Republic of Artsakh

I do have some thoughts, multiple thoughts.

First of all, it was only a month after this that Pashinyan just basically went to Prague and recognized Artsakh as part of Azerbaijan.

And I'm thinking that between 2020 and 2022, he must have dragged his feet.

towards some of the promises that he may have made that were not on paper, which was basically the recognition of Artsakh as part of Azerbaijan.

And Azerbaijan decided, okay, well, we're going to attack and kill people and take your own territory until you do that.

And it showed that the man is not fit for command.

And, you know, 225 people were killed needlessly.

I'm not saying you should have recognized Artsakh earlier, but I'm saying that he should have prepared for something like that.

So he was working across all of these different places, and the, the nature of the border between them was different than it is now.

And of course, the border between Armenia and Azerbaijan is closed because of the war in Artsakh.

There are relations between each of those countries and Georgia, but it's, you know, things are much more closed off, and because of Soviet arts policies, they had the national culture that was promoted in each of the Soviet republics at the expense of the non-national peoples in each of those republics.

So that's Something I was thinking about both in relation to Parajanov and Sayat Nova, like Khachatur was saying, you know, their relationship with borderlessness and moving between cultures and bringing those cultures together or referencing times when there weren't such strict boundaries between them.

I think my background of being multilingual informs an attunement to having an ear and availability to how various languages want to be presented as uniquely as possible, each on their own.

Of course, the uniqueness of this project and the challenge of this project, very early on we discovered, uh, and I've learned this actually from Joey, that Sayat-Nova wrote in multiple languages, right? He not only wrote in Armenian, Georgian, Farsi, but also, uh, Azeri language.

And at just a year or so before I met Joey, there was the ethnic cleansing of Armenians of Artsakh, uh, from modern-day Azerbaijan, uh, after a bloody, uh, war, and, and the identities wrapped up in the emotion of loss and, and heaviness and, and, and of course, for Armenians, uh, not only contemporary loss, but the Armenian genocide and the wounds of generations past and how we carry that as Armenians in our identity.

So then to come to an intersection artistically where Sayat-Nova, the one I look up to, has written in Azeri language in his time, and the project with Joey and the ensemble kind of asked that I step into that space.

But the fact is, is that how things get erased is so terrifying to me.

And I think this became really true even like in the last few years with what happened in Artsakh in Armenia and what's happening in Palestine.

I mean, just the sense of erasure and this attempt to erase people or attempt to erase um you know certain voices um and make sure they don't have power they don't have agency and so yeah this made this was really important to me and i think also i wanted to bring in that kind of collision of of american culture of of how you know how violence is you know sexualized and and um and really the sense of like where and then the reality of the violence as well so that was important to me but yeah

yeah thank

It's Andronik Papians, anchored in the past history of ontological resource in Armia's collective memory.

And he asked the question, why do nations cling to familiar stories even when reality changes? And draws on theories of ontological security, collective memory, and political psychology, examining how the loss of Artsakh unsettled Armia's national narrative and the Search for a new sense of collective identity.

Yeah, it's a long piece, but definitely worth taking the time to sit with it, if you will.

Because

We see some threats from Israeli officials, but they have also collaborated on a lot of things in the region, including in Syria.

They both supported Azerbaijan and the ethnic cleansing of the Armenian Christian population from the Republic of Artsakh, which no longer exists.

That's Nagorno-Karabakh.

So, you know, a lot of this kind of seems like theater to me, you know, the stuff Erdogan says.

Uh-huh.

Or the Artsakh region.

But anyways, this family, like, stuffs a whole pumpkin with, like, rice and meat and whatever.

What is it?

declared independence as the Soviet Union collapsed, and they exercised their UN-recognized right to self-determination, and may I add, something that was completely compliant to then-existing Soviet constitution as well, And then they supported this decision by a December 1991 referendum where 99.9% voted for independence.

Basically, they declared the establishment of the Republic of Artsakh, affirming the Armenian population's legal right to self-governance.

Now, Pashinyan, this defeated charlatan in 2020, betrayed the cause of Artsakh.

And he enabled and justified the defeat, blockade, starvation, and ultimate complete ethnic cleansing in 2023.

A multi-millennial homeland of Armenians is now empty of its indigenous people, just like historic Armenia was depopulated 111 years ago of us, indigenous Armenians, during the Armenian Genocide.

Now, this is the reason why Artsakh's cause and their struggle for their rights and justice remains the cause of all of us Armenians, of our generation and future generations.

So I urge everyone, every Armenian, don't listen to anybody who wants to sell your history and your identity out.

Unless you're ready to