4. همسفر
Film still
همسفر (Hamsafar / translation: ‘Companion Traveller’, 2020) is an installation, video and printed hand out. The project created a stylised environment in which an assembly of props and audio-cues reimagined the cultural impact of the 1975 song همسفر by the iconic 70s Iranian popstar Googoosh. The work locates nostalgia for an Iran that may never have existed in the way that this music is held by diaspora communities. This work explores diasporic storytelling as a vessel; a means to carry something to a home that acknowledges its foundations are built on a place where imagination meets experience. Semi-fictitious recollections and speculations can parallel the ways diaspora artists look for an individual voice in the complex plurality of shared collective histories.
همسفر was supported by the Jerwood New Work Fund grant from Jerwood Arts. The film’s performer was Sara Heydari-Waite and the director of photography was Emma Finn. The work was shown as part of Mount Strange and the Temple of Doom, Summerhall, Edinburgh.
