On a wildflower-lined gravel track off a quiet thoroughfare...
Biennale Arte 2024
11قد تملكون القناديل لكن الضوء لنا
الحلقة الثانية: كحل الليل
You May Own the Lanterns but We Have the Light
Episode Two: Eyeshadow Dark as Night
Haig Aivazian

Single channel video, 10’40”, stereo.
2024

Photography by Ugo Carmeni 2024

In his animation miniseries titled You May Own the Lanterns, but We Have the Light, Aivazian composes episodic narratives out of vast array of found cartoons and animations, all redrawn and re-animated with varying degrees of alterations to the original source material. The resulting cartoons paint a picture of a city plunged in darkness, where ghosts chase cops out of town, and labor and leisure shadow one another in elaborate labyrinthine infrastructures. The plot is in the guise of a linear narrative that sets up the night as a contentious space, where its attempted colonisations are countered by various practices of escapism, fugitivity and confrontation. In Episode 1: Home Alone (2022) two young adults go out to dance, while a younger child, Khayal, is left behind to devolve into increasingly tempestuous dreams where the dead come to life with an appetite for revenge. In Episode 2: Eyeshadow Dark as Night (2024) a nimble night-dweller named Sahar and with seeming animal-like qualities, maneuvers through the city into an underground nightclub. While the darkness of the city is perturbed by an ominous pulsating red light, Sahar emerges out of the club profoundly transformed and ready to fight.



Stills from video
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