فرنگ  / Farang
(2024), video stills


فرنگ  / Farang (2024) is a moving image work that traces a semi-fictional journey across Iran. Using original family footage shot on trips to the country in the early 1990s, the project combines a personal British-Iranian archive with source materials concerning 19th and early 20th century British presence in the region, reflecting on the interplay between familial histories and their wider socio-political frameworks. 

Central to فرنگ / Farang are notions of historical synchronicity, serendipity and coincidence. Finding that my family’s route mapped onto that which was followed by the British Indo-European Telegraph Line – an administrative apparatus of Empire which stretched across Iran for over fifty years – the work considers the cognate overlaps between Hi8 film and the telegraph as communicative artefacts, their messages subject to codification, degradation and retransmission.


Camera: James Waite, Daniel Hughes
Edit: Mina Heydari-Waite & Daniel Hughes
Voices: Emma Hignett, Fatima Arabshahi 
Sound mix: William Aikman
Script: Mina Heydari-Waite & Thomas Querns
Title card design: Hanna Karrabi
Caption consultation: Collective Text, Ace Mahbaz 
Caption translation: Hamzeh Halakouei, Sannaz Rasouli 
Thanks to OFFLINE, Hamideh Heydari, Anahita Razmi, Molly M. Whawell and Mitchell Library Principle Librarian Dawn Vallance

The development of the work is supported by the National Lottery through Creative Scotland.

The work was exhibited in an solo sculptural installation with Offline during Glasgow International Festival of Art 2024 (6th-23rd June 2024). Materials list: single channel projection, 7 channel sound, cable, aluminium, speakers, voile, clay plaster, black stoneware, rosewater, rose petals, fan, fountain pump. The exhibition was part of The Ground is Not Unchanging, a wider collaborative project delivered by myself and Offline throughout 2024 that includes: curated film screenings, the GI installation, and experimental archiving workshops.

فرنگ  / Farang (2024), photo of installation at OFFLINE as part of Glasgow International Festival of Art by Sally Jubb
فرنگ  / Farang (2024), photo of installation at OFFLINE as part of Glasgow International Festival of Art by Sally Jubb
فرنگ  / Farang (2024), photo of opening event at OFFLINE as part of Glasgow International Festival of Art by Erika Stevenson
فرنگ  / Farang (2024), photo of opening event at OFFLINE as part of Glasgow International Festival of Art by Erika Stevenson
فرنگ  / Farang (2024), photo of installation at OFFLINE as part of Glasgow International Festival of Art by Sally Jubb
فرنگ  / Farang (2024), photo of opening event at OFFLINE as part of Glasgow International Festival of Art by Erika Stevenson
فرنگ  / Farang (2024), photo of opening event at OFFLINE as part of Glasgow International Festival of Art by Erika Stevenson
فرنگ  / Farang (2024), photo of installation at OFFLINE as part of Glasgow International Festival of Art by Sally Jubb
فرنگ  / Farang (2024), photo of opening event at OFFLINE as part of Glasgow International Festival of Art by Erika Stevenson
فرنگ  / Farang (2024), photo of opening event at OFFLINE as part of Glasgow International Festival of Art by Erika Stevenson