The installation "A Tale of Tehrangeles" 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 video footage from two different shooting locations: Tehran and Los Angeles.

The commentary is setup in a green-screen 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", spatial connections/disconnections/negations derive, pretending the existence of an actual intermediate space/city.

Image: © Anahita Razmi, Carbon 12