Morehshin Allahyari: Over There is Over Here, 2010. Video, 5:06 min.

Over There Is Over Here explores the dialectics of time and space, real and imaginary, to address the position of those who have left Iran in recent years in relation to the position of current political prisoners in Iran. The project uses 3D animation and data glitch as a way to emphasize the absence of the presence in collapsible time sequence. A found photo of political prisoners is perhaps hundred years old, but as the prisoners in it are chained to each other, so the past is chained to its present, generation after generation. The animation starts with the images of political prisoners from the past, but the names called are those of prisoners currently in solitary confinement in Iran, located in Azadi Square in Tehran (azadi means freedom); the same square where protests took place during the Green Movement in 2009. The narrator of Over There Is Over Here alternates between the neutral third person position and the actual position of the author — the artist telling her story out of Iran, while many of her friends and classmates remain imprisoned. The artist casts herself as outsider —but also outside the prison walls.