Far Closet, is an installation located in the gallery’s closet and converts it into an intimate, hosted listening space. Visitors open the door, settle onto a small perch and are offered hot tea brewed with ingredients from Iran. Through headphones, they listen to the ambient recordings from 60 Tehran cafés made at different times of day. Guests may close the door to adjust privacy.There is a wall label explaining the location of the cafes, the date and the time of the recording.During the run, I refill the teapot and wash the cups.
Conversations in the audio are in Farsi, they are layered and indistinct as they are recording of the ambient, the background music in the cafes, are often in English.
The installation reframes site and time, bridges here and now to there and then.while invoking elsewhere, may feel uncannily familiar and welcoming.
In the spirit of sensory ethnography, viewers interaction with work starts with what their bodies notice, the scent and the heat of tea, the overlap of voices, enclosure, and the slow attention of being hosted, where co-presence with Tehran becomes sensible without translation.