2026
Black and white super 8 and color digital videos, 4:3 format, 3 loops, 18’.
Direction: Rebecca Topakian
Image and editing: Rebecca Topakian & Nader Chalhoub
Sound: Rebecca Topakian & Nader Chalhoub
With the support of ADAGP, FRAC Île-de-France, and the French Institute of Armenia.
Concentric Circles is a visual and sound installation project that commemorates ancestral Armenian practices carried forward through contemporary gestures. After documenting the ethnic cleansing of Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh, I reached a stark conclusion: we have nothing but our bodies. Caught between unease and fascination, I explored this heritage of ancestral Armenian practices of singing, dancing, and traditional wrestling called “Kokh”. I recorded details of bodies, gestures and voices to share them as a living act of remembrance — a gesture of resistanc against erasure. Using both analog and digital techniques, the work stands as a monument and delves into an anthropology of traces In a digital age marked by dizzying social and ecological tensions, the intelligence of human memory and community endures.
