A collaboration of the Post-Exile Collective - Gita Hashemi, Taraneh Hemami, Haleh Niazmand - The Word Room project was mounted in response to the events following September 11, 2001 as an immersive installation and participatory multimedia environment comprised of an exterior wall and an interior room. The exterior wall was covered with circular mirrors printed with words taken from recent speeches on the so-called "war on terror" by leading Western politicians (installation by Taraneh Hemami). The wall was intensely lit, creating layers of reflection in its surrounding environment. The interior was a dimly lit black room housing two slide projections, a band of questions stenciled in red running on the lower one-third of two adjacent walls (installation by Haleh Niazmand), a graffiti wall, and a blank wall where the audience could write. The room was filled with an interactive soundscape (A War Primer, by Gita Hashemi) that live mixed previously recorded sounds with live feed through a microphone placed in the centre of the gallery. The website (by Gita Hashemi) hosted comments by visitors as did the walls of the gallery.
At the opening and while the work was on exhibition, student groups were invited into the gallery for facilitated discussion and interaction. The Word Room was first mounted at Janalyn Hanson White Gallery in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, from November 12 to December 12, 2001.