Tonight, two brilliant Iranian graphic designers—Iman Raad and Shahrzad Changalvaee, who participated in the acclaimed Seattle-Tehran Poster Show at Bumbershoot in 2008—deliver a lecture. The audience will be exposed to ideas and images of a world that is at once familiar and foreign, new and old, seductive and political. Raad and Changalvaee’s Iran is not the same as the one that’s regularly presented in the press and on TV. It is an Iran that’s much closer to reality—meaning, it’s much more dynamic and unstable. Note: If you can’t make the talk tonight, there’s another, earlier one on June 28 at the Seattle Center Armory. (Tether, 316 Occidental Ave S, seattle.aiga.org, 7 pm, free but reserve tickets online)

Charles Mudede—who writes about film, books, music, and his life in Rhodesia, Zimbabwe, the USA, and the UK for The Stranger—was born near a steel plant in Kwe Kwe, Zimbabwe. He has no memory...