Previous Residents:

2002
Dahlia El-Sayed & Andrew Demirjian (image and text)
Zach Poff (image and text)
Tamar Salibian (image and video)

ANDREW DEMIRJIAN & DAHLIA EL-SAYED

[back]

Image: video still, "Yerevan Conversations," 2002

Work:
Yerevan Conversations is a document of location and time in a place of rapidly changing landscapes. Residents of Yerevan, Armenia are filmed while asked targeted, sensory questions about describing their place and its meaning (their body, this room, this street, city, country.) Their answers are then used as a catalyst for the treatment of the paintings and video. Selections from participant responses are fused together with a variety of the artist's own images, text, motion graphics and audio, selected in response to the participant's words and gestures. The result is a documentary poem of personal landscapes - a collaborative dialogue in video and paint between artists, participants, and viewer.

Experience:
Working in Armenia you seem to run the gamut of emotions every hour: bliss, frustration, laughter, sorrow. Everywhere you turn there is a story, a question, a feeling. Some of the most rewarding experiences are communicating and getting to know the local artists. The quality of artwork there is very high and very inspiring. Yerevan has made a truly memorable and lasting impression on our work.

ZACH POFF

[back]

Image: spectrograph example moving spectral "terrain" projected onto model

Work:
I came to Yerevan to interview Armenians about Mt. Ararat, the birthplace of Armenian culture and rumored resting-place of Noah's Ark. To some, the mountain symbolizes Armenia's legacy of domination by other cultures. (Like much of historical Armenia, it is now part of Turkey.) Others believe that Noah's Ark will be found intact, and they continue to search for it. I asked contemporary artists in Yerevan to answer questions and share stories about the mountain, it's relationship to their culture and themselves.

The audio interviews were later processed to visualize the unique speech patterns of the participants. Each visualization takes the form of a scrolling animation of colored patches, resembling mountainous terrain viewed from above. In the viewing space, the imagery is video-projected onto a smoothed model of Mt. Ararat. The voices inform the mountain, converting the white surface into a changing symbolic terrain as the viewer hears each interview and an English translation.

Experience:
I was able to achieve my goals and work well in Yerevan. I think that my most productive experiences were made possible by the help of the NPAK artists. I spent a lot of time discussing culture and politics and seeing their work. For me, NPAK was primarily a meeting-place. I knew that if I walked to NPAK and waited long enough, I could find whoever I was looking for.

TAMAR SALIBIAN

[back]

As I am a graduate student studying film (at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia - I graduate with my MFA in film in May 2004), my plan was to shoot video footage in Armenia to edit it into a short film. Various circumstances including a camera problem led me to shoot many still images instead of video. At the end of the residency, I exhibited a group of photographs from my stay, and after my return from Armenia, I was able to use some of the video footage I shot to make a short film titled "Anahit and Sona," about the two sisters of the family I lived with.