ingenocide

“Ingenocide” is an audio-visual project composed of images taken at the frontier between Armenia and Turkey. They represent a journey that many Armenians do taking the bus or car to visit the ancient Armenian cities, now within the Turkish territory.The voice of the artist is telling a story in an invented language accompanied by a classical contemporary piece of music of Arvo Pärt. By that way, the artist introduces strange elements to her creation composed of images which are a geographical signs of a fragmented history. What is a collective memory? What is a personal memory? Who determinates the heritage of a trauma?The video shows what is left. Everything we can see in this video is an itinerary from one place to another, giving the opportunity to the spectator to choose one of the places to merge in. The (hi)story is not clear, sometimes erased, recreated and perverted. A disturbing and strange situation where the spectator tries to find something reasonable, but he can’t. It is indefinable and there is no language to tell.

Artistic Statement

Images recorded during my trip to historical places such as Ani, Van, Akhtamar Island in Western Armenia (now Turkish territory), edited by saturating the image, making things clearer, simpler and untruer. Because of the impossibility to narrate that experience in an existing language, I have invented a new one watching at these images and I have recounted what I was feeling in this new language.I address several questions in my artwork, including reflection on childhood and the transition to adulthood, the relationship between parents and children, family and collective memory, search for identity, contemplation on nostalgia and the artistic creation in a non-native, non-maternal and non-ancestral space.I have a strong relationship with music, vocal sounds and also with the human speech. Being a ‘condemned’ translator of poetry, I question recreation as a form of creating in fine arts. I am also interested in the creation process from the fear and absence, existential reflections about space and time, here and now, non-independent elements of the past life (family) and of the near future (hopes and ambitions of the individual), absence of space and time and reflection on the here and now as an eternal representation of the conflict between experience and desire.Blog: http://arakssahakyan.tumblr.com/