Festival Program
Encounters on Borders
Summer Festival
August 18-21,
Ijevan, Armenia
18.08-21.08
19:00-19:30 Festival Opening (Ijevan Municipal Gallery)
19:30-20:30 INTERMEDIATE POSITIONS Exhibition opening
The subtlety of transition times is arduous to gin in twilight. This is a tense of dusk and chiaroscuro whenit seems that the body movements are in slow motion. Catching sight of transition cracks is also complicated in social reality, when everything is changing veryfast. The individual seems to appear in a trap between two political systems; one of the formers is azombie, a remnant in social memory, and the other simulates visions and legends of future.In such positions of fragile transitions the artist’s role becomes crucial; one appears as an actor ofparadigm changes, proposing them to the attention of wide social formations.
But in order to fix this transformation the subject is compelled to bustle from one community andidentity to another. By unfolding and occupying the cracks emerging between different territories,between “before” and “after”, the artist gives birth to new subjectivities, new urban identities.Those are the flexible characters who mark and at the same time blur the borderlines between timesand regions.
Artists: Mher Azatyan/Tigran Khachatryan/Norayr Chilingaryan/Gagik Charchyan
21:00-22:00 Concert: Pogo Right and Pincet bands
19.08 Thursday
10:00-11:30 Lecture (Tourism and Buisnes Development Centre of Ijevan)
Julian Vigo
Public Art in Haiti: The Goudou Goudou and the Museum of Disaster Relief
Haiti’s earthquake killed approximately 300,000 people, among of which were hundreds of fine artists,metal sculptors and artisans whose living depended upon the sales of souvenirs sold to foreigners. The earthquake of January 12, referred to as the Goudou Goudou, broke down the divisions between what had been seen previously as elite artists and their artisan counterparts, and as such the schism betweenhigh and low art.After the Goudou Goudou, scavenging the thousands of piles of debris by children and young men was atask of survival and pulling the metal out of the rubble to craft lawn chairs, souvenirs of local flora, thetransformation from metal rod to a voudou god, or the placement of a crushed car in the middle of aroad all became occasions for celebrating life after death and for conterminously commemorating deaththrough life. News reports told of thousands of paintings destroyed in the Centre d’Art, College Saint Pierre, Musée Galerie d’Art Nader on Rue Bouvreuil and the destruction of the Cathédrale Sainte-Trinité which all housed valuable artworks suchas those of Haitian masters Hector Hyppolite, Philome Obin, Prefete Duffaut and Wilson Bigaud. Yet, thetrue loss of Haiti cannot not be measured through the numbers of buildings or artworks as thedevastation of life took center stage. The recuperation of Haitian art quickly became conflated with thespirit of humanitarian projects on the ground and as a result artwork in Haiti was repositioned in theworld theater through its sale and collection now rendered“fundraising.” Internet sites such as “Haitian Earthquake Relief Art Sale” put artworks on virtual auctionannouncing that proceedings would be “donated to the relief efforts”, and the Smithsonian set up acamp in a former UNDP building to restore the lost art. In this way Haitian art was recast on the worldscene as an art of tragedy and the Goudou Goudou gave birth to the museum of disaster relief in thecontext of communal art. My paper will examine the nexus between developmental models utilized by humanitarian NGOs on theground in Haiti and the recuperation of Haitian art through the similar networks which attempt to saveHaitian art as if a human life. My work questions the relationship between public spectatorship andcommunal art and likewise interrogates the problematic ties between the international interception andmediation, local construction and consumption of these pieces, and the representational force of thisart. Ultimately, I call into question the representational form of communal monuments and their cooptationunder the guise of development or aid.What are the implications for treating Haitian art through human rights and political discourse? How cancommunities continue to produce art when the bottom line of art to be sold to an internationalaudience must maintain a narrative of disaster, or at the very least, tangentially through a metadiscoursewhich consistently deterritorializes disaster in the framework of relief and humanitarian aid?Most importantly, is it possible that this artwork produced since the Goudou Goudou comes torepresent the local communities’ relationship to their own history, their own memory, and even theirown death without bearing the traces of disaster relief?
12:00-14:00 Panel Discussion (Tourism and Buisnes Development Centre of Ijevan)
Art criticism and curatorial training school
“1985-1991 Ijevan Sculpture Symposium: Post Factum”
By stressing the importance of cultural decentralization policy and the necessity of reinterpretation ofpublic memory, the graduates/alumni of Art Criticism and Curatorial Training School are inviting you to take part in a panel discussion on a sculpture symposium that was held in Ijevan during 1985-1991 andthe heritage it left to the city.The archive of the symposium has appeared in students’ attention not only as a research topic or subject; this is an opportunity for symposium to become historicized not only in the context of culturaldecentralization policy but also in cultural past and present realms of Ijevan.The print media archive of the symposium subsequently underwent content and conceptual analysisand during the research work talks and meetings were held both with symposium organizers andparticipant sculptors.
15:00-17:00 Presentations (4): Anthropology of the Communal (Tourism and Buisnes Development Centre of Ijevan)
Pau Cata i Marles
Theory as Practice: A Creative Practitioner-based Research on CASAMARLES’ Local Context
The focus of this presentation, which more precisely could be qualified as an experiment, is toundertake a researcher-based exercise using a self-analytical methodology to investigate one’s ownexperience of lived place and space. Its aim is to break down acquired theoretical knowledge whiletesting its usability. This self-analysis is conducted by creatively documenting and critically commentingon a series of ordinary activities and local rituals in the context of Llorenc del Penedes: the village where I grow up and where I have been living for the last three months. These activities and rituals havemarked the researcher’s ‘everydayness’ when living in CASAMARLES, an interdisciplinary living andworking space for creativity and cultural research developed since January 2008. Paying specialattention to non-artists, the documentary and presentation will attempt to describe every day, unimportantand subtle activities and tricks used by individuals and collectives of my village in order tounderline the relevance of the different strategies used in the creation of a sense of belonging, in short asense of ‘locality’.
Carmen De Michele
Tepito: Art in the “Rough Neighbourhood”
Tepito is, without exaggeration, the most famous neighborhood in Mexico. This small area north of theHistoric Center in Mexico City is better known as the “Barrio Bravo“, the “rough neighborhood“. It is thelegendary home of thieves, prostitutes, gangsters and also the cradle of several world-champions inboxing. “Living in Tepito is a way of life”, its dwellers claim. Many of them have never left their “barrio“. In late 1970s, a group of artists decided to give Tepito a public identity through their art. They founded “TepitoArte Acá“. Inspired by the highly political art of the muralist movement in the 1920s, their work focused on the “tepiteños“and their struggles. They were the first of many artists of that neighborhood whotried to catalyze their anger and discontent through art.Tepito is changing. A large influx of immigrants pours in from the nearby city of Neza. They work in themarkets and start altering the life in the “barrio”. A group of young artists has become the new voice ofthe “rough neighborhood“. They significantly call themselves “Neza Arte Nel“.
Natuka Vatsadze
From Apt Art to Art in the Apartment
My friends and I created an art group in Georgia which we called Bouillon. It produces performances,actions and artistic interventions in public space. The main focus of our activities is investigation of thespace and adaptation of art works to non artistic spaces. The group made series of apartmentexhibitions using private space for performance, happenings and installations. In contrary of sovietapartment exhibitions where the private space played the role of the gallery for presenting unofficialartworks, Bouillon group’s use of the private space underlines the artistic importance of the non artisticspace itself. First we search for a space that becomes motivation for our artworks. My presentation concerns the apartment exhibition series arranged as underground activities in Soviettimes in South Caucasus and other Soviet republics and post-Soviet apartment series as artisticinterventions in non-artistic spaces. If possible, I would like to work with a group of artists in Armenia10who are interested in private space interventions and make a project of an apartment exhibition as afinal result of the Summer Seminars for Curators.
Ruben Arevshatyan
Red Thread e-Journal
The project Red Thread is envisioned as an active network and platform for exchange of knowledge andcollaboration of artists, curators, social scientists, theorists and cultural operators from the Balkans, theMiddle East, the Caucasus, North Africa, and beyond. It aims to create and widely disseminate newknowledge about paradigmatic socially engaged art practices in a wide geopolitical context, thuschallenging the predominance of Western narratives in official art histories and exhibition making.Through initiating research, meetings, panel discussions and an active online site for exploring bothhistorical and contemporary approaches that deepen and challenge broader relations of art and society, Red Thread intends to reopen the issues of joint modernist legacies and histories between various socalled”marginal” regions, and attempts to create new approaches to deal with questions of autohistories,self-positioning and reinterpretation of art history.The title of the project indicates a critical cultural and artistic engagement that has been present in theperipheral zones of the European modernistic project in different conceptual manifestations since the1960s, when the crisis of the project of Western monolith high modernism in its relation to ideas of social progress became apparent. Metaphorical meaning of the expression ‘red thread’ suggests notonly way out of labyrinth, but also a fragile, elastic link between different intellectual, social and artisticexperimentations that share a desire for social change and the active role of culture and art in this process.
17:30-18:00 Presentation
Nvard Yerkanian, Harutyun Alpetyan
“The City: Borders and Definitions” workshop
(Between students of Yerevan Open University and Yerevan State University, Ijevan Brach)
Despite being a product of human activity, “the city” scarcely goes in for definitions. On one hand, itintroduces itself as a whole system; on the other hand, it seems as if it’s constantly trying to hide itsunderlying binary principle. This principle is manifested in various phenomena: in architectural solutions,social relations, and different psychological processes. The presence of opposing processes in balance already refers to the existence of the city. However, it doesn’t come to those contrasts being in balance:the city itself gives birth to unbalanced states.Civilization, civility and politics: in the context of these paradigms, the concept of citizenship refers moreto the subject’s social space rather than the physical space of its existence; that is, the habitat. The initialstage of being conscious of oneself as a citizen is the realization of the urban context in which theindividual has appeared. Subsequently, the subject repositions himself with respect to the given context,specifying demands and responsibilities in one’s environment, since, as a point of support; it also has theperception of the other in its mind.What are the factors by which reorientation and self-consciousness are conditioned? Where do mineend and the other’s – begin? Is it (somehow) possible, to follow that process? These practical lessons aimat outlining various paths to approach these issues. Yerevan and Ijevan will become those otherenvironments where the city’s borders and definitions are played out.
21:00 Film program (Festival camp)
20.08, Friday
12:00-13:30 Talk and Round-Table: Curatorial Interventions
Ida Hirshenfelder
SCCA- World of Art Curatorial Course
16:30-18.00 General Round-Table (House of Culture)
19.00-20.00 INWARDS context responsive art exhibitions (next to the ropeway building)
The group project designed for the theoretical discussions, workshops and lectures section of thefestival can be considered as an artistic performance and intervention. By penetrating into the cityscapeof Ijevan, we wish to shape a new attitude towards public art. The event is aimed at turning the outlookof city resident inwards, towards the space they are living in by raising public issues which heretofore have been invisible.Inwards is a group event; the projects are autonomous and based on personal experiences of the authors.
Participant-authors/artists: Sona Abgaryan/Susan Amujanyan/Manan Torosyan/Natuka Vacadze/ Temo Kartvilishwili/Koka Kitiashvili/Zura Kikvadze/Tigran Araqelyan/Arev Arakelian/Yuri Manvelyan
21:00 Concert: Arni Rock & Apricota
21.08, Saturday
Visit to historical sites of Tavush region
SPONSORS AND SUPPORTERS:
Encounters on Borders 