Ghost of Your Embrace

“Ghost of Your Embrace” is the live embodiment of a 2,500 ceramic chainmail dress or suit of armor produced into a short film to showcase it’s remarkable structure, detail, and metaphorical depth. Weighing in at approximately 15 pounds, a dancer wears the piece while leading us through nature as a story manifests many subjective meanings with the same objective outcome. Symbolism is centralized around living in trauma based responses and moving through our inner work and opening up to the world, letting the weight of unhealed wounds go to be fluid like water. The film’s purpose is to reflect the journey of a descendant from relatives directly affected by the Armenian genocide. This film represents the breaking of cycles and chains of generational trauma. Ghost of Your Embrace weave's the world’s pain into a larger picture of how society must let go of identity, blind belief, and structural oppression faced. The film carries through many themes such as: birth, womanhood, envy and judgement of others, outdated belief and thought systems, heritage and displacement, self confidence, the individual, the inward journey and meeting the unknown. The proposition of this film lies within a stark desire to impact the world and its polarized perceptions, as the choices of our ancestors may have led us here, but the future we need depends on the choices we make now.

The outcome of this film acts as a ripple, with a message that everything we touch has purpose and we can choose to give it life, or repeat the cycles of death and evil. We water down our inner truths so much, that perhaps if we were not limited or restricted from our internal capacities and thus turning our attention inwards to the self, the world may have more peace. Having the audience subjectively relate to this film was important, so poetry was written to outline the film’s underlying themes and guide the viewers to their own shifting perceptions. The poetry, written in English, has been translated into Armenian as a conscious effort to preserve the culture. It metaphorically imposes the cultural dilution generations of displaced people face when assimilation into a new country’s way of life and language takes place.