ATOM EGOYAN`S AURORA AND ITS RELATION TO THE

ATOM EGOYAN’S AURORA AND ITS RELATION TO THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
Christopher Arkilanian
The Istanbul Biennale is a venue that showcases works from artists living not only in the West of Turkey,
but in the immediate areas surrounding the Balkans and the Middle East. Some of the countries in these
regions lack the ability to host large-scale art exhibitions and, due to social and political reasons, their
artists have limited appeal on the world stage. The objective of the Istanbul Biennale is to promote artists
from these locations, to share the experience of the East with the West. 1
Turkey is a country that has experienced a lot of political and social unrest in the last hundred
years. While the 2007 Biennale was taking place, Turkey was preparing to send their forces to Iraq to
combat Kurdish rebels in the mountains.2 Couple that with the fact their bid to join the European Union
was rejected and the political turmoil between secularists and Islamists in recent years, and you get the
image of a country with a complicated, difficult history. 3 So when Hou Hanru of China, proposed the
theme, “Not Only Possible But Also Necessary: Optimism in the Age of Global War”, for the 2007 Biennale
he aimed to select works that would not offend the host country or its allies like the United States, at war
in Afghanistan and Iraq. Instead, the works presented in this exhibition were a more utopian, idealized
call for peace.4
One of the few exceptions was a video piece by Atom Egoyan, an Armenian-Canadian
independent filmmaker currently living in Toronto, who submitted a work titled Aurora. The video
referencing the life of Aurora Mardiganian, a survivor of the Armenian genocide, is narrated by women
from different nationalities. In this work, the viewer is situated in a room with seven screens each
occupied by a women speaking a verse of Aurora’s memoirs alternatively (figs. 1 & 2). The women look
and sound traumatized, each expressing their emotions in diverse aural and visual ways. The sense of
disorientation evoked by these women is amplified by the viewer who must change his viewpoint to see
each of the seven screens.5 Before the work was presented at the Biennale, Egoyan had suggested that
viewers focus on the face of one actor at a time, to get a feeling of their personal way of expression. He
later regretted this suggestion. In an interview with David Markus for Saatchi online TV and Online he
stated that, “The thing about listening to an artist too carefully is that you tend to get overwhelmed by
their particular revelation of a given moment.”6
Unfortunately, finding visual references apart from these still photographs was not possible. In
the interview, cited above, Egoyan spoke about Aurora and the difficulties of making a video installation
versus a feature film. He emphasized the ephemeral quality of Aurora, the fact that he has not able to
transfer the work onto a DVD since it would lose the impact of the original instillation.7
Egoyan’s video installation is about Aurora, a girl who survived the Armenian genocide. When
Aurora tried to escape Armenia at the age of fourteen, she had already witnessed horrible events. She
saw her whole family – her parents, her sister and her three brothers – die. She was forced to live as a
Moslem woman in a Harem but she was determined to keep her Christian faith. In the spring of 1917 she
escaped to Erzurum, which was overrun by the Russians. 8 There, American missionaries cared for her, and
the Armenian National Union and American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief helped her
immigrate to the United States. Aurora, having survived the genocide, was intent on helping those who
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were still suffering. She was approached by the screenwriter Harvey Gates when she was 17, who helped
her write down her experience in a memoir titled Ravaged Armenia, The Story of Aurora Mardiganian,
the Christian Girl, Who Lived Through the Great Massacres (1918). 9 A passage from the book illustrates
how she helped two girls she met on her travels deal with this tough subject:
The sisters walked on with their arms about each other. They dared not even look around to
where their mother lay upon the ground. When we could hear the woman's moans no longer
I walked over to them and asked them to let me stay near them. I knew how they must feel.
I wondered if my own mother and my littler brothers and sisters had lived. 10
Subsequently, M-G-M studios decided to turn the book into a movie. The purpose of the film was
to make people more aware of what was happening to the Armenian people (figs. 3 & 4). The profits from
the film were to be donated to humanitarian aid, to help those suffering in Anatolia. Interestingly, Aurora
played herself, the main character of the film. She reenacted the scenes of her life with 10,000 Armenian
residents of Southern California, including 200 deported children. 11 A year later, when the movie
premiered, Aurora became so overwhelmed by the attention the movie was generating, that she decided
to run away and the production company decided to replace her with seven look a-likes, deciding not to
inform the public of the real girl’s presence. The movie ended up being an early blockbuster. In trying to
find a copy or scenes from the film, I discovered that, while efforts have been made to discover the
location of the nine reels that comprise the film, the efforts have unfortunately not been fruitful. The
only segment still in existence is one copy kept in the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute.12 As for
Aurora, she died in 1994, at the age of 93. 13
Atom Egoyan was interested in the way that Aurora’s life was dramatized in the film and how she
became an early movie celebrity. Her story captivated people because of the authenticity of the narrative
and her personal emotional involvement. In the video piece, Egoyan’s intention is to replicate these
intense feelings by having the female performers narrate their lines with different emotional responses.
The visible signs of trauma can be numerous and can change from one person to the next, ranging from
anger directed towards the perpetrator or with the self, to a cold and distant state, stemming from
emotional exhaustion or sheer panic. 14 There can also be physical signs, like unexplained pain or lack of
sleep. Elisabeth Kubler Ross’s five stages, which explain the psychological stages of trauma that victims
go through while coping with grief, can also be used here, especially the first two stages, denial and
anger. 15 On the screens, the women reflect the different stages of grief and the symptoms of trauma. One
woman is very emotional and shocked; another speaks her words with coldly as if she is talking about a
trauma disconnected from herself. Egoyan explains the viewers’ reactions to the seven women’s different
re-enactment of Aurora’s story in this interview:
Some people may find one performance way over the top, whereas others need that sort of
emotional release. But in every instance there is a fine line between what is entertaining and
what is formulaic - as opposed to what is 'authentic. 16
The fact that Egoyan was allowed to present in Turkey was impressive given the fact that just
five years earlier, he had created a film that was banned from the country. 17 The work was named Ararat,
named after a mountain that has many historical and symbolic meanings for Armenians. It touches on the
genocide more directly compared to Aurora, since the film shows scenes from the genocide, and stars
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Armenian actors including Arsinée Khanjian or Charles Aznavour. Watching the film as a teenager when it
came out, I was actually confused by the story line, since it is not a linear narration, rather, it
encompasses different stories simultaneously and spans various time periods. The reason for this is
because Egoyan made the movie from the point of view of a filmmaker named Edward Saroyan, who is
making a movie about the genocide, from the perspective of a fictionalized Armenian-American artist,
Arshille Gorky. 18 So, instead of it just being a movie about the events that happened during the genocide,
the film is also about the people posing as actors for Edward Saroyan’s film, and their emotional
development through the project.
The Turkish government was not prepared to ban Ararat outright, but did cut out parts of the
film and only planned on playing it in certain theatres to avoid public rage and to downplay the content
of the film. As it turned out, Ararat was not shown in Turkey, because the ultra nationalist group, Grey
Wolves, threatened to issue consequences if the film was allowed to play in the country.19
While the work of Atom Egoyan, regarding works related to the genocide, relate to historical
figures and facts that do not involve the artist directly, Kutlung Ataman shares with the viewer a more
personal story. A Turkish artist, Ataman, has been making films since 1994.20 In his video installations, he
usually has one on one-camera interviews with subjects. For example Kuba is a video installation on forty
screens portraying the marginalized residents of a shantytown in Istanbul, while Paradise is a film that
questions the notion that Orange County, California is paradise. 21 Ataman and Egoyan, at the Istanbul
Biennale in 2007 and the Toronto arts festival LuminaTO earlier that year, showed their video works in
the same exhibition space. In Testimony Ataman interviews his Armenian nanny, Kevser, who was
sheltered by his Turkish great-grandfather after her family was killed in 1915 (figs. 5 & 6). 22 In the film,
Kevser recalls what she can of growing up and being taken in from the family. However, she does not
mention what happened to her during the genocide. She is too old to remember and, according to
Ataman, in an interview with Ezri Basaran, she was trained to forget. He says, “Her being confused and
not talking about the subject is an allegory to Turkish society handling the Armenian problem.”
Ataman made the video in order to justly portray what, in fact, happened during the First World
War. 23 The Turkish position, to this day, is that that the Armenian genocide consisted of massacres that
were not organized and therefore could not be called genocide. The fact that Armenians murdered
thousands of Turkish people also means that it was not genocide. Discussing these events is taboo in
Turkey. You can be incarcerated for “Insulting Turkishness” or worse, get killed by extremist groups, in
the same way Turkish journalist Hrat Dink was murdered in 2007 (the same year Egoyan and Ataman video
works were shown at the Istanbul Biennale) when he agreed with the Armenian side of the story.24 In the
interview, Ataman stated that the Nuremberg trials in Germany brought closure and that similar action
needs to be taken in Turkey, “For the health of the Turkish society, we need closure on the Armenian
case, no matter what. I have the right as a Turkish citizen to know the uncontested truth.”
Accordingly, Ataman does feel optimistic regarding the state of Turkey in recent years, saying
that the country has been the most liberal he has ever seen and, even if the Justice and Development
Party, the Islamic-rooted party of Turkey, is demanding Sharia law be installed, it will not happen
because they are not in power. Also, with the help of the American government, over the last year talks
between Turkey and Armenia have increased, as both governments are realizing that dialogue is an
important part of moving on.25
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In the case of these two artists, the works made by them regarding the genocide are just a facet
of their work and have not been the main focus of their careers. Atom Egoyan has been making films since
the 1970’s and these two works are his only projects dealing with the subject. 26 As for Kutlung Atamans,
this is his only work on the subject. The two works contrast each other since Aurora is a piece meant to
make the public aware of Aurora’s life, and Testimony is one illustrating the capacity for people to forget
the importance of events with time.
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FIGURES
FIG. 1 The seven women from Aurora.
(Image: <http://www.artcoregallery.com/exhibitions/auroras_testimony/index.html>)
FIG. 2
One of the faces from Aurora (detail).
(Image:<http://www.artcoregallery.com/exhibitions/auroras_testimony/index.html>)
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FIG. 3
Ravished Armenia.
(Image: <http://www.genocide-museum.am/eng/online_exhibition_6.php>)
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FIG. 4
Auction of Souls. (Image: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora_Mardiganian>)
FIG. 5
Testimony. Three images from the video installation. (Image:
<http://www.artcoregallery.com/exhibitions/auroras_testimony/index.html>)
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fig. 6 Testimony . “Kevser” (detail). (Image:
<http://www.artcoregallery.com/exhibitions/auroras_testimony/index.html>)
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ENDNOTES
1
Claire Bishop, 10th International Istanbul Biennial: various venues (Nov. 2007)
<http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0268/is_3_46/ai_n30953989/?tag=content;col1>.
2
John Feffer, The Art of Anti-War (21 Sept. 2007) <http://www.fpif.org/articles/the_art_of_anti-war>.
3
Ezri Basaran, Backstage With Kutlug Ataman: A Video Artist In Search of Adentity (14 Sept. 2007)
<http://hyelog.blogspot.com/2007/09/backstage-with-kutlug-ataman-video.html>.
4
John Feffer, The Art of Anti-War.
5
Luminato, Atom Egoyan, Aurora Mardiganian and the Armenian Genocide (3 June 2007)
<http://luminatocreativity.wordpress.com/2007/06/03/atom-egoyan-aurora-mardiganian-and-thearmenian-genocide/>.
6
David Marcus, Atom Egoyan in Conversation with David Markus (28 June 2007) <http://www.saatchigallery.co.uk/blogon/art_news/atom_egoyan_in_conversation_with_david_markus/2242>.
7
Marcus.
8
Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute, “Auction of Souls” or “Memorial of Truth,” (2010)
<http://www.genocide-museum.am/eng/online_exhibition_6.php>.
9
Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute.
10
Armenian National Institute, Ravished Armenia and the Story of Aurora Mardiganian (1998-2010)
<http://www.armenian-genocide.org/Education.21/current_category.121/resourceguide_detail.html>.
11
Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute.
12
Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute.
13
Wikipedia.
14
Wikipedia, Psychological Trauma (17 Dec. 2010) <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_trauma>.
15
Alan Chapman, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross - five stages of grief (2006)
<http://www.businessballs.com/elisabeth_kubler_ross_five_stages_of_grief.htm>.
16
Marcus.
17
Harout Sassounian, Gray Wolves Spoil Turkey's Publicity Ploy on 'Ararat' (15 Jan. 2004)
<http://adl.hayway.org/default_zone/gb/html/page3590.html>.
18
Claire Bishop, 10th International Istanbul Biennial: various venues.
19
Harout Sassounian, Gray Wolves Spoil Turkey's Publicity Ploy on 'Ararat'.
20
Bishop.
21
Vancouver Art Gallery, Past Exhibitions: Kutlung Ataman; Kuba and Paradise (2006)
<http://www.vanartgallery.bc.ca/the_exhibitions/exhibit_kutlug_ataman.html>.
22
Ezri Basaran, Backstage With Kutlug Ataman: A Video Artist In Search of Adentity.
23
Basaran.
24
Basaran.
25
Basaran.
26
Wikipedia, Atom Egoyan (23 Nov. 2010) <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atom_Egoyan>.
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