The Festival Concept

In post-Soviet Armenia, the sweeping introduction of market economy along with numerous issues led also to disproportionate development of cultural life, with its hyper focus in the capital.

In terms of cultural production, Armenia’s palm-sized borders have begun to coincide with the borders of Yerevan’s center. These new dimension of, on one hand, geographical-territorial; on the other hand, symbolic imbalance is fraught with ontological dangers.

It’s vital to understand what is pursuing the decentralization of management in cultural life, which is happening globally everywhere. On the other hand, it’s necessary to train cultural operators who will be capable of developing and implementing programs which mark this change in cultural management paradigm.

AICA Armenia’s Art Criticism and Curatorial Training educational program is reflecting to the fore-mentioned issues. Receiving theoretical knowledge, the students have simultaneously initiated and are implemented Encounters on Borders Summer Festival of Community Art as their final work in cooperation with another initiative of AICA-Armenia, the Summer School for Curators.   The presented projects are united by the interest towards the social and historical scale, and figurative aspects of urban environment.

Previously industrial, and now a carrier of students’ and touristic capacity, Ijevan holds the necessary historical experience required for the revival of cultural life.

The most notable was the International Symposium of Sculpture, which heretofore continues to recall the vision of turning Ijevan into a venue of cultural initiatives, carried out by the cultural and administrative workers of the late Soviet era.
Time will tell whether it’s possible to revive that future-intended notion amongst today’s Ijevan residents. Encounters on Borders festival has been designed with that hope in mind.