Mixtape: AAFL Launch with Perla Kantarjian and Olivia Melkonian

Evening of Music and Poetry from Beirut

Armenian Arts and Film London proudly announces MIXTAPE — a new series of cross-disciplinary events at Bush Theatre — starting with poetry and sound!
One of Perla Kantarjian's poems is archived on the Moon, sent up as part of the Lunar Codex. That's not even the most striking line on her CV. Lebanese-Armenian, raised speaking Armenian and Arabic and writing in her third language, English, she's been racking up prizes — from the Bridport Prize to the National Poetry Competition, even before her debut collection is out. She's also the sole Sonny Mehta Scholar chosen from the MENA region at the University of East Anglia. 

This September, You Must Become Field (Bad Betty Press) lands in the UK, moving from the 1915 arrest of Armenian intellectuals in Constantinople to a 2025 Beirut club bathroom, eyeliner fixed between airstrikes — and from language to language, Armenian, Arabic, English, the way memory does.
"I come from an ancestral lineage that was already once made homeless by history," Kantarjian says, "and I write from a country where I now feel that old ground shifting again, differently, closer... Writing is how I hold the small and the vast in one hand."

Joining her is Olivia Melkonian is an audio producer, sound artist/archivist and founder of Analog Armenia, an archival cassette project dedicated to the preservation and celebration of Armenian cassette culture. Melkonian uses audio and sonic archiving to reimagine and reconstruct what has been lost, forgotten, or misremembered, addressing archival absences while questioning memory and knowledge formation.

As an open-access digital archive, Analog Armenia safeguards intangible sonic heritage including endangered dialects, folk songs, revolutionary radio broadcasts and religious masses. Sourced from Lebanon, Armenia, and community contributions, Melkonian also traces the social, cultural, and historical narratives embedded within these recordings, exploring how sound-based memory informs collective knowledge and sustains cultural continuity.
They are two archivists in a way, working in different mediums, one in language, on in tape and music. Expect poetry and music alongside the conversation, followed by drinks in the Bush Theatre's welcoming cafe.

The event is co-sponsored by Bad Betty Press, the publisher of Perla Kantarjian’s collection, and the International Armenian Literary Alliance (IALA), which supports writers by fostering the development and distribution of Armenian literature in English.