SONIA BALASSANIAN

Artist’s Statement

My work explores and links my multi-faceted identity with the physical and perceptual world surrounding me and relates intimate images to broader social and cultural issues including gender identity and relations, the aftermath of war, and the role of the individual, especially the individual artist, in today's society.

The simultaneous development of several ideas made possible by the video art format mirrors the rapidly shifting and essentially unresolved nature of those issues.  

My language operates at a certain level of symbolic abstraction in order to evoke universal human experiences from specific situations.

Following are dialogues from “Who is the Victim?”:

The first is memories of the wife of a fallen freedom-fighter, and the second excerpts from diary of a conscript. These and similar situations are what affect my feelings on war and the pain and frustration caused by it.

Mamik: (woman)

-     My name is Mamik

-     I was born in Javakhk

-     I fell in love with my husband, Galoust

-     We were married when I was 17 years old

-     I named my first son David

-     My husband joined the army, as soon as  war began

-     When I had my second son I named him Artsroun

-     My husband kept visiting us but he could only spend very little time with us

-     He was a fearless freedom fighter

-     During that period 12 young men from our village disappeared –we still don’t know what happened to them. Some of the villagers think that they might have been abducted by the enemy.

-     When I was pregnant with my third child I asked my husband to stay until I gave birth

-     He said he couldn’t leave his comrades alone at the battlefield.

-     Before he left he asked me to name the child Hripsime if it is a girl, after his mother or Galoust if a boy

-     I had my third son ten days later and two hours after he was born, they brought my husband’s body home.

-     I named my son Galoust after my husband

Ed Tadevosyan: (Conscript)

Excerpts from the diary of Ed Tadevosyan, A Conscript/ACTOR

July 16, 2004 16:55

Asphalt ablaze...
A dusty, torn soldier's boot which has crossed scoreless kilometers...
The sun turns the crowd into a uniform sweaty mass. In the wrinkles of clothes take shelter the flies, the only living creatures that enjoy the sweat dropping from the helmets of thousands of dirty heads...

Asphalt ablaze...
Sun burning...
The crowd wants to eat...
To reach something reminiscent to food, one needs to cross through dust, blazing asphalt, burning sun, torn soldier-boots, and heavy boxes.
The crowd sweats eating. They snatch food from one another. The crowd needs to rest. The crowd has to rest...
The crowd knows that after getting fed, again...

Asphalt ablaze...
Sun burning...
The crowd is on the verge of nervous outburst...

June 29, 2004 17:40 - July 11, 2004 01:12

Waiting...
There is nothing worse than waiting... However strange the result might be, it is more desirable than waiting...
Everything is soaked with waiting. Even the seconds hand of the clock runs at the speed of the hour hand...
Strangely, time turns into a staunch enemy.
You wait, and silently conform to the mockery of time, and its wicked jokes... And suddenly time becomes the most malicious being, because your satisfaction depends only on time...

Waiting...
At any event there is something pleasant in waiting...
There is nothing worse than waiting...
The last moment of waiting is the climax of pleasure...
But...
There is nothing worse than waiting...

July 8, 2004 2:20 - July 11, 2004 0:40

Insomnia
The desire to accomplish at least... Everything?
Freedom: everyone will pay for it...
Freedom: The most expensive commodity of all times...
Deep night... the knowledge that insomnia is a method of expressing freedom makes it desirable...
Insomnia...
Fear of losing the freedom...

17.07.04 4:30 - 4:15 AM
... Everyone is asleep ...
It is possible that only a few are sleeping. The rest are waiting... Crisis is anticipated... How predictable are the war-lords?
The group of people who rules the other has only one purpose: to teach their subjects how to play war better...
Therefore, they need to interrupt the youth's dream. For some, the dream is the only way of seeing their mothers.
They say those who are capable of waking up the sleeping are capable of any malicious act...

4:20 AM
... Everyone is asleep ...
Someone is waiting for the start of "the play". He has one important mission: He will scream “crisis”...
It is a shame that all this did not start before his shift... A couple of minutes more, and thousands of youth would start playing war, suspending their dreams.
Dawn.
Everyone is asleep. Crisis is coming...