Borders of Identity

A Journey in the Land of the Past
July 2010
For a few years now I have been taking trips to different borders of Armenia in preparation for a film regarding Armenian identity.
Last July, I joined a group visiting historic Armenia, Eastern Turkey today. From Armenia we had to travel through Georgia to get to our destination as the shared border between Turkey and Armenia remains closed.
Some of the questions that crossed my mind were the following: Are there borders of identity? Can one cross them? Can one distinguish where one stops and the other starts? Is a mixture of layers of identity possible in a time like ours?
On the trip, I took down the following notes for myself. Both as a marker of the experience and possibly as a heading for this work:
“I am a shadow of my past and present,
      between identities and countries.
How can I cross
      these boundaries,
      these borders,
      these lands?”


July 1985
We think about the miracle of life
of earth,
sun,
light.
We destroy circumferences
Erase the borders.
They suffocate the light,
In madness, pound the steel chains,
Constrain the laughter of the earth,
Close the shutters of the sky,
Erase the windows blue,
and encircle themselves in the spider’s web.
Mounted on hurricanes of the world
We dash into the suns of light…