Networking Meeting: Towards Collaborative Curating

Nov. 4-7th,
Ljubljana, Slovenia
Hosted by SCCA-Ljubljana
Funded by Eurpean Cultural Foundation


Within the framework of Towards Collaborative Curating, the partner institutions met in Ljubljana, is a series of round-tables, open discussions and a public symposium, to address the issues of curatorial education in the countries of partner institutions and to discuss the possibilities of future collaboration.
The involved partners were SCCA-Ljubljana, AICA-Armenia, Anadolu Kulture in Istanbul, SCCA-Alma-Aty and Townhouse Gallery in Cairo.
For further information, follow the link: http://www.scca-ljubljana.si/report-en_08_02.htm

Angela

New Impressions from Old Yerevan: by Rana Ozturk

Photo: Alena Boika

2008 Summer School Participant Rana Ozturk's Impressions from Armenia at www.nowiswere.blogspot.com



NOWISWERE is a new web-based magazine for contemporary art in English edited by Fatos Ustek and Veronika Hauer. The second issue includes The schizophrenia of Stefano Boeri by Mara Ferreri, words without songs by Nicole Miltner, T'ain't what you do by Claire Louise Staunton, Who is afraid of the Real? by Tobias Hering, Proposal for an Imagined Artwork by Gernot Wieland, Susan Hiller by Margit Neuhold, Schindlertryangles by Oona Peyrer-Heimstätt, Sehgal versus Darwin by Jurga Daubaraite, Martina Steckholzer by Veronika Hauer, Europe - A Grand Narrative by Fatos Ustek, Art in Armenia by Rana Ozturk and Image based contributions by Nicole Miltner, Martina Steckholzer.
The cover is specially commissioned by Yane Calovski, with layout design of the cover by Povillas Utovka.

NOWISWERE appears quarterly and is open for submissions, please contact us on: nowiswere@gmail.com

Some Yerevan Impressions from Pawel

One Week in Yerevan: Art, Politics, and Sexuality

Pawel Leszkowicz's post on rhiz.eu

Summer in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, is very hot (30-35 °C in the shadow), and yet the week of late July early August 2008 was even hotter - with cool events. In the evening of the 2nd of August a group of people gathered in the garden of Utopiana Association for the opening of a women’s art exhibition Coming to you to not be with you organized by WOW (Women—oriented-Women) Armenian artists network. It is 7 p.m. and the heat is still enormous. The curators, art historian Angela Harutyunyan and a writer Shushan Avagyan are opening the show with an introduction emphasizing the feminist and queer agenda of the show. The art expresses the experiences and cultures of straight, bisexual and lesbian Armenian women artists living in Armenia and in diasporas scattered all over the world. The lesbian element of the project is very important, since it is also a coming-out manifesto in a very conservative country....

More on http://www.rhiz.eu/article-17794-en.html

Armenian Apricot Soup

Hey everyone!

Milena here... writing from Angela's account, as per the info provided... sort of ;-)

Hmmm... Everything in this interface is in Arabic, so I hope I don't screw up and delete the whole blog! Yikes! We'll see how it goes...

All that aside, I'm here to post a recipe I stumbled across while searching for something else altogether. It's for Armenian Apricot Soup. Naturally, this might be of interest to all of us because of our time together in Armenia, which undoubtedly involved eating apricots! But, it's also of interest to post because of a little conversation a few of us had about strawberry gazpacho! See! Fruit can be the base for a soup!

Reposted from: http://www.101cookbooks.com/archives/000352.html

Armenian Apricot Soup

• 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
• 2 onions, diced
• 3 carrots, peeled and chopped
• 1 tablespoon ground cumin
  
• 3 cups red lentils, rinsed
• 10 cups water
• 12 ounces dried apricots, chopped
  
• salt

Heat the oil in your soup pot over medium heat, then stir in the onions and carrots. Saute for about 10 minutes.

Add the cumin and stir well.

Decrease the heat, cover, and let the vegetables sweat for ten minutes.

Add the lentils and pour in enough of the water to cover. Bring to a simmer, then reduce the heat to medium low and cook for twenty minutes, or until the lentils and carrots are tender.

Add more of the water as needed as the lentils soften and expand.

Remove from the heat, stir in the apricots and any remaining water, and season with salt.

Use an immersion blender to puree until smooth; alternatively working in batches, puree in a regular blender until smooth. Take care not to over salt this soup. The right amount will bring out the flavor of the apricots but leave the onions in the background. Serve hot.

Serves 8 to 10.


ps: I looks like I didn't invent strawberry gazpacho, after all ;-) http://www.greatcooks.ca/strawberry_gazpacho.html

Some Suggestions from the Participants to the Organizers of the Summer Seminars' Program

• The participants advised the organizers to make it clear in the application that the stress of the program will be on collaboration between local and international/invited curators (participants).
• The program was too intense. The participants should have one day a week to rest, read and explore the city as well as to get to know the context by themselves. A reading list of articles on the local artistic context should be provided.
• All participants, including the local ones, have to stay together in the hostel to be able to socialize during off hours.
• The address and location of the accommodation venue should be provided to the participants earlier, before their arrival.
• For the future not to come up with ambitious titles or heavy theoretical framings for the program.
• To facilitate a platform through which the participants will be able to get to know the instructors better before arriving to Yerevan.
• To invite a team of volunteers to help the organizers.
  
• To include a one-week course of Armenian contemporary art into the program.
• To ask Armenian artists to prepare CDs with their bios and works.

SUMMER SEMINARS' PROGRAM, 2008
JULY 21-AUGUST 2, YEREVAN, ARMENIA

Post Socialism and Media Transformations: Strategies of Representation

Participants

Haizea Barcenilla (Spain), Nora Galphayan (Armenia), Karin Grigorian (Armenia), Lius Miguel Da Silva( Portugal ), Julija Fomina (Lithuania), Marianna Hovhannisyan (Armenia), Rana Ozturk (Turkey), Yavuz Parlar (Turkey), Robyn Maree Pickens (New Zeeland), Milena Placentile (Canada), Elodie Royer (France), Anna Smolak (Poland), Yuliya Usova (Ukraine), Yuliya Vaganova (Ukraine)

Courses

Curatorial Methods I: Post-Socialism and Media Conditions: Strategies of Representations

Instructor: Olesya Turkina

10 sessions

Art History

Painting in the Era of the New Media

Instructor: Petja Grafenauer Kranc

5 sessions

Curatorial Methods II: Relations of Representation

Instructor: Anthony Auerbach

5 sessions

For information, follow the link: http://vargas.org.uk/projects/yerevan/

Practical Workshop: Dominique Abensour

10 Sessions

Presenters

Dušan Dovč: SCCA-Ljubljana, Slovenia, Karoyan and Abensour, Women-Oriented Women's Network, Angela Harutyunyan/Vardan Azatyan, Paweł Leszkowicz, Alena Boika, Cafesjian Museum-Foundation, Henri Igitian

Organizers - AICA-Armenia, Nazareth Karoyan and Angela Harutyunyan

and Open Society Institute

Culturesfrance Embassy of France in Armenia

Angela

CALL FOR PARTICIPATION
International Summer Seminars for Art Curators

Post Socialism and Media Transformations: Strategies of Representation

July 21-August 1, 2008, Yerevan, Armenia

AICA-Armenia is calling for applications to participate in the 3rd International Summer Seminars’ Program for Contemporary Art Curators, which will take place from July 21-August 2 in Yerevan, Armenia. The project is being realized in collaboration with SCCA-Ljubljana in Slovenia (www.scca-ljubljana.si ), SCCA-Alma-Aty in Kazakhstan (http://www.scca.kz) and Beral Madra Center for Contemporary Art in Istanbul(http://www.btmadra.com).

The program is comprised of a series of lectures,presentations and workshops that focus on issues related to the methodologies of curating, the role of the curator in the ever increasing globalization othe art market, strategies of representation and institutional structures in the contemporary art world.

The deadline for applications is: April 15th, 2008.

For more information and to download the application form, please, refer to our website: www.naac.am

If you have further questions, please, contact: Angela Harutyunyan: angela.harutyunyan@gmail.com or Nazareth Karoyan: n-karoyan@naac.am