Single channel video. 4:3. Total playing time: 28’08’’

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A person sits at a table, his face hidden from view. On the table are an old radio cassette player and he is cutting out letters from the pages of different newspapers, pasting them onto a sheet of paper to form strange messages. The twice repeated action is filmed in real-time. Each time the language used is different. The first message is a sentence from Mao Tse Tung translated into English (Action must not be reaction but creation). The second message is an Armenian proverb (Vorut bats es knel / I have slept with my ass in the air).

The scene’s atmosphere, influenced by the archetypical thriller, stands in contrast to the lack of apparent relation between the messages and provokes a feeling of absurdity and uneasiness strengthened by the uncut editing.

This video was created in response to the invitation to participate in the Gyumry (Armenia) Biannual – a land of emigrants, whose population has dispersed throughout the globe over the centuries, and with one of the oldest active languages in the world. The existence of strong socio-economic problems has made the transition to a modern democratic system difficult. This piece seeks to discretely deal with the tensions between the cultural hegemony and subordinate cultures and makes reference to the contradictory conditions which must be overcome in order to leave behind the situation of political and historical destructuralization.