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Drawing on Hirsh’s theories of ‘post-memory’, and in response to uncovering Armenian cultural assimilation, Echoes of Home introduces new methods of storytelling between the personal, collective and cultural trauma of Armenians who survived the 1915 Genocide, and the ‘generation after’. Inspired by a historic, familial collection of photographs depicting Ottoman life in Eastern Anatolia in the early 1900s, the virtual realm augments memory, commemorating the truth of the past and simultaneously advocating for a third space, a virtual homeland for Armenian diasporic identity to be reimagined.
In taking control of the protagonist, Hagop, the player enters spaces of memory, embarking on a journey centred on the restoration of a virtual Arabkir, reconstructed from a photographic archive.
Residing in an archival collection in the Armenian Genocide Museum in Yerevan, Echoes of Home sets out to return these images to their historical and cultural context, the old towns of Arabkir and Erzerum.
The game map of virtual Arabkir stretches between its historical location and the north-western border of the Euphrates River, retaining the authenticity of its physical counterpart yet defining it as fiction.
In exposing the emotional impacts of denial, memory and healing for the generations after, players experience the multiplicity of collective memory through visual cues echoing the nature of the haunting imperfections of the historical remnants.
Acting as an homage to Armenian diaspora, Echoes of Home offers a transnational digital connection to our distant homelands.