to the city, watched that movie, four hours, came back the next day, had the test - got an A. It’s playing in one theater in New York City. As accurate as Hamlet could possibly be on screen. It’s literally the full Hamlet script from beginning to end. “She said, ‘Listen, Kenneth Branagh just came out with the four-hour version of Hamlet in the theaters right now. His English teacher was sick and days before their test he told the substitute that he was dyslexic. ![]() He explains by telling the story of learning Hamlet at his Long Island high school. With me it’s always videos and pictures.” As much as I loved it, reading, it would take me years to read a book. “They didn’t really know how to teach the way my mind learns. His dyslexia and ADHD didn’t jive with the classroom style of teaching and learning. In Germany he attended an academically rigorous international private school, but struggled to keep pace. From the comfort of his sleek sofa I learn that his pursuits are many and varied, and the scale of his ambition is witnessed in the scale of his promotional efforts. He speaks quickly and evenly, unloading the twists and turns of his past with urgency. His is the somber presence of one who has tasted the fullness of life but has yet to find what he’s looking for. When we sit to talk in his Tribeca artist’ loft, a space that doubles as a studio for his film, photography and design projects, he has much to get off his chest. I met him at an opening last summer and it wasn’t until I explained that Deviation is about those who are committed - how the Deviant’s Dictionary includes the word poseur for this very reason - that he became interested. His father held no delusions about their circumstances, saying to Rad’s mother on the flight out that they would never be able to return. “And, being Jewish and being supporters of the king…” Weeks after Rad was born his parents sought refuge in Israel, then settled in West Germany where several of his uncles were established in life and in business. Rad Roubeni was born in Iran in 1978, the heat of the revolution.
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