Carrying the Nest: (Re)writing History Through Embodied Research

This video article describes the embodied research conducted whilst creating the video performance Carrying her; where various meditation techniques serve to confront the taboo history of the Armenian Genocide that reached its climax in 1915-16 in my homeland, Turkey. I instrumentalize my experience living in a twocentury old stone house in the city of Mardin, in the Syrian frontier of Turkey, to reconsider the historical wound felt in the collective utterances of the region. Chants, lamentations, lullabies, testimonies, myths and tales guide me through the history embodied in Southeast Turkey and urge my journey to France where I re-discover the wound through sonorities of the Armenian Diaspora. My pregnancy opens a space to reflect upon women’s experience of the genocide, translating the corporal phenomenon of being pregnant to the reality of the exiled through the notion of carrying. The sonic universe reclaimed in the diaspora revives my memory of the land in its lullabies. To reclaim the diversity lost from my homeland, I create a soundscape that employs diverse sonorities of Southeast Anatolia. Complemented by the soundscape, the video performance composes my ağıt, my lament for the people exiled and massacred. Gros: Carrying the Nest 26

made in the houses that sit on those foundations. As time passed, others appropriated the city. Houses were made on the ruins of demolished homes. For centuries, homes were ruined to make new ones over and over. As such, diverse lives were hidden between the strata of the city. It is the strata where the phantoms reside.
The wars, the hatred, the violence of our ancestors become part of our identity, haunting us. I close my eyes; I feel their disturbing non-presence. I try to hold their faces in my memory to tell you afterwards but they imitate their fate; they perish.
They are banalized in pages of subjective histories. Massacres continue to exist. Their names change, their contexts change; yet, the phantoms that they produce endure.
They are the swaddled babies borne by their mothers. They are the veiled brides taken into an unknown home. They submerge in lullabies, laments, sung in new lands. Lifting the veil of the history signifies confronting their stories. Househamadyan.org "Mardin … a margin, … a murky sphere endowed with residues of critical events …" Biner, Z. Ö. 2010, p.68 In our current day, the growing culture of marginalizing people who question the Turkish-Muslim identity imposed by the government causes my self-exile, generating my questioning of the foundations of this identity and the destructive tendencies of the patriarchal order that is repeating itself today in Turkey as in all corners of this world.

Gros: Carrying the Nest 6
Carrying her #3 [Pencil drawing] Gros, N. 2017 My pregnancy, the consciousness of embodying the destiny of another, provokes my journey to the diaspora in France and revives my motivation to unveil the history of the exile. Yet, the sentiment of empathy does not describe the bridge that I attempt to build with this performance. My experience of being oppressed in my homeland is far less consequential than that of the Armenian people. Embodying the exile is for me an attempt to heal myself of this taboo.
Armenian Refugee Camp, American Military Hospital No. 3 in Paris, 1918 [Photograph] Library of Congress In Mardin, a two century old stone house serves as a site of reconsideration and recollection of hints pointing to the 'aggrieved' haunting the site.   The Grandchildren, Altınay, A. G., & Çetin, F. 2009 Myths in Anatolia often interpret rocks as a bride, or a woman with a baby fossilized into the silhouette of the landscape. She is petrified into the rock upon her prayer to turn into a stone rather than being caught by aggressors.
Myths and tales of the region repeat the secrets held by haunted architectural elements and rocks. The bottomless well, a folkloric element that re-emerges in tales told in Armenian diasporas around the world, provides access to the underworld. The wells of the fortress of Mardin are told to have tunnels reaching the houses from within the rock hill.
The phantoms of the previous occupants of the region, 'those people', are mentioned in testimonies of locals in an odd secrecy.
The World below [Pencil drawing] Gros, N. 2018 "Some gave their babies and goods to Muslims, … they said 'take him, take all this, just take care of him'. We had many many children in the house … we even fed the girls." "… when they were being deported … the Armenian women told the Muslims, 'These lands will bring you no bounty! … you'll never know peace in these lands!' … The years passed …. not a single stone stood on top of another. … and said, 'The Armenians' (Ah) curse came true." My grandmother, Çetin, F. 2012, p.91 In diverse regions and languages of Anatolia, 'Ah' is wailed in unmetered folk songs. In the tradition of Denbej, the Kurdish storyteller deplores the 'Ah' that remains in sites from tragedies.  The land on which culture functions seems to be crucial to its continuum.

Widow Shushan Sarkissian, Collection of Bodil Biørn [Photograph] Armenian
In the context of France, Armenian culture is heard in diverse voices of the diaspora. Yet, the culture has been interrupted, uprooted, reclaimed and reinterpreted.
Pursuing the depth of elements that I embodied in Anatolia becomes The drone serves as a mantra that revives a transcendent moment for the collectivity. It shapes a sonic space. In my experience, this sonic space born from the effortless flux of voices translates into a site, an imaginary home, in the same way that the lullaby knits a sonic nest for the baby. It is sung in a low voice, with a natural breath that does not push for projection. It is an embodiment of a healing space for the wound that I recognized in the sonorities of Eastern Anatolia and had an unstoppable urge to follow.
For the soundscape of the video performance, I meditate through the vocal practice of this sonority speaking from and to the internal world. I embody the 'Ah' of the stone house through the modalities of my voice and weave into the lullabies that I collected in southeastern Anatolia. The Kurdish mothers would often cry while they were singing their lullabies to me. Their words would pour out of them in prose to sooth their baby. The lullabies of the region, from Assyrian to Kurdish are haunted by the sonority of the 'Ah', transmitted from one culture to the other for centuries. They may not be mirrors to each other musically but they carry the emotional qualities embodied in the region. The Armenian lullaby I encounter in the diaspora carries a remedy of the wound that I heard in the land, now, deprived of this culture.
I make the base of the soundscape from this remedy weaving a sonic nest by vocalizing hints of Armenian, Turkish, Kurdish, Assyrian, and Arabic lullabies. I reclaim the integrity of the homeland that could have been, complete in its cultural diversity. It is in the lullaby that the emotionality of the land is written. The lullaby, the ephemeral sonic home connects me to my wound of … losing my home as I begin (re)writing the embodied history of my homeland. An ephemeral history that merges and emerges.
[20:40] Video article written, narrated and edited by Nilüfer Ovalıoğlu Gros With thanks to Virginia and Aram Kerovpyan for their inspiration and support. This is a transcript of a video article. Individual elements from the transcript, such as metadata and reference lists, may appear more than once in the document in order to be properly read and accessed by automated systems. The transcript can be used as a placeholder or reference wherever it is not possible to embed the actual video, which can be found by following the DOI.