VODKAHOUSE a visual rearrangement

Photo by Eugenia Porechenskaya

VODKAHOUSE A visual rearrangement

10.2023

Photo by Eugenia Porechenskaya

Photo by Marianna Lupina

Table of Contents WAR……………….01 WAR……………….02 WAR……………….03 WAR……………….04 WAR……………….05

WAR ?

Aren’t you scared they will bomb the capital?

No the capital is not the land it’s the people that are already dead.

First came the virus, and then my father's panicky, and then I too got the virus, and then came the war. One morning before work, I realized and repressed the emotion of war. Fear first, then the feeling that I am useless. As people I knew dropped one by one on the front, I realized I was going to survive this as well.

Then came the guilt of surviving and the hatred towards my own illness that prevented me from being drafted into the army. People younger than me died, and all I could do was continue to go to work, and suddenly, the virus we all had, seemed the least of the things that could kill us.

A picture taken days before the first attack, at the victory park.

Little by little war became our new reality, and the more it lasted the more it started feeling like normal.

We, as humans, get attached easily, and we become our struggle: a huge feeling of guilt for living, for loving, and for laughing. At the same time, we all realized soon enough that if we don’t start living, we are as good as dead. The ongoing war is nothing but a headache that never goes away, and you still keep living with it to the point where it becomes your new norm.

A portrait taken in Tbilisi, July 2023, near the lake. The day we met activists from Baku, the silence of nature was loud enough for us to realize how much we all have lost. A rear feeling in the air at the same time—guilt and shame— and an understanding that we both humans, feared and scared, were no longer victims and predators.

S

And then the war turned into ethnic cleansing. When in school we would learn about the Armenian genocide, I would always have the question, "Why? Why did no one do anything to fight back? Until right before my own eyes in 2023, I saw scenes like those times of people not fighting but simply walking and leaving; the desert turned into mountains; the Turks on horses turned into Russians; and Azeris in military clothing.

LEO IN BERLIN And for the first time in all those 3 years of war, I cried for the first time, and I let go of things. I guess there was something about being in a place where no one knows you from back home and crying felt natural and necessary. Berlin brought down the walls within me. Cold winter, dark after 4 p.m., people like me all in one place, from different places on the planet, but all sharing traumas of some sort. Free Artsakh and Free Palestine, and suddenly I realized that my people are not the only ones, and sharing the sadness, panicked, and fear suddenly brought me closer to the human within me.

It felt for the first time that I was not alone.

Third world war My grand grandmother would always tell me stories of World War II, and those would always be horrible, scary stories. I would sometimes ask her if she felt scared and panicked to be living in such times, and she would always tell me the same thing: when you live in those times, you don’t fully realize what’s happening, because to you, that’s just another year from your life; you only fully realize and get to see from the side how things were after it’s done.If we survive, we too may tell the tales of the times we live in.

Picture taken in Berlin January 2023

Alive and living It makes all the times and pains better when you have people around you; even when dead, it hurts less to be dead with a friend.

Behind every friend’s laugh, there is a lot of pain and fear hidden; however, even in the darkest times, we find a way to feel a bit of light together. Iskutyun, Empress, Edo, and all the others that hold my hand when I am having a pannick and willing to be dead, you all make me want to live.

Photographed by Iskutyun

Dedicated to all the ones who still live as a form of protest against the war, Dedicated to all the ones who still love, Dedicated to all the people in my life, and finally Dedicated to death that patiently awaits all of us.