CULTURE AND ARTS

Receiving Pulitzer Prize for Poetry with his book of poems “Ozone Journal”, Balakian spoke to Agos on various topics from literature to politics.

Michelle Andonion have been photographing the children at risk around the world for providing a better future for them by raising awareness. Now, in her book “This Picture I Gift”, which was published on September 2015, she travels to the past of her family, Armenia and Anatolia by following the footsteps of her grandmother Sara.

The owner of the famous Baron Hotel, which was established in Aleppo in early 20th century by Mazlumyan family from Kayseri, Armen Mazlumyan passed away last week. Mazlumyan's loyalty to his family's heritage, his struggle for keeping Baron Hotel standing and his extraordinary life in Aleppo which he didn't abandon even during the war are subjected to “Barons of Aleppo: A Hotel in Syria, A Family and the Last Century of Middle East” by Flavia Amabile and Marco Tosatti.

We talked to Özcan Alper about his movie “Memories of the Wind” and the issue of representing the disaster.

After Onnik Dinkjian’s concert with his son Ara Dinkjian on October 24, Silva Özyerli told the journey that she went on with the songs of Onnik Dinkjian, who is also from Diyarbakir like her.

Lebanese Armenian musician Eileen Khatchadourian has been recently in Turkey on April 24, for the Memorial Concert. This time she came for the Hrant Dink Award Ceremony to İstanbul. At this special evening she sang songs from her latest album ‘Titernig’ (Butterfly). We came together with her and talked about her identity shaped in various lands, her authentic interpretation of traditional Armenian songs and her feelings arising while being in Turkey.

Every single day, some terrible news about the immigrants from Syria comes to the fore. So, in these days, we would like to share the visual diary of the forced migration that the father and grandparents of our photography editor Berge Arabian went through. In 1930, they hit the road from Diyarbakir to Aleppo. The exhibition that was opened in Diyarbakir on May 23 will visit Istanbul and Erivan, and the book that is based on this exhibition is being prepared now. Armenians are one of the communities that history challenged with migrations and they had always been migrating in the Middle East which is stirred by civil wars. This story, which is like a reversed migration, is rather an expression of longing. It is like a gloomy “uzun hava” to the lost home, Diyarbakir.

The press conference of 14th Istanbul Biennial, which will open its doors to visitors on next Saturday, was held at Italian High School on September 2. Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, the curator of the biennial, made a long opening speech in Turkish and by this way, we understood that not only the artworks, but also Bakargiev’s energy will spread all over the city.

As the opening of Istanbul Biennial gets closer, it turns out that there are a lot of works that refer to the Armenian Genocide and the developments that followed it.

Last week, renowned Canadian film director Atom Egoyan was in Turkey for the first time. Although he had received many invitations from film festivals before, he had preferred not to come. He had legitimate reasons, fears and concerns. ‘Ararat’, the film he shot 13 years ago, had faced intense reaction and repression in Turkey; and could not be screened.