Echgi Memeg is a feminist reflexion on trans–national and generational trans–mission and its impossibility through a cycle of trans–formations and mis.trans–lations, of necessarily fragmented and altered memory between two fem bodies and histories. Echgi Memeg is less an artistic project, than the polymorphic, always to be re-membered and enacted taste of a relation that uses memory; its non-linearity and morbidity as an affective and political tool.
Egchi Meme (or Echgi Memeg or Sour Tits or EM) is a trans–national, generational and media project produced by the encounter of Berjouhi Ournechian (Berjui or BO) and Lorde Selys (Laure, Lore or LS). It functions within situations, narrations, accidents and exchanges, works on the boundaries of transmission, of supposed illogic or chosen affiliations and develops the idea of a realation, that there’s no access to an outside to the act of translation, outside the unfolding of material (mediatic) and cultural (semiotic) forms of transcoding and hermeneutics. I.e : from objects to images, into words, and signs, from one sense to another, from sounds to a spoken language or written one, from one geo-historical dimension to another.
The blind spot, starting point of this work (chain of forms) traces freely the geo-urban and linguistic trajectory of a wild edible flower; the “Echgi Meme” in the pre-urbanised area of Bourj Hammoud* in Beirut. It can be literally translated in English as Sour Tits, and is still today named as such in the Turkish language by the Lebanese-Armenian community of the area. The name of this flower encapsulates the acidic taste of transmission, of geo-historical domination on bodies, memories and territories through language and forms.
Hence, the trans–lingual oxymoron Sour Tits opens a space between two bodies in which the editing of images on time-lines and the dispersion of hand-made embroidered jewels were put in a community of praxis. These interrelation evolved in different affective and economical spheres of exchange through the spreading of photographs, videos, recordings, international marketed crocheted embroideries, drawings, songs, texts, as well as into exhibitions, the re-enactment or reversal of gestures or bodily movement, the transcription and translation of multi-lingual texts.
Egchi Meme (or Echgi Memeg or Sour Tits or EM) is a trans–national, generational and media project produced by the encounter of Berjouhi Ournechian (Berjui or BO) and Lorde Selys (Laure, Lore or LS). It functions within situations, narrations, accidents and exchanges, works on the boundaries of transmission, of supposed illogic or chosen affiliations and develops the idea of a realation, that there’s no access to an outside to the act of translation, outside the unfolding of material (mediatic) and cultural (semiotic) forms of transcoding and hermeneutics. I.e : from objects to images, into words, and signs, from one sense to another, from sounds to a spoken language or written one, from one geo-historical dimension to another.
The blind spot, starting point of this work (chain of forms) traces freely the geo-urban and linguistic trajectory of a wild edible flower; the “Echgi Meme” in the pre-urbanised area of Bourj Hammoud* in Beirut. It can be literally translated in English as Sour Tits, and is still today named as such in the Turkish language by the Lebanese-Armenian community of the area. The name of this flower encapsulates the acidic taste of transmission, of geo-historical domination on bodies, memories and territories through language and forms.
Hence, the trans–lingual oxymoron Sour Tits opens a space between two bodies in which the editing of images on time-lines and the dispersion of hand-made embroidered jewels were put in a community of praxis. These interrelation evolved in different affective and economical spheres of exchange through the spreading of photographs, videos, recordings, international marketed crocheted embroideries, drawings, songs, texts, as well as into exhibitions, the re-enactment or reversal of gestures or bodily movement, the transcription and translation of multi-lingual texts.
In memoria of Berjoui Ournechian/Garabedian (-2016)
Part III of this project was developed in collaboration with artist Ezgi Kilinçaslan.
With the support of Anadolü Kultur, Badguèr-Beirut, Arpi Mangasserian and Osman Kavala.
*Bourj Hammoud is a neighbourhood built over the refugee camp that became home to surviving Armenians of the Ottoman government’s systematic extermination in 1915, comprehended today, but not by Turkey, as the Armenian Genocide.
Part III of this project was developed in collaboration with artist Ezgi Kilinçaslan.
With the support of Anadolü Kultur, Badguèr-Beirut, Arpi Mangasserian and Osman Kavala.
*Bourj Hammoud is a neighbourhood built over the refugee camp that became home to surviving Armenians of the Ottoman government’s systematic extermination in 1915, comprehended today, but not by Turkey, as the Armenian Genocide.