The Animated Book of Genocides, a multimedia interactive installation, features the Virtual Reality animation *Girl Earth Fire Time*, the 2D animation Between the Wall and the Sides, and The Book of Genocides, the interactive-art-installation-turned-disaster-comic that birthed these animations.  
Using multiple layers of scientific|artistic interaction—ranging from images drawn into the surface of a mid-20th-century zoology textbook to the latest digital innovations of VR— the installation moves genocide beyond massacre to focus on its remediable systemic roots. It exposes the patterns of dehumanization, settler colonialism, and profit that lie at the root of genocide as it empowers users/viewers to act to end, prevent, and collectively heal from these atrocities.  

The VR experience Girl Earth Fire Time reconnects the user to our natural propensity for love and compassion through weaving together the story of artist and author Dana Mashoian Walrath’s grandmother Oghidar during the Armenian genocide and her encounters in the ancestral realm, where she meets victims and perpetrators of other genocides including those in Southern Africa, the Holocaust, and Palestine. Between the Wall and the Sides traces the dehumanization of genocide and connects the UN Genocide Convention’s failure today back to the rejection of the 1951 “We Charge Genocide” petition Black Americans filed against the US government once the convention was established.  The installation also provides the opportunity for participants to alter destructive authoritative texts, a process integral to the creation of the installation, and to interact with digitally rendered turn-the-flap sections of the disaster comic. The installation’s continuum between the physical and the virtual aims to spark dialogue and to empower participants to enact the systemic changes vital for humanity’s collective survival.

Directors: Dana Mashoian Walrath, Dylan Valley
Producer: Antoinette Engel
Writer and Artist: Dana Mashoian Walrath
Creative technologist: Jason Stapleton 
Lead developer: Kyle Donald Marais 
Technical assistant: Nasser Eledroos 
Original compositions and performance: Mthwakazi Chosi (Bongiwe Lusizi)
Sound designer: Gavan Eckhart 
Consultants: Lesedi Mogoatlhe, Lawrence Bennett, Nashada Ndango
Production coordinator: Tobela Pemba
With support from: Atlantic Institute, Centre for the Less Good Idea, and United World College Dilijan

Dana Mashoian Walrath (US) practices a border crossing blend of creative writing, comics, art, and anthropology. Her award-winning books include Aliceheimer’s, Like Water on Stone, and The Book of Genocides (Harvard University Press, 2026). Her work has appeared in The Nation, The Lancet, Slate, NPR, and more. An Atlantic, MacDowell, and Fulbright Fellow, she also creates opera, animation, and VR works.
Dylan Valley (SA) is an award-winning filmmaker and educator who sees film as a tool for social change. His virtual reality/ 360 documentary Azibuye—The Occupation premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2020.  Dylan has directed work for Al Jazeera, Arte, and the South African Broadcasting Corporation. He's on the editorial board of “Africa is a Country.” 

Dana M. Walrath and Dylan Valley open The Animated Book of Genocides with the story of her grandmother surviving the Armenian genocide after being concealed in a drum. The animated book turned VR experience is situated in an animated landscapes of the ancestral realm where victims of genocide in South Africa, Palestine, and the Holocaust confront their perpetrators through the mediation of a praying mantis. Curated in cross-cultural collaboration with indigenous survivors, the interactive art draws the impact of genocide on identity, migration, family, and survival. The clear message in the face of the ongoing genocides in Africa and the Middle East, is that we must act in the face of dehumanization, settler colonialism, and government-profit-driven wars to prevent another senseless genocide, as a necessity for humanity’s collective survival.