Radios/Radio Armenia
With Danny Snelson
Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art
Geffen Contemporary
Step & Repeat Festival
Curated by Poetic Research Bureau with MOCA
July 17, 2015
This performance draws on two texts, Danny Snelson’s Radios and Mashinka Firunts Hakopian’s Radio Armenia. Radios uses every word and punctuation mark in Radi Os (1977) in the endeavor to recompose Paradise Lost (1674). Radio Armenia presents translations of radio anecdotes of the Soviet era, transcribed from an audio recording of conversations with Soviet Armenian linguistics scholar and Hakopian’s mother, Sona Hakopian. Extending these texts into a performative scenario, Radios/Radio Armenia stages translation and transmission through readings, radio broadcasts, and live transcription.