An Interview with Arash Nassiri | Berlin Art Link

Forms of measurement rely on arbitrary human references, such as the foot and the hand. Scale can be approached without centering humans by using relative, non-human ways of determining distance and depth. A lighthearted film by Arash Nassiri, titled “A Bug’s Life,” follows an otherworldly insect and a small wooden puppet inside vast Los Angeles mansions called “Persian Palaces.” These mansions were commissioned by Iranian expats in the 1980s and designed by architect Hamid Omrani, reflecting a post–Iranian Revolution architectural trend in wealthy neighborhoods. The style blended American luxury with European classicism, became disparagingly labeled “Persian Palaces,” and was banned by Los Angeles in 2004. The film uses spatial and social foibles to examine scale as both physical and social quantity.

"Forms of measurement are essentially arbitrary, the "foot," after all, is based on a human foot. The "hand," used to measure horses in the Anglosphere, is based on a human hand. The legendary Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami, writing in his poetry collection 'A Wolf on Watch,' embraces the relativities of determining scale: "I measure/The depth of the lagoon/By the croaking of frogs"-a reminder that even if measurement is inherently arbitrary it need not be anthropocentric."

"Tehran-born, Berlin-based artist Arash Nassiri's recent exhibition 'A Bug's Life' at London's Chisenhale Gallery offers a lighthearted exploration of the incongruities created by disparities in size and perspective. Nassiri's film-not to be confused with the Pixar film that shares the same title-follows the spatial and social foibles of an otherworldly insect, a small wooden puppet, that finds itself inside one of the vast Los Angeles mansions known as "Persian Palaces.""

"The lavish Beverly Hills residence featured in the film was commissioned in the 1980s by Iranian expats and designed by architect Hamid Omrani, and forms part of a small architectural trend that emerged in wealthy LA neighbourhoods after the Iranian Revolution. This style of home combined the grandeur of American luxury estates with eclectic elements of European classicism, later becoming disparagingly known as "Persian Palaces" and banned by the city of Los Angeles in 2004."

"The results of Nassiri's film offer novel, and affecting, musings on notions of scale as a physical and a social quantity. Lately, the artist's work has also inevitably been subsumed into geopolitical events operating at a scale far beyond the scope of an art film and these tensi"

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