The installation "A Tale of Tehrangeles" is consisting of three videos and a book object. It is taking the beginning of Charles Dickens novel "A Tale of Two Cities" as a basis for a visual collage of the cities Tehran and Los Angeles.
"Tehrangeles" is a portmanteau word that is informally used when referring to the large number of iranian immigrants and their descendants residing in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. With an estimated 700,000 to 800,000 people, it is the largest such population outside of Iran. The project "A Tale of Tehrangeles" is relating to that denominated connection with a performative comparison.
Working with a three-screen setup it is combining a two-screen city collage with a single screen accompanying "commentary" monitor. The city images are composed of videofootage from two different shooting locations: Tehran and Los Angeles.
The commentary is setup in a greenscreen studio, referencing a newsroom, in which the artist as an "anchorman" is reading out the beginning of Charles Dickens novel. The sentences are randomly repeated and mixed. In combination with the shown images of "Tehrangeles", the setup is aiming to emphasize territorial blurrings and spatial connections/disconnections/negations and is questioning preconceived interpretations of space.
In addition to the video installation, a book object is shown. Titled "A Tale of Tehrangeles", it is a collection of newspaper headlines that originally carried the words „Tehran“ or „Los Angeles“ within their headline. Replacing those two city names with the word |Tehrangeles", the book is furthermore telling "Tales of the City/two Cities". It is aiming to broach issues of territorial attributes and histories, - pretending the existence of an actual intermediate space/city.
