the great decision of the German Parliament to call a genocide by its name a memory of coming in contact with a very special Armenian community, though I never met anybody face to face ;):
The experience I still cherish the most, though at the time it felt
pretty odd and weird, was taking my time to travel out to the isle of San Lazzaro degli Armeni to have a look at Atom Egoyan's contribution. What actually tempted me about it, was that Egoyan explored the painter Arshile Gorky
and I had read Barnett Newman's tribute to him. The first thing when
entering the boat was that the driver on hearing my destination
commented that I would not actually like to go there, for transfers were
rare and I would have to wait for three hours. I insisted nevertheless.
When I was on the island I realised that I was the only person visiting
the exhibition. But I was not the only person present because the
island is dominated by an Armenian monastery. So somewhere but not
visible for me there must have been monks. Odd also the fact that the
island is situated inbetween Venice and its beach, the Lido. It was
summer and there surely was a lot of traffic on the water, but none
would come to this island. Thus I had this otherworldly sensation of
being surrounded by people I could not see and being quite remote yet
looking out on the busy life - in retrospect a wonderful experience.
Venice Biennale 1997
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