Azat Sargsyan

2003-2008

Installation, 00:05:07 min, 00:05:06 min, 00:05:08 min, 00:10:16 min, 00:10:27 min, 00:10:28 min, 00:38:36 min, 00:38:36 min.
Materials: plastics, dvd

Collection: Collection M HKA, Antwerp (Inv. no. S0436).

Schizo-Reality is an ongoing project motivated by the presidential and parliamentary elections in Armenia in 2003. During those elections, the Armenian people witnessed a blatant and cynical fraud, by which the regime reinstalled its own ruling elite. Due to the avid ambitions of those in power, Armenian society was denied its basic civil right - the right to vote. International observers, who had been following Armenian politics since the early 1990s, commented on the event with the cynical words: 'Don't worry, it will happen again.' A lack of decisive action allowed a climate of suspicion and schizophrenia to install itself in Armenian society. In Schizo-Reality, the artist analyses this event by dividing it into eight video fragments, creating a critical video-installation. In the centre two politicians - who came out as competing candidates - talk on video screens at the opposite end of a horizontal column of air. On the sides images of a listening crowd are superimposed by someone scratching his nose. Only in the centre image of the end wall does an autonomous time seem to be found; the endlessness of prayer beads gliding through fingers.