Closing Weekend Sarkis - 7 Tage, 7 Nächte

Silvina Der Meguerditchian will present her film Thresholds and a performance reading.

Based on the leitmotif "The Pile", the first chapter of the novel "Thresholds" by Krikor Beledian, Der Meguerditchian’s short film invites us to reflect on 20th-century photography and its role in people's cultural and family heritage. Beledian’s text is considered one of the literary jewels of the Western Armenian language; a language in danger of extinction. Der Meguerditchian, who in her daily practice deals with photographic archives, embarks through the author's language on a search for unimagined images.

Next to Sarkis’ work Autel des croyances et d'utopie (1979–2004) and in addition to the film’s screening, Der Meguerditchian will present a performative reading of seven poems from the unpublished "Father fragments“ by Krikor Beledian.

Silvina Der Meguerditchian is the granddaughter of Armenian immigrants in Argentina. She was born in Buenos Aires in 1967 and has lived in Berlin, Germany since 1988. She works with various media (video, sculptures, installations, performances, etc.) and deals with questions of identity and displacement as well as the role of minorities and the effects of migration in urban space. Socio-political engagement, the reconstruction of the past, and the creation of archives are fundamental elements of her artistic practice. Meguerditchian has exhibited internationally, including in the Armenian Pavilion (Golden Lion) at the 2015 Venice Biennale. Meguerditchian is the founder of "Underconstruction", a platform for artists and curators who deal with issues of identity, globalization, the construction of personal and group consciousness, and the role of the diaspora, especially the Armenian diaspora. Since 2010, she has also been the artistic director of Houshamadyan, a project for the reconstruction of Ottoman-Armenian town and village life.

Marc Sinan will present a perfomative reading of his 2023 novel “Gleißendes Licht”.

Through a performative reading in the exhibition, Marc Sinan connects his personal stories with the subtle existing personal stories of Sarkis. Like Sarkis's family, Sinan’s family are survivors of the Armenian genocide, only separated by a generation. In reference to Sarkis’ concept of the “Kriegsschatz”, Sinan titles his performative reading “Rohschatz“:

"I'm recording my novel on cassettes, 14 of them, seven hours long. The tapes of these cassettes will be in the 14 filled jars on the table in front of me. The fifteenth is still empty: I will read the last half hour, the end of my novel, in the museum, in front of Sarki's art, in the Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, at a table, illuminated by a special light. When the A-side of the audio cassette is full after 30 minutes and I have finished reading, I open the last, the 15th jar, pull the complete tape out of the cassette, stuff it into the container, seal it and label it with my name, the words Rohschatz, Gleissendes Licht, the date and the time. I dedicate these 15 jars of Rohschatz to Sarkis as a tribute to his mysterious art" Marc Sinan

Marc Sinan was born in 1976 to a Turkish-Armenian mother and a German father. He is a composer, guitarist, and writer. Perpetrators, victims and genocide: this is what Marc Sinan's work is about, including the music theater "Komitas", the concert installation "Hasretim (My Longing) - an Anatolian Journey" and the oratorio "Gleißendes Licht". In his first novel of the same titel "Gleißendes Licht", he takes up these topics and for the first time deals with them in literary form. Marc Sinan lives in Berlin.