Mary Kouyoumdjian

ANDOUNI (Homeless) is a music-documentary hybrid in collaboration with photojournalist Scout Tufankjian around the recent genocide of Armenians indigenous to Artsakh/Nagorno-Karabakh. Scout’s photos of the current refugee crisis and precursors to it are complemented by interviews and field recordings taken by myself on a trip with Scout to Armenia in spring of 2023, as well as interviews and sounds contributed by activists on-the-ground in fall of 2023, during the ethnic cleansing and mass exodus of Artsakh-Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh into the Republic of Armenia. I have always admired Scout’s ability to invite the viewer of her photography into the more personal and human space of larger political conflict, both in the heaviness of tragedy and the joys resilient individuals find in order to push onward, and this space for empathy is urgently needed with the current events of Armenians.

Scout and I had originally intended to create a piece around the impact of the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war––never could we have imagined that between that time and now that Armenians would experience a nearly year-long blockade by Azerbaijan of the Lachin Corridor, starving out Artsakh-Armenians and preventing them from medical access; the ethnic cleansing of all Armenians from the territory, with negligible international intervention; having their homeland of thousands of years become absorbed by another country; cultural heritage sites demarcated and destroyed; and the massive influx of refugees into Armenia, whose infrastructure had already been struggling. From the 2015 Armenian genocide to today’s, this is a community forcibly themed by erasure, but it is a resilient one. The voices in this work speak to that resilience.

Special thanks to all of the interviewees for their generosity in speaking the unspeakable, to my dear friend Scout for her unwavering commitment to sharing a community who will not be erased, the Children of Armenia Fund, and Teach for Armenia.

Interviewees & Speakers: Knar Abrahamyan, Haig Boyadjian, Shahen Araboghlian, fortune teller, high school graduates (contributed by Mary Kouyoumdjian); Gayane Malonyan, Nyree Abrahamian (contributed by Nyree Abrahamian and the Country of Dust podcast); Vera Khatchatyran (contributed by Scout Tufankjian and Taline Oundjian, translated by Taleen Babayan)

Photography by Scout Tufankjian | Field recordings from Armenia gathered and interviews edited by Mary Kouyoumdjian