So, if your bones haven’t already started tingling at the thought of going for a dance, then we’re sure they’ll start grooving and jiving once you hear of the duo’s future plans. Not only is Disco Tehran launching a cinema project entitled Cinema Tehran, it’s also booked in a world tour. Time to boogie!
A recent endeavour is an oral history project devised in 2021, that involved collecting family stories of immigration in collaboration with Fisk Projects. The work premiered at MoMa PS1 with a mixtape, combing visuals with sound to create an utterly immersive experience. The pair describe the process of receiving immigration stories as being “touching”, with tales coming from in from India, Iran to Colombia. Showing the diversity of its output, the team are creating a new oral history project in which they’ve collected family satires from Nowrouz. “With Nowrouz being an ancient and multicultural celebration,” says Arya, “we are now seeing story submissions that far surpass national borders, and span various ethnic and linguistic backgrounds; a unison in celebration.”
Its foundations are therefore deeply rooted in music and community, not least the fact they want to bring people together to have a good boogie. And, aesthetically talking, the 70s is the design element that ties it all together. Both founders are highly influenced by the arts movements from that era, especially that which emerged from Iran. As such, when they work on a project, the pair think of the art and people who made it “not as sources of emulation but as an inspiration for work coming from the memory of an era where everything seemed possible,” explains Arya. This means that collaborations are of key importance to the making of Disco Tehran, and oftentimes, they’ll work with different artists to broaden their horizons. They refer to them as their “family of artists” who each help to create “amazing experiences both for us and for our family of audiences who come to our shows”, Mani adds.