RIJIN SAHAKIAN

SIMULATION
Visual Media + Text, 


2020 - present



Supported by the Art, Land, and Public Memory fellowship, Open Society Foundation.
Through writing, video and photographs, tracing the lineages of war, occupation, and genocide on the environment, explored primarily through archival research, site work, and personal testimony from Iraqi survivors of Operation Desert Storm and the Gulf Wars.  The development of auto-immune disorders and psychiatric presenting disorders, primarily derived from the decay of the myelin sheath, play a primary role in the research of how the proximity to massive deployments of weaponry - its shock waves and terror - can weave its way through living bodies, psyches and cultures even without the appearance of a wound nor any act of “witnessing,” 

Inscriptions left by what is known as the world’s first “Space War” are examined alongside the California deserts utilized to develop new tactics for control, and to preserve the surveillance-led war technologies used in 1991 and beyond.  This project also looks at the ways the U.S.-led wars in Iraq utilized concepts of play, crossing recreation and militarism in the pursuit of mass violence, particularly in the region of 29 Palms, home of the Joshua Tree National Park headquarters and the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center, the largest marine training ground in the world.  

These dynamic landscapes, sometimes engineered to mimic Iraq, both look back on and portend a future where simulation has led to irreversible modifications, not only in the bodily systems of those considered “the enemy,” but to individuals, ecosystems and their interutilization. 


Photo, Climbers at Joshua Tree National Park, 2023
Archival Photo, Celebration at Jebel al-Qosh, Nineveh Plain, Iraq, 1975 
Desert Sheild T-Shirt for sale, online
Microscopic image of interleukin 6 (IL-6) instructing T cells to cause damage to myelin sheaths in the central nervous system
Image credit, Thomas Korn, in connection with the press release "Multiple sclerosis: Newly discovered signal mechanism causes T cells to turn pathogenic"
Photo, Tea by Kerosene, Iraq, 2011
Photo, Sky’s the Limit, 2023
Photo, Barber at 29 Palms, 2023
Video Still, Ronald Reagan National Library Promotional Video
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