Nana Saribekyan

We live in a disenchanted world. I use my camera to observe this world and to document staged but playful gestures with human figures in urban settings. In a modernized, bureaucratic society, where scientific explanations are the highest good and our choices are based on rational considerations. A world rationalized through formal rules, procedures, structures, and systems to achieve certain goals in a predictable and calculable way. We cannot escape rational thinking; it makes the world understandable, measurable and calculable. At the same time, I am among the people who feel that a large system, rationally focused on efficiency, can reduce people to cogs on a wheel that makes a machine turn. Play is unproductive, useless and not rational. Therefore, playing helps me to create a free space outside the rational realm. The photographs this results in help to deal with the limitations generated by rationality. Through play I create a space in to regain a sense of autonomy.