The book, recently acquired by the Robert B. Haas Family Special Collections Library for its Art of the Book Collection at Yale University and the Fine Arts Library at UCLA contains an exploration of themes (written and visual) applied to the creation of a museum for Washington D.C. dedicated to exposing the Armenian Genocide of 1915-22, a historical event whose factuality is currently denied by the descendants of the perpetrators.
The striking design within it pages is a contemporary response to the cyclical nature of genocide, a process that prevents the transfer the events it contains into historical facts due to denial. Genocide is forgotten (the victims cannot speak of their experiences), and thus comes the next spiral segment and the begetting of another genocide, onward and onward, an algorithm of death. The central memorial void, or husk, would have provided a radically “decentering” spatial experience with its 1.5 million khatchkars, or cross-stones.
