Summer School for Curators, Yerevan

PROGRAM

2011-07-16T12:31:00.000-07:00

THE INSTITUTIONAL AND IDEOLOGICAL OPERATION OF TRANSNATIONAL ART EVENTS
July 25-August 4, Yerevan, Armenia

Program

July 25, Monday

11:00- Breakfast
11:30 – Opening Remarks
Angela Harutyunyan and Nazareth Karoyan
12:00pm –Lecture
Beatrice Von Bismarck, Curatorial Conditions – Relations in Process
1:30-2:30pm – Lunch
2:30pm –4:00 Round-Table Discussion
On the Temporality of Transnational Art Events
Moderated by Angela Harutyunyan
6:30 - Introduction on Suburb Cultural Center by Eva Khachatryan
7:00 – 8:30 Public Presentations (Venue—Mkhitar Sebastatsi Fine Arts School)
Eleonora Farina, National Art Systems vs. Transnational Art Events: The Romanian Case
Elisa Tosoni, Transnational Artistic Events: On Temporality and Its Repercussions On The Local Context
Maaike Gouwenberg, Local Audiences, Global Curating

July 26, Tuesday

10:30-Breakfast
11:30- Lecture
Misko Suvakovic, International & Global Nomad: Art & The Transcultural, Part I
1:00-2:00pm –Lunch
2:00-3:30 – Round-Table
Curating a Biennial, Moderated By WHW and Nazareth Karoyan (TBC)
7:00- 8:30 Public Presentations (Venue – The Club, 40 Tumanyan str.)
Claudia Slanar, In-between Disruption: About the Connection between Artistic and Political Events
Ozge Ersoy, Transnational Art Events and Regional Artistic Practices
Corina Oprea, Breaking Through the Political Ideology within the Venice Biennale

July 27, Wednesday

10:30– Breakfast
11:30-Lecture
Misko Suvakovic, International & Global Nomad: Art & the Transcultural, Part II
1:00-2:00 – Lunch
2:00-3:30 –Round Table Discussion
Institutional Frameworks of Transnational Art Events, Moderated By Sasa Nabergoj
7:00-8:30 SWEET 60s in Yerevan, transit.at (Harutyun Galents Museum)

SWEET 60s is a long term experimental, curatorial, scientific and educational research project that investigates the hidden territories of the revolutionary period of the 1960s through contemporary artistic and theoretical perspectives, which has developed around itself a wide international network of interested and cooperating individuals and institutions.

The curatorial and artistic focus of SWEET 60s lies on "post ideological societies" (in post-Soviet, post socialist, Eastern European, Middle Eastern, West and Central Asian as well as North African countries and in a second phase in China and Latin America), in making a comparative analysis and contextualizing the historical developments in the arts, culture and societies of the 60s and 70s and researching their subsequent effects on contemporary socio-political and cultural situations. The Yerevan presentation for the International Curatorial Summer School brings together key personalities involved in the project. The participants will give an insight into their practice in regard to the project „Sweet 60s“.

Introduction - Ruben Arevshatyan artist, art critic and independent curator, Yerevan and Georg Schöllhammer editor, author, curator and editor-in-chief of Springerin magazine, Vienna

Speakers

Ali Akay curator, sociologist, Mimar Sian University, Istanbul

Keti Chukhrov philosopher, Institute of Philosophy, Moscow

Ivet Curlin curator, member of 'What, How & for Whom' (WHW) curatorial collective,

Zagreb Sohrab Mahdavi cofounder and English editor of Tehran Avenue magazine, Tehran

Lali Partenava, Art Historian and Critic, Tbilisi.

„Sweet 60s“is supported by Allianz Kulturstiftung and the European Commission through the Culture Program.

ERSTE Foundation is the main partner of tranzit.at.

The panel is coorganized by International Curatorial Summer School - Yerevan

July 28, Thursday

10:30 – Breakfast
11:00 – Lecture
Sarah Rifky, On Being an Institution
1:00-2:00- Lunch
2:00-3:30 – Round-Table Discussion
Labour, Value and Art Production in a Transnational Framework
Moderated By Sarah Rifky
7:00-8:30 – Public Presentations (Venue –Cafesjian Museum Foundation)
Kamil Julian , Daniela: Kostova Unorthodox Image (Suburb Center’s presentation)
Isabella Hughes, Contemporary Art: An Agent Of Cultural Diplomacy
Sasa Nabergoj, The Praise of Laziness

29th July, Friday
Visits to Art Institutions: National Art Gallery, Armenian Center for Contemporary Experimental Arts (ACCEA)

July 30th and 31th - Weekend Retreat to Lake Sevan

August 1st, Monday
11:00-2:00 – Visits to Art Institutions: Museum of Modern Art, Cafesjian Foundation, Art Laboratory, etc.
5:00-8:00 -Reading Sessions In Various Locations In Yerevan
Conducted By Angela Harutyunyan

August 2nd, Tuesday
10:30 – Breakfast
11:00- Lecture
Bassem El Baroni, Just What Is It that Makes Today's Transnationalism So Prescribed, So Paradoxical?
1:00-2:00- Lunch
2:00- 3:30 – Round-Table Discussion
Transnational Art Events and Local Cultural Politics
Moderated By Vardan Azatyan
7:00-8:30pm – Public Presentations (Venue – Narekatsi Cultural Center, near Vernissage)
Mariana Losi, Residency Zine
Milena Leszkowicz, Contemporary Art and Anthropology
Combiz Moussavi Aghdam, The Narratives Of Art History And Iranian Intelligentsia In The 1960s And 1970s

August 3rd-4th, Wednesday - Thursday
11:00-2:00 – Visits to Art Institutions: Museum of Modern Art, Cafesjian Foundation, Art Laboratory, etc.
5:00-8:00 -Reading Sessions In Various Locations In Yerevan
Conducted By Angela Harutyunyan

Boris Groys, “Art and Money” and “Comrades of Time”
Allan Badiou, exceprts from The Communist Hypothesis
Agamben –“Author as Gesture”
Bataille – The Story of the Eye, Part II
Jalal Toufic –Undeserving Lebanon, excerpts
12:00-4:00 – Visits to Art Institutions and Artists’ Studios

Intersections: Critical and Curatorial Practices of Art and Art Education, ed. By Angela Harutyunyan. PrintInfo: Yerevan, 2011

Abstracts

International & Global Nomad:Art & the Transcultural
Misko Suvakovic

In this two-part lecture I will point to the transformation of the intercultural status of art in modernism, postmodernism and contemporary times. I will discuss the imperial model of the influence of large dominant cultures on small marginal cultures. Further I will discuss the influence of French, German and Russian art at the turn of the 19th and the 20th century. I will perform a model of cultural imperialism. I will consider the notion of style in international Western art, design and architecture between the 1930s and 1950s. I will point to the American cultural imperialism and Soviet internationalism during the Cold War. I will further interpret the concepts of the plural and the transcultural in postmodernism. It will help to indicate the difference between the nomadic and transcultural art practices. I will introduce the concept of the global and point to characteristics of a global art. The concepts of regional, glocal and transitional art in relation to globalization will be discussed and performed parallel to analysis of artistic practices and art institutions.

Curatorial Conditions – Relations in Process
Beatrice von Bismarck

Collective forms of curating have been a trend in recent years. It has become obvious especially for international large scale exhibitions, from the teams at the Manifesta, via the various Biennials – the one in Berlin, Venice, Istanbul or the Caribbean -- to Okwui Enwezor’s documenta 11 in 2002 or the travelling exhibition “Utopia Station”. While these forms of collaboration allow for synergies with respect to expertise as well as to symbolic capital – fame and status, they also possess a self-reflexive potential analyzing, questioning and redefining the conditions and relations in the field. The talk will trace recent examples of the latter approach and analyze its implications for the notion of authorship and work within the field of the curatorial. As a transdisciplinary, transprofessional and transcultural mode of working together, collective curating mirrors not only the connectivity specific for curatorial practice but also the questions pertaining its economic aspects. Activities, roles and positions can be brought together in ever newly definable re lationships. What gains central importance in this context is the capacity of collectivity to accumulate different forms of capital, its operational function and the techniques and strategies employed to this end.

Bassam El Baroni
Just What Is It that Makes Today's Transnationalism So Prescribed, So Paradoxical? *

After and sometimes during the span of a "transnational" art event (such as a biennial) journalistic and critical material circulates pointing towards the event's over or under-representation of artists from a certain region, the nationalities of the participating artists etc. In these debates the wider issues of what kind of art is subject to exclusion in present day "trans-nationalism" and the reasons behind this supposed ineligibility are often overlooked. The talk will claim that the majority of art being produced around the world is non-compatible with the paradigm of contemporary discursive art production that the curators of such events aspire to. In fact, it might not be a matter of aspiration but actually of obligation. Most peoples' imaginary of what art is can be tagged under the term 'Fine art', art characterized by the academic application or manipulation of canonical art histories. The present day biennale and similar event structures favor 'contemporary art' over 'fine art', the reasons given are unconvincing for most people. It is in unraveling, analyzing, and healing the schism between these two nodes of art that might lay a more pertinent chance for a radical transnational model.
* Based on the title of Richard Hamilton's 1956 work entitled "Just What Is It that Makes Today's Homes So Different, So Appealing?"

Sarah Rifky
On Being an Institution
The discussion on a desire for increased autonomy in the arts is by no means new. Increasingly, the desire of being autonomous or independent is outlined in the way one choses to formulate what one does as an artist and as a curator, be that individually or collectively. An analysis of the daily trivial aesthetics that make up the work of independent, self-employed and self-invested people, including artists and curators, is integral towards understanding the structures within which we operate primarily governed by a de facto social contract that binds our individual practices into a type of collective action derived from a shared collective intentionality. What 'I' do becomes part of what 'we' do. The modus operandi that governs our relations and our work is increasingly tending towards a form of 'self-institutionalization'. We become locked into a system of relations that predicates certain forms of work and responsibilities that lie outside of the bounds of acting on the pure intentionality of hopes, desires, dreams and visions. The flexibility and autonomy of practice dissipates in this collective condition whereby we exist in relation to each other in the manner of institutions rather than persons.
To be able to think about institutions, it is necessary to think oneself into the institution. What is an institution and how can we perform ourselves as institutions in a way that deflects the precariousness of new forms of flexible labour within an increasingly intertwined economy that subsumes us, and art? This and other questions pertaining to time, responsibility and self-fashioning of institutions will form the basis of this lecture, and the subsequent moderated discussion.

PRESENTATIONS

Ozge Ersoy
Transnational Art Events and Regional Artistic Practices

Ersoy’s presentation will introduce her two recent projects, How to Begin (2010) and The Timeline (2010). How to Begin is a publication that invites artists and curators to envision the possible impacts of the soon-to-be-built Guggenheim Abu Dhabi on their own practices in particular, and the art scenes of the Middle East in general. The Timeline (2010) takes the form of a poster that suggests the question of how exhibition practices could engage contemporary art that tackles peoples, places and cultures which once constituted the expansive Ottoman Empire. The Timeline acts as an interpretive and suggestive mapping exercise as it highlights the changes in the fields of museology, as well as visual arts and culture during the 19th and 20th century Ottoman Empire. It also raises questions about the ways in which contemporary art, modern art and traditional art forms have been categorized through clear-cut definitions and so-called ‘ruptures’ from their predecessors.

Ersoy’s presentation will focus on two fundamental questions: What is lost when curatorial and critical accounts of non-Western contemporary art are limited to ahistorical and essentialist readings? And what is the potential of emerging art organizations and museums to challenge the existing representational mechanisms in contemporary arts? Ersoy’s interest lies in rethinking the representational mechanisms in this field, as well as our very expectations from curatorial practices and emerging infrastructural models in the arts.

Eleonora Farina
National Art Systems vs. Transnational Art Events: the Romanian case

Compared to other East European artistic milieus, Romania has managed to strongly establish itself at an international level presenting artists in major transnational art events. The most impressive example is the one by the dissident Ion Grigorescu (1945), who during the last years has exhibited at documenta12 (2007) and at the 6th Berlin
Biennale (2010) and is representing the Romanian Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennial. How is it possible to build a national art system to support the enormous international (and, let us say, occidental) demand? How can a country that has just come out of a communist dictatorship (the Ceauşescu's one) propose, or better impose, its own artistic choices? Or maybe is it more suitable to talk about the 'colonization' of Romanian art by foreign curators? Taking my cue from my experience as assistant curator at the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Bucharest (MNAC), I will discuss the Romanian art scene focusing on the mechanism of exportation of local art out of its national borders: from the disputed MNAC to the internationally known Pavilion Unicredit (founder of the Bucharest Biennial), from the independent The Paintbrush Factory in Cluj-Napoca to the new Club Electro Putere in Craiova, from the numerous not-for-profit spaces (among all the Centre for Visual Introspection in Bucharest, curator of the Romanian Pavilion at the last Venice Biennial) to the active commercial galleries (i.e. Plan B in Cluj-Napoca, dislocated in Berlin for three years) ending with the much needed art magazines (principally “IDEA art + society”).

Maaike Gouwenberg
Local Audiences, Global Curating

Within my practice as a curator there are different elements to focus on. Here in Yerevan, I would like to give you a small introduction about myself and where I come from, the scene and the changes at the moment in The Netherlands, after which I would like to concentrate on two things. The part will focus on the question “How to show a project that connects both to the local context and the international art scene while at the same time critically engages with the given structures of the Netherlands, where community art and social projects are pushed through by the (local) government?”
The second part will focus on an ongoing project. It is a close collaboration with artist Gerbrand Burger who will make a performance that deals with the (impossible) attempt to take on the view of the outsider, collected in a story that will be turned into a theater play and video work. The idea of the outsider connected to the role of the curator within the global art scene might be a good starting point for a conversation. The underlying structure of the organization, which deals with questions on the role of the curator as producer, and has as one of the main goals to place the artist and his work at the core of the program will be brought to attention.

Isabella Hughes
Contemporary Art: An Agent of Cultural Diplomacy

Getting back to the core of cultural diplomacy, a definite buzz word these days: it's about exchanges and building relationships between people and cultures different than our own. I will discuss the power that contemporary art has to build greater understanding, tolerance and awareness both within the US, where I am from, by focusing on new immigrant and indigenous communities, as well as contemporary art and cultural diplomacy in a more global context, with an emphasis on the Middle East. I'll also reference my own background as an Iranian-American, born and raised in Hawai'i, now living in the Arab world and how this impacts my curatorial practice and the projects that I develop. I will reference two past exhibitions that I've curated and one upcoming project and how they relate to this topic.

Milena Leszkowicz
Contemporary Art and Anthropology

How can contemporary art criticism benefit from cultural and social anthropology?
Recently a number of publications and workshops including the books Contemporary
Art and Anthropology and Between Art and Anthropology edited by Chris Wright and
Arndt Schneider and the Connecting Art and Anthropology (CAA) workshop in 2007 pointed towards a convergence of art and anthropology. While cultural and social anthropologist reach out to the art world to find new ways of representation and more freedom for experiment, the understanding and interpretation of contemporary art production can deeply benefit from anthropological approaches and methods. In reliance on ethnographic fieldwork anthropologists generate much of their data and knowledge through direct, personal interactions and observations creating in-depth and thick descriptions. Such ethnographic studies in the field of art practice and criticism can be used to challenge and analyze processes of value production or understanding general processes underlying the cultural connections and clashes which appear when art (increasingly non-Western art) is exhibited in inter - and transnational contexts.

Transnational exhibitions and art events increasingly confront artistic expressions based on different local, cultural and political influences with a globalized, international art market and context. It seems that anthropologists might be uniquely positioned to understand art as an activity embedded in a complex set of social relationships and cultural influences.

Marianna Liosi
Residency zine

Among other projects I’ve developed so far, one in particular fits with the topic of the Seminars. It’s a long term work which started last year and arose from the interest in residency programs as one of the strongest examples of transnational events in the contemporary art system. The research consisted of mapping residencies provided by Western European art institutions, in order to list who and how many artists from Central- East areas caught the attention of the Western art system in the past. Consequently, a report of various ways each artist experienced the residency was collected. These contributes will be part of an e-zine, temporary entitled Res-zine that should ideally circulate by email and would be periodically brought up to date.
The project aims at mapping artists/curators passages from a context, a social history, a society and a culture to another, and at highlighting the role that residency programs play in the art system, in terms of relationships among people, territories and point of views. Behind this, key topics concern the definition of geographical and political borders and its influence on the art system; the growing network occurring thanks to artists’ movements and to physical and cultural passages and its effect. Accordingly, the Residency-zine would become a means to give form to the network and spread information, since it is free of charge, nonofficial and non-professional. It will represent a virtual map of artists’ movements and physical and cultural passages, as well as a way cross political and geographical borders.

Kamil Julian
Daniela Kostova Unorthodox Image

I would like to present the exhibition Daniela Kostova Unorthodox Image that I organized in early 2010 in Warsaw in the framework of 93 Foundation, and the project-book I issued from that.
The project evolved around the Alexander Nevski Orthodox Church, built by the Russian Church and co-funded by the Russian Empire – a huge church imposed over Warsaw, located at the Saxon Square and hated by the Poles. I invited artist Daniela Kostova to work with the (non-existing nowadays) church, and as a result new works were created. The project touched upon political and historical issues related to the Russian presence in Warsaw as well as contemporary functioning of unwanted historical architecture that often goes covered with huge advertisements. Furthermore, Unorthodox Image interrogated the relation between image, memory (screen memory) and (official) history: the way they complement and contradict one other.
The project book includes both textual and visual material, where images create their own narration. The publication is a survey from analysing the work by Daniela Kostova, through texts covering the background of the history of the Saxon Square and Alexander Nevski Orthodox Church with archival photographs, to essay on art of Daniela Kostova, a Bulgarian-born and New York-based artist.

Combiz Moussavi-Aghdam
The Narratives of Art History and Iranian Intelligentsia in the 1960s and 1970s

Since the early twentieth century, many Iranian intellectuals have attempted to construct and demonstrate their new identity with reliance on their national history vis-à-vis the history of the modern West. Associated with nationalism, Shiite Islam and modernist currents, certain narratives of Iranian history shaped modern Iranian subjectivities during the past century. In this context, the development of art historical narratives in intellectual environment played a significant role in the flourishing of modernist artistic trends in Iran of the 1960s and 1970s. On the one hand, the narratives of both Iranian and Western art history were mainly based on the writings of Euro-American scholars with their Orientalist and colonialist views. On the other hand, both Marxist and Formalist approaches in art criticism were highly influential in determining the new modes of image representation, specifically when the Cold War reached its zenith within mentioned period. Today, with reference to art history books and journals available at the time, policies on translation and publication, university curricula and exhibition catalogues are be able to analyse the flourishing of modernist trends in Iran, and the ways images are chosen, reproduced and located within the historical narratives.
This talk intends explore the links between the narratives of art history and the history of intellectual trends in 1960s and 1970s in Iran. Despite the fact that visual analysis can play a significant role in showing how modern Iranian identities have been developed, almost all intellectual discourses have failed to address the ways the collective subjectivities are imag(in)ed through visual arts and its history in Iran. In this paper, I will focus on the role of ideological agendas in the construction of modern Iranian art history and the approaches in which Orientalism meets nationalist and religious tendencies. Revealing the limits and problems of these canonised approaches in art history will shed light on some unexplored angles of Iranian identity today.

Saša Nabergoj
Dolce Far Niente: The Praise of Laziness

In this lectures Saša Nabergoj will try to defend the right to leisure in contemporary hyper-productive society. She will examine the roots of our contenporary obsession with work and in the 18th century. The capitalist economic system was formed during the Enlightenment, and within this system rational discourse on work and economy emerged. At the same time, however, an alternative discourse celebrating laziness was established. In this discourse lies the roots of resistance to participation in a social project based on the work ethic, and the beginning of scepticism about the belief that productivity and the production of goods are the ultimate goals in life. The generally accepted circle of supply and demand fuelling the consumer society of the 21st century will be questioned with reference to artists such as Kazimir Malevich, Marcel Duchamp and Mladen Stilinović. Laziness will be presented as an alternative which can turn the need for (multi)production into freedom for production.

Corina Oprea
Breaking Through the Political Ideology within the Venice Biennale

Since its launch in 1895, the Venice Biennale has been constructed on the politics of nation-states. Besides being an artistic platform the biennale functions as a marketing agency for states and regions. Individual countries are showcasing in national pavilions their own artists and representing their nations. Through the years, the biennale mirrored also the global geo-politics and the changes happening on the European map. New countries are represented each year, similar to other transnational events, such as Sports Olympics. In some cases, state sanctioned identities are being highjacked by individual or political interests in order to achieve individual curatorial or artistic projects.
The biennial has also become the stage for initiatives that use the political charge of the event to reach across with a meaningful content that questions political strategies within artistic contexts.

Claudia Slanar
InBetween Disruption: About the Connection Between Artistic and Political Events

How does the character of an event frame an exceptional state interrupting our ontological state of being? How and why do artistic practices that deal with events investigate not only a rupture that an event (and its often traumatic experience) presents in the fabric of our sensual world, but also seek to re-visit it, to re-frame and re-shape the “distribution of the sensible” (Jacques Rancière)? Is there an intrinsic quality or potential to (hopefully and possibly) change the course of a particular historical narrative when dealing with such a practice and can the “thought-provoking” (Claude Lefort) nature of an event be reshaped again by its re-staging?

Elisa Tosoni
Transnational Artistic Events: On Temporality and its Repercussions on the Local Context

Is it possible to imagine a biennial - the most iconic of transnational art events - as something that could possibly exceed its canonized temporality? Could an event be considered not as a momentum, but rather as an iteration of simultaneous momenta, for which power resides in a moving - evolving - mass, becoming something that stretches across a time-lapse of two years? Or would the art system then face the paradox of a continuous, eternal biennial, in which one edition fades through to the next? And, again, what are the consequences of the voracious rhythms of artistic production and consumption, often dictated by those of global institutions, on the locality? How could a host city or territory forge a biennial in becoming, adapted to the rhythms of its own social norms, its inhabitants and geographies, aiming towards sustainability and perhaps a fruitful slowness? Rethinking the temporality of such events, by shifting the attention away from the “finished” exhibition and artworks, the opening week and the art professionals’ tourism, towards a continuously accretive process, in which a variety of tangents unfold simultaneously or remain idle, appears to be a solution to connect with - rather than tower over - the local context.
The presentation will address these questions through the lens of three case studies: BB3 (Bucharest, Romania, 2008), Manifesta (with particular focus on the exhibition The Rest of Now, and its offspring Tabula Rasa, at Manifesta 7 - Bolzano, Italy, 2008) and the 6th Momentum Biennial (the exhibition Imagine Being Here Now, and its itinerant performance program - Moss, Norway, and across Scandinavia, 2011).

SUMMER SEMINARS FOR ART CURATORS AICA Armenia 6th Edition JULY 25 - AUGUST 5

2011-03-15T03:23:00.000-07:00

The Institutional and Ideological Operation of Transnational Art Event

The 1989 Fall of Berlin Wall did not only mark the collapse of the ideologically bipolar world order and the start of the triumphant rhetoric of global capitalism but also the leveling of contemporary art practices, representational mechanisms and institutional structures. The historical collapse of state socialism also designated the breakdown of an art system that relied on non-market driven consumption and circulation. The unofficial art practices heretofore evolving behind the Iron Curtain found a comfortable shelter in various transnational biennials, art festivals, fairs, collections and discursive events mushrooming since the 1990s.

The transnational art events are no longer exhibitions in a traditional sense of art representation, but these are global events that are also evolving in extra artistic domains that include discussions, educational programs, networking and so on. “Global” and mobile artists and curators, leaving the imprint of thousands of carbon traces, fly from Moscow to Venice, from Sao Paolo to Seoul and from Gyumri to Beirut in order to share the latest discursive vogue and the representational paradigm, the possible potential of radical political art as well as the latest curatorial stratagems and artistic debuts.

Then, what are those mechanisms, systems and ideologies of contemporary art representation that construct the global art event in the transnational framework? How does this framework impact certain local contexts? How is the aesthetical value being constructed and articulated through such events?

By proposing the above outlined framework, the 6^th edition of the International Summer Seminars for Curators in Yerevan is initiating a series of seminars, lectures, discussions and public reading groups that aim at questioning the economic, political and ideological bases of constructing the global art event on one hand, and the participation of the contemporary art scene in Armenia in those events on the other hand.

Coinciding with the 54^th Venice Biennial of 2011, where three Armenian curators are representing three artists, a series of events is aimed at addressing the role of global art events in reshaping Armenia’s cultural policy. We will refer to the history of Armenia's participation in the Biennial and its ideological and cultural-political implications. Hence, the most important issue that we would like to propose relates to the role of the curator, its purpose and function in relation both to the local scene and the ongoing international redefinitions of the curator within the framework of transnational art events.

The aim of the program is twofold: to discuss a timely issue in the international arena and at the same time address the experience of participation of the local context in transnational art events. Further, we would like to extend these questions to discuss issues related to the impact of these events on cultural policy and institutional politics in the field of contemporary art.

The program invites international and local curators, theorists, artists and cultural operators including those directly involved in the development of cultural policy to participate in the following events:

Lectures will be conducted by local and international theorists, who will present various aspects of economic, political, ideological and aesthetic analysis of transnational art events.

b. Seminar discussions intend to propose and discuss topics related to the general conceptual framework proposed by the organizers. By developing a clear framework of issues these discussions will touch upon both local and international institutional policies that are being developed in response to transnational art events. The participants are local artists, curators, critics, the participants of the graduate program of Art Criticism and Curatorial Studies as international participants of the Summer Seminars’ Program.

c. Reading sessions are dedicated to active reading and discussion of specific subject-related texts that will be conducted by Angela Harutyunyan. These sessions will be held in various public places in Yerevan and are to establish a direct link between the text and the natural-architectural environment. Readings will be literally localized. The participants include the students of the graduate program of Art Criticism and Curatorial Studies as international participants of the Summer Seminars’ Program.

To apply, please, send a CV, a Statement of Interest (approximately 1000 words) and a writing sample (a review, a curatorial statement or an art critical piece, approximately 1500-2000 words) to Angela Harutyunyan (angela.harutyunyan@gmail.com) and Taguhi Torosyan (tag.torosyan@gmail.com) by April 1^st, 2011. AICA-Armenia does not provide grants to cover travel expenses.

However, limited grants to cover accommodation can be obtained on the basis of the merit of the application. We encourage you to apply for external funding sources. Participation is free of charge.

The program is supported by:

Summer Seminars for Art Curators 2010 Report - Part One Posted by Michelle Kasprzak

2010-09-13T07:11:00.000-07:00

Saturday, September 11. 2010 • Category: Musings

Recently I attended the Summer Seminars for Art Curators, which is hosted annually by AICA-Armenia. We spent three days in the Armenian capital of Yerevan, and a further four days in Ijevan, in the north near the border with Azerbaijan and Georgia. The themes of the two seminar events were “Aesthetic Communities and Contextual Translation of Communal Art” and “The Communal Function of a Monument”.

Armenia is a fascinating country, but I will not go into too much in detail about it here (I intend to post thoughts about Yerevan in particular on the Spacing Wire shortly). However, it must be said that the post-Soviet-ness of Yerevan is striking, and the beauty of the countryside is extraordinary. It was wonderful to get to see both Yerevan and Ijevan, and all the landscape and important points of interest in between. You can see my photos from the seminars and general sight-seeing on Flickr.
More on

2010-08-09T03:35:00.000-07:00

5th Summer Seminars for Art Curators

Communities and Contextual Translation of Communal Art

August 15-20, 2010

Yerevan and Ijevan, Armenia

Participants: Elke Krasny/Armenak Grigoryan/Michelle Kasprzak/Karin Grigoryan/Sarah Rifky/Arevik Grigoryan/Patrycja Rylko/Marlène Perronet/Harutyun Alpetyan/Adnan Yildiz/Aykan Safoğlu/Carmen De Michele/Gor Engoyan/Nvard Yerkanian/Natuka Vatsadze/Liana Khachatryan/Viviana Checchia/Sona Melik-Karamyan/Ida Hirsenfelder/Pau cata i Marles/Taguhi Torosyan

Volunteers and free participants: Marine Hovsepyan/Shoair Mavlian/Özge Çelikaslan/ Tigran Grigoryan/Emanuele Braga/Maddalena Fragnito/Narek Tovmasyan/Marine Hovsepyan/ Ovsanna Hovsepyan/Haykuhi Avestisyan

Program

Yerevan, 15.08-17.08

Aesthetic Communities[1]

15.08 Sunday

10:00-10:30 Opening Remarks and Introduction

10:30-12:00 Lecture

Dr. Margarita Tupitsyn

Russian Art as a Sisyphean Project

In 1990 I curated the exhibition The Work of Art in the Age of Perestroika, which was largely devoted to Moscow conceptual art. My reference to Walter Benjamin’s famous title made the claim that perestroika was a revolutionary moment capable of changing the fate of the Soviet neo-avantgarde the way the October Revolution had done with the historical avant-garde. Presented for the first time as seminal postwar movements in my exhibition Russian New Wave, Sots Art and Moscow conceptual art enjoyed a positive reception in New York, culminating in museum exhibitions in the years of perestroika. At the time, there was reason to believe that Soviet alternative art of the 1970s and 1980s had the chance to consolidate its position in the genealogy of international postwar culture. Paradoxically, twenty years later, under much more favorable conditions for the integration of models of national cultures, and amid a curatorial zeal (if only superficial) to consider national specificity, the status of Russian art both as historical and contemporary phenomena has lapsed.

In fact, global curators who take pride in their commitment to providing equal opportunities to artists of all nationalities, to the extreme of giving their mammoth exhibitions titles like Against Exclusion, remain far less enthusiastic about Russian cultural production than, say, Chinese, Indian, or African. Such an attitude may be categorized as a new Orientalism, a new West/East binary into which Russian culture barely fits. Moreover, the degree of referential debt assigned at the outset of modernism to Asia, Africa, and Russia (precisely in that order) has paradoxically remained intact. Under these circumstances, any serious presentation of a Russian artist or movement in the West is an absurd endeavor, a Sisyphean project, in which, to quote Albert Camus, ‘The struggle itself…is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy’. That said, in this paper I would discuss why I believe why I believe it’s worth pushing a boulder up a mountain for a little longer, even if only to see it roll down.

12:00-1:30 Lecture

Dr. Vardan Azatyan

Myths and Visions of Artistic Avant-gardes in Armenia

I discuss artistic avant-gardes in Armenia in connection with dominant nationalist and religious discourses that historically played and continue to play some crucial role in Armenian societies. By doing so, I situate perhaps the paradigmatic conception of contemporary art in Armenia – art as a strategy of living free – in structural connection with historical liberation visions and aspirations of Armenian people. My discussion shows that the avant-gardes however subversive (sometimes precisely because of their subversiveness) remain within the larger trajectories of dominant projects of political liberation.

I argue that contemporary art practices need to radically rethink their subverting strategies as directed against dominant discourses and strive for a strategy which would go beyond the logic of dominance and subversion however multilayered and nuanced are the terms by which this logic is conceived. I conclude the paper by suggesting a possible strategy for artistic avant-gardes in Armenia.

18:00- 20:00 Presentations

Marlène Perronet

The Tea Ceremony

Since twenty years, the TRAM network association federates about thirty art centers in the region Paris - Île de France. It aims “to promote contemporary art and to give to the largest possible number an access to our epoch's creation” (from the website). With an exception of one private foundation, these art centers are mainly associations, municipal and departmental corporations as well as two public art schools. This network weaved around Paris contributes to decentralize the cultural production at a regional level and, in this precise region which is all considered in the collective mind as a periphery of the main city, at the level of the suburbs (“banlieues”).

Such institutions give a great importance to “audiences” and reconcile them with forms they sometimes consider as provocations. They favor a direct presence of the artists, themselves regularly producing artworks especially for these places, their environment (off-site events) and contexts. At the scale of the exhibition length, processual forms integrate the dimension of speech, performances and experiments involving a transmission, or a relation with the visitors. I will try and analyze some shared tendencies among projects that took place in this regional network recently.

Elke Krasny

Notions of Transversality: Dialogues of Aesthetics, Ethics, Politics

The presentation focuses on four case studies to develop an aesthetic understanding and an analytical concept of how to create and interpret the specificity of artistic, curatorial and cultural production allowing for transversality by way of creating aesthetic communities. These case studies are "Macondo - Life on Earth in Vienna" by Cabula6 (2009), Bellevue. Das Gelbe Haus/The Yellow House in Linz by Peter Fattinger, Veronika Orso and Michael Rieper (2009), Het Blauwe Huis/The Blue House in Ijburg/Amsterdam by Jeanne van Heeswijk (2004-2009) and Annenviertel! The Art of Urban Intervention (curated by rotor association for contemporary art; curatorial team: Margarethe Markovec, Anton Lederer, Elke Krasny). Using my experience to unfold different perspectives, transversality is explored as an aesthetics of changing perception, creating spaces, places and situations for a dialogue overcoming the conventional boundaries of hierarchical structure and introducing shared territories and shared aesthetic experiences. Transversality of aesthetics, ehtics and politics and of all the actants involved is understood as a driving force for creating, re-reading, transforming or questioning the given within contexts and using contextualisation as a vehicle for change through aesthetic strategies.

Adnan Yıldız and Aykan Safoğlu

Artistic Dialog+ Curatorial Grammar

“AH OH” by ğ (soft g)

Berlin/Istanbul based curatorial collective will present their first project, “AH OH” an exhibition that is designed to develop a dialogue between LGBT organizations and contemporary art practitioners. Questioning some terms such as community, artistic dialogue, curatorial grammar, group identity, social responsibility, critical knowledge, identity, activism… within this experience, will also refer to some historical incidents, local references, and personal histories.

16.08 Monday

10:30-12:00 Lecture

Dr. Victor Tupitsyn

Seeing Through a Crack

Following the death of Lenin in 1924, there began a period of collectivization. The peasantry, which in pre-Revolutionary Russia had constituted the overwhelming majority of the population was, for the most part, forcibly recruited into collective farms or, in smaller numbers, wiped out or banished to distant regions of the country to perform forced labor. A significant number of others were compelled to migrate to urban areas. This phenomenon engendered a housing problem of enormous proportions. Stalin’s course was to exploit the situation so as to further his project of “de-individualizing” the consciousness and daily life of the Soviet people. City apartments, as provided by law, became as populous as anthills and beehives. Families of every variety, belonging to various social, national, and cultural-ethnic groups, were forced to cleave together in a single communal body. Such “uplotnenie” reached its climax when two or three different tenants had to live in one room. The inhabitants of the communal thermae (known as kommunalka) were drawn into a process of “serial” talking -- be it relatively harmless gossip or extreme cases of verbal abuse. Everything (including vision) was ruled by speech rituals. In short, communal vision can be defined as seeing through the eyes, or on behalf of the “collective other.” Caused by this optics, an individual ends up being treated as a baby glued to a societal mirror.

This observation can be applied to an exemplary infant terrible, placed in a global orphanage known as “art.” Self-perception as an eternal child harks back to a time when the burden of adulthood was placed on government bureaucracy. Everyone else was inculcated with the idea that “the only privileged class in the USSR is children.” Therefore, the prospect of the loss of such (class) privileges, caused the tempo of maturation to slow down. Hence, the naive longing for accidents combined with the carnival-like (festive) perception of acts of violence: the conviction that “even dying is good if the world is watching” best illustrates this. Translated into the language of urban problems, immaturity is the ghetto, and those who came out of this ghetto often turned out to be the most zealous guard dogs of convention and orthodoxy, the angelic host entrusted with protecting the authoritarian power.

Despite their chronological proximity, the contexts of childhood and youth are not metonymically close: unlike childhood, youth does not feel comfortable in the position of onlooker fascinated by the conflict and the unity of opposites. It is characterized by social altruism, rebellion and an intolerance toward everything invested with “paternal” prerogatives. On the other hand, the iconoclastic gesture does not befit childhood (eternal, stagnant childhood), for which inertia and a taste for an apocalyptic vision of the world are “appropriate” ‑- whereas youth is aflame with a desire to alter the existing order of things. In other words, both youth and the youthful are missing from present-day world, where childhood and adulthood remain the principal psychosocial niches.

12:00-13:30 Talk and Round-Table: Curatorial Interventions

Sarah Rifky

Reconjugating the Curator-Function: a case study in curating contemporary art, thinking about cultural policy and producing publics in Cairo

The shifting functions of artist, critic, work of art and curator within contemporary artistic practices, are constantly demanding a re-evaluation and definition of the role and function of our practices. The traditional distinction between audience and producer no longer hold true. In contexts within which contemporary art practice, in its lateral definition, is still struggling for definition and grappling to expands its forms of engagement with its publics, how do we negotiate our curator-function? I propose to discuss a number of decisions within my own curatorial practice in the last year, within my current capacity as Curator at the Townhouse Gallery of Contemporary Art in Cairo, an integral art institution founded in 1998, that contributed to the radical shift in expanding the potential of contemporary art practices in Cairo over the past decade, towards questioning curatorial-responsibility and the ‘task of the curator’ within that context. The case studies will include a recent exhibition held at the gallery, “Invisible Publics”. Through this example, I meditate on the experience of producing the Cairo Complaints Choir, an extension of the Complaints Choir project initiated by Oliver and Tellervo Kochta-Kalleinen in Helsinki in 2005. Furthermore, a delineation of proposals concerning the programming decisions in the upcoming year will be highlighted, including “Jump Cut Curate” towards insinuating the relevance of curating as a medium (as intermediate or agency), situated not only between the artist, art work, art space and public, but located and housed within the intricate practicalities that inform day-to-day cultural policy.

18:00- 20:00 Presentations (3)

Michelle Kasprzak

The Transient and Mutable Monument

Monuments are objects that cover a wide scope of possible formal categories including architecture, art, design, (and even performance), but they are grouped and defined as monuments by their intention and the ideas, events or persons that they honour. They engage a wide range of social and design issues in their execution, maintenance, and display.

My thoughts are very much inspired by the work of Estonian artist Kristina Norman, whose recent work explores the issues surrounding the Bronze Soldier monument in Tallinn. The Estonian government moved this monument from its prominent central location to a more remote place in 2007, prompting riots which were used to portray Russians negatively in the media. Two years later, Norman placed a full-sized replica of the Bronze Soldier in its former place, and created a quasi-documentary film that recorded the reactions, on both sides, to this intervention. Similarly, Antony Gormley’s recent work, One and Other on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square, London illustrated the importance of site for monuments more than the actual monument itself. Taken together, Norman and Gormley’s projects represent a uniquely contemporary re-thinking of the ways in which monuments can be viewed both as art objects and as modes of interaction for all.

My presentation will make the case for the development of speculative designs and/or instructions for a new unstable and impermanent monument, using common materials and raw human resources, which would be openly released and shared. Developing an “open source” monument design to be shared globally poses a unique challenge.

Joanna Warsza

The Logic of the Projects in the Public Realm: A Talk on Slalom between
a social involvement and the politics of the hidden agendas (based on my
curatorial practice)

Over the last tree years I commissioned projects on the ruins of the 10-th Anniversary Stadium in Warsaw and in ex-Warsaw Ghetto based on the critique of Israeli youth trips to Poland. Her work refers to the perception shifts, the unspoken and the ephemeral.

The 10th-Anniversary Stadium was built in 1955 from the rubble of war and
preserved Communism’s good name for forty years. In the early 1990s it fell into ruin, and was only revived by Vietnamese and Russian traders. Since then the area has become an open-air market, an Asian inner city, a primeval garden, a storehouse of urban legends, a piece of Land-Art, or a work camp for botanists. The heterotopic logic of the place and its long-standing (non-)presence in the city, inspired me to curate series of live art projects The Finissage of Stadium X and the related reader, Stadium X; A Place That NeverWas.

Public Movement from Israel together with Polish collaborators in April 2009 led a walk in the former Warsaw Ghetto, in the foot steps of Israeli and Jewish youth delegations. The starting point for the project was the hermetic and strictly ritualised procedures of Israeli Youth Delegations to Poland. Public Movement explores the political and aesthetic possibilities residing in the manifestations, spectacles or public marches. They invent and re-enact moments in the life of individuals, communities, social institutions, peoples or states.

Ida Hirschenfelder

Land Art in SFRJ – Reinterpreted Monuments

A specific party policy on artistic expression in Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRJ) has led to some astonishing artistic achievements. Although connected to the party authorities, these works had far surpassed any similar attempt of the artists to utilize the ideology in order to realise their own grandiose landscape architecture. In the past ten years when we were able to see these political landmarks from a contextual distance, several contemporary artists such as photographer Marko Lulić in Modernity in YU, David Maljković in Scene for a New Heritage (numbers 1 & 2, 2004 & 2006), Marijan Crtalić in Nevidljivi Sisak (2007-2010) or curatorial collective WHW on sculptor Vojin Bakić, have attempted to see beyond the obvious. These memorials to WWII have been frequently dubbed as ugly socialist landmarks, »following flat-footed abstract rhetoric crushed under its own weight«. However I will argue that such one-sided interpretation is of this monuments is merely a product of persistent political dualities of the cold war. The question that should be asked is how are the Land Art works by Robert Smithson from 60s and 70s any different from Bogdan Bogdanović’s primitive land marks? Are the public structures of Sol LeWitt any different from Vojin Bakić’s constructions? And why the formally superb sculptures by Miodrag Živković can be called »overblown and joy-killing Titost monuments«!? The initial idea for the ongoing project on SFRJ monuments is to reinterpret these landmarks through a series of photographic exhibitions and publication of a critical reader that would help to restore the decaying monuments which are not only the victims of time but also the victims of misunderstanding of their historical value.

17.08 Tuesday

Visit to art institutions in Yerevan

18:00 –20:00

Round-table discussion on cultural and institutional politics organized by Rene Gabri and Ayreen Anastas

18.08 Wednesday

Travel to Ijevan

Encounters on Borders

Summer Festival

August 18-21, Ijevan, Armenia

Organizers: Arevik Grigoryan/Armenak Grigoryan/Gor Yengoyan/Harutyun Alpetyan/Karin Grigoryan/Liana Khachatryan/Nazareth Karoyan/Nvard Yerkanian/Sona Melik-Karamyan/Taguhi Torosyan/Vahram Aghasyan

Volunteers and free participants: Anais Gyulbudaghyan, Ashkhen Minasyan, Elizabeth Torosyan, Sona Baghdasaryan, Tsovinar Ghazaryan, David Vardanyan, Vaghinak Ghazaryan,

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 implementing Encounters on Borders Summer Festival of Community Art which is their final work. 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.

PROGRAM

Ijevan, 18.08-21.08

19:00-20:00 Exhibition Opening (Ijevan gallery)

INTERMEDIATE POSITIONS

The subtlety of transition times is arduous to gin in twilight. This is a tense of dusk and chiaroscuro when it seems that the body movements are in slow motion.

Catching sight of transition cracks is also complicated in social reality, when everything is changing very fast. The individual seems to appear in a trap between two political systems; one of the formers is a zombie, 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 of paradigm 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 and identity 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 times and regions.

Artists: Mher Azatyan, Tigran Khachatryan, Norayr Chilingaryan

21:00 Open Air Concert

Mano Grigoryan: Pogo Right/Pincet group (Sculpture garden)

19.08 Thursday

10:00-11:30 Lecture

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 between high and low art.

After the Goudou Goudou, scavenging the thousands of piles of debris by children and young men was a task of survival and pulling the metal out of the rubble to craft lawn chairs, souvenirs of local flora, the transformation from metal rod to a voudou god, or the placement of a crushed car in the middle of a road all became occasions for celebrating life after death and for conterminously commemorating death through 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 such as those of Haitian masters Hector Hyppolite, Philome Obin, Prefete Duffaut and Wilson Bigaud. Yet, the true loss of Haiti cannot not be measured through the numbers of buildings or artworks as the devastation of life took center stage. The recuperation of Haitian art quickly became conflated with the spirit of humanitarian projects on the ground and as a result artwork in Haiti was repositioned in the world theater through its sale and collection now rendered

“fundraising.” Internet sites such as “Haitian Earthquake Relief Art Sale” put artworks on virtual auction announcing that proceedings would be “donated to the relief efforts”, and the Smithsonian set up a camp in a former UNDP building to restore the lost art. In this way Haitian art was recast on the world scene as an art of tragedy and the Goudou Goudou gave birth to the museum of disaster relief in the context of communal art.

My paper will examine the nexus between developmental models utilized by humanitarian NGOs on the ground in Haiti and the recuperation of Haitian art through the similar networks which attempt to save Haitian art as if a human life. My work questions the relationship between public spectatorship and communal art and likewise interrogates the problematic ties between the international interception and mediation, local construction and consumption of these pieces, and the representational force of this art. Ultimately, I call into question the representational form of communal monuments and their co-optation under the guise of development or aid.

What are the implications for treating Haitian art through human rights and political discourse? How can communities continue to produce art when the bottom line of art to be sold to an international audience must maintain a narrative of disaster, or at the very least, tangentially through a meta-discourse which 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 to represent the local communities’ relationship to their own history, their own memory, and even their own death without bearing the traces of disaster relief?

12:00-14:00 Panel Discussion

Art criticism and curatorial training school

"1985-1991 Ijevan Sculpture Symposium.Post Factum" (Business Center)

By stressing the importance of cultural decentralization policy and the necessity of reinterpretation of public 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 and the heritage it left to the city.

15:00-17:00 Presentations (4): Anthropology of the Communal

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 to undertake a researcher-based exercise using a self-analytical methodology to investigate one’s own experience of lived place and space. Its aim is to break down acquired theoretical knowledge while testing its usability. This self-analysis is conducted by creatively documenting and critically commenting on 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 have marked the researcher’s ‘everydayness’ when living in CASAMARLES, an interdisciplinary living and working space for creativity and cultural research developed since January 2008. Paying special attention to non-artists, the documentary and presentation will attempt to describe everyday, un-important and subtle activities and tricks used by individuals and collectives of my village in order to underline the relevance of the different strategies used in the creation of a sense of belonging, in short a sense of ‘locality’.

Carmen De Michele

Tepito: Art in the “Rough Neighbourhood”

Tepito is, without exaggertion, the most famous neighborhood in Mexico. This small area north of the Historic Center in Mexico City is better known as the “Barrio Bravo“, the “rough neighborhood“. It is the legendary home of thieves, prostitutes, gangsters and also the cradle of several world-champions in boxing.

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 fouded “Tepito Arte 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 who tried to catalyze their anger and discontent through art.

Tepito is changing. A large influx of immigrants pour in from the nearby city of Neza. They work in the markets and start altering the life in the “barrio”. A group of young artists has become the new voice of the “rough neighborhood“. They significantly call themselves “Neza Arte Nel“.

Natuka Vacadze

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 the space and adaptation of art works to non artistic spaces. The group made series of apartment exhibitions using private space for performance, happenings and installations. In contrary of soviet apartment exhibitions where the private space played the role of the gallery for presenting unofficial artworks, Bouillon group’s use of the private space underlines the artistic importance of the non artistic space 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 Soviet times in South Caucasus and other Soviet republics and post-Soviet apartment series as artistic interventions in non-artistic spaces. If possible, I would like to work with a group of artists in Armenia who are interested in private space interventions and make a project of an apartment exhibition as a final result of the Summer Seminars for Curators.

Ruben Arevshatyan

Red Thread e-Journal www.red-thread.org

The project Red Thread is envisioned as an active network and platform for exchange of knowledge and collaboration of artists, curators, social scientists, theorists and cultural operators from the Balkans, the Middle East, the Caucasus, North Africa, and beyond. It aims to create and widely disseminate new knowledge about paradigmatic socially engaged art practices in a wide geopolitical context, thus challenging 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 both historical 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 so-called "marginal" regions, and attempts to create new approaches to deal with questions of auto-histories, self-positioning and reinterpretation of art history.

The title of the project indicates a critical cultural and artistic engagement that has been present in the peripheral zones of the European modernistic project in different conceptual manifestations since the 1960s, 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 not only way out of labyrinth, but also a fragile, elastic link between different intellectual, social and artistic experimentations 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 Yeravan 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, it introduces itself as a whole system; on the other hand, it seems as if it’s constantly trying to hide its underlying 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 more to the subject’s social space rather than the physical space of its existence; that is, the habitat. The initial stage of being conscious of oneself as a citizen is the realization of the urban context in which the individual 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 the perception of the other in its mind.

What are the factors by which reorientation and self-consciousness are conditioned? Where do mine end and the other’s - begin? Is it (somehow) possible, to follow that process? These practical lessons aim at outlining various paths to approach these issues. Yerevan and Ijevan will become those other environments where the city’s borders and definitions are played out.

19:00-20.00 Presentation by Yuri Manvelyan (Ijevan gallery)

(Inward)

21:00 Film program

(Sculpture Garden)

20.08, Friday

10.00-11.30 Round table

Moderated by Eva Khachatryan

(Transkaukazja)

12:00-13:30 Talk and Round-Table: Curatorial Interventions

Ida Hirshenfelder

SCCA- World of Art Curatorial Course

14.00-15.00 Presentation

Gagik Charchyan (Business centre)

(Intermediate positions)

17:30-19.00

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 the festival can be considered as an artistic performance and intervention. By penetrating into the citiscape of Ijevan, we wish to shape a new attitude towards public art. The event is aimed at turning the outlook of city residents 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 independent/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/Garik Yengibaryan/Edgar Amroyan/Tigran Araqelyan/Arev Arakelian/Gor Yengoyan

(8.00-13.00 Inward (optional)

Walk tour with Gor Engoyan along Ijevan-Tsltan non-functioning ropeway)

The touristic paths are the most preferable cultural and social layers; churches, landscapes, etc. And what can the unrealized tourist roots and their traces show? Ijevan‘s half-built ropeway station carried out in the 80‘s is attractive by its unfinished form, but at the same time it refers to current socio-political instability in Armenia. The station should hav been connected to the recreation zone called "Tsltan" ; this route is now passable only by feet and cross-country vehicle. A few ha were deforested for the purpose of building the upper station. The volunteer expedition will move from inner to the upper station, examining the traces of the corrupt project, inaugurating the route estimated for the ropeway and symbolically continuing the process of its construction.

21:00 Open-Air Concert

Arni Rock & Apricota (Sculpture Garden)

21.08, Saturday

Visit to historical sites of Tavush region

Շնորհակալություն

Summer school

ORGANIZERS:

President of AICA-Armenia, co-founder of Summer Seminars for Art Curators

Nazareth Karoyan

naz.karoyan@gmail.com

Member of AICA-Armenia, co-founder of Summer Seminars for Art Curators

Angela Harutyunyan

angela.harutyunyan@gmail.com

Coordination and communication

Marianna Hovhannisyan

m.a.hovhannisyan@gmail.com

PR and Documentation

Karin Grigoryan

karin.grigoryan@gmail.com

SPONSORS AND SUPPORTERS:

OSI

Transkaukazja Embassy of France in Armenia

[1] Breakfast is provided at 9:30, and lunch break is at 1:30.

Մամլո հաղորդագրություն

2010-07-05T05:45:00.000-07:00

ԱԻԿԱ–Հայաստան (Արվեստի քննադատների ազգային ասոցիացիա)
Արվեստի կուրատորների ամառային սեմինարներ. Հինգերորդ թողարկում

Գեղագիտական համայնքներ եւ համայնքային արվեստի կոնտեքստուալ թարգմանություն
Օգոստոսի 15-20, 2010 Երևան, Իջևան

Արվեստի Քննադատների ազգային ասոցիացիայի ամառային սեմինարների ամենամյա ծրագիրն իրականացվում է SCCA-Ljubljana–ի, Ստամբուլի «BM Suma» կենտրոնի, Ալմա–Աթայի SCCA-Alma-Aty կենտրոնի ու Կահիրեի «Townhouse» պատկերասրահի հետ համագործակցությամբ: Ամառային սեմինարը միավորում է տարբեր համատեքստերում գործող արվեստի համադրողներին` դասախոսությունների, գործնական սեմինարների, շնորհանդեսների եւ արվեստի տարածքներ այցելությունների եւ այլ միջոցառումներով:

Հինգերորդ ամառային սեմինարի թեմատիկ ընդհանուր շրջանակը արվեստային համայնքների ու համայնքային արվեստի ներկայացման հարցն է։ Բարձրացվող հարցերի թվում են արվեստի ընկալման գործում կոնտեքստուալ թարգմանության խնդիրը, այն դեպքում, երբ արվեստի գործն արտադրվել է ներկայից տարբեր տարածաժամանակային ու գաղափարաբանական պայմաններում։ Ո՞րն է ընկալման քաղաքականության մեջ կուրատորի դերն ու նշանակությունը։ Կարո՞ղ է արդյոք այլ պայմաններում ստեղծված գործը ներկայում ծավալվող դիսկուրսների մաս կազմել մեկնաբանության միջոցով։ Ի՞նչ կարգավիճակում է հայտնվում արվեստի գործը, երբ նպատակադրված ուղերձն ու հանդիսատեսն այլևս չկան։
Սեմինարի ծրագիրը բաղկացած է ամենօրյա դասախոսություններից, քննարկումներից եւ շնորհանդեսներից։ Տեսական մասը տեղի կունենա Երեւանում, օգոստոսի 15-17-ը: Սեմինարի երկրորդ եւ գործնական մասը պատրաստել են Արվեստի նախագծման ծրագրի շրջանավարտները: Ի թիվս այլ գործունեությունների` ասոցիացիան իրականացնում է կրթական այլընտրանքային` «Մշակութային նախագծում և լուսաբանում» 10-ամսյա դասընթացը: Առաջիկա 3 տարվա ընթացքում դասընթացը հավակնում է դառնալ հետբակալավրական կրթական ծրագիր` արվեստի համակարգողների եւ արվեստի լրագրության գծով։ Այսպես, «Հուշարձանի համայնքային ֆունկցիան» խորագրի ներքո նախատեսվող ցուցադրություններն ու քննարկումներն Իջեւանում կընթանան օգոստոսի 18-20-ը:

Արվեստի քննադատների ազգային ասոցիացիայի (ԱԻԿԱ-Հայաստան) գործունեության ամփոփ նկարագիր

Արվեստի քննադատների ազգային ասոցիացիան հիմնադրվել է 2005 թվականին: Աշխատում է Հայաստանում արվեստի քննադատության զարգացման, արվեստագետի եւ հանրության փոխհաղորդակցության, արվեստի քննադատի արդի խնդիրների, քննադատի դերի բարձրացման խնդիրների շուրջ: 2005 թվականին Մեծ Բրիտանիայի Պլիմուտի համալսարանի մասնագետների հետ կազմակերպել է մեկօրյա դասընթաց` կոլոքվիում, Երևանում կայացած «Հանրային ոլորտ. Վիճարկման և վերըմբռնման միջև» վերնագրով եռօրյա գիտաժողովի արդյունքում նկարահանվել է վավերագրական ֆիլմ և հրատարակվել գիտաժողովի նյութերի ամփոփ ժողովածու: 2006- 2007 թվականներին մշակվել և ստեղծվել է արվեստի համակարգողների երևանյան ամառային միջազգային դպրոցը: 2008 թվականին կազմակերպվել է Արվեստի քննադատների ազգային ասոցիացիայի գործունեությունը խթանող համաժողով: Այդ ժամանակահատվածում մշակվել և Գյումրիի 6-րդ Բիենալեի շրջանակում իրականացվել է ցուցահանդեսային ուսումնական մի նախագիծ:

Summer Seminars Program: Suggested Bibliography

2010-07-05T05:20:00.000-07:00

Communal Art in Soviet and post-Soviet Contexts

Victor Tupitsyn, The Musicological Unconscious, The MIT Press. 2009

Ilya Kabakov, “From the Communal Kitchen: A Conversation with Ilya Kabakov”, Arts, October, 1991: 51

Boym, Svetlana, The Future of Nostalgia. New York: BasicBooks; Plymouth: Plybridge, 2002.

Buck-Morss, Susan, Dreamworld and Catastrophe: The Passing of Mass Utopia in the East and West. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000.

Boris Groys, (with Max Hollein) Dream Factory Communism. Frankfurt: Hatje Cantz Publishers; Bilingual edition, 2003.

--Art Power, MIT Press: Boston, Massachusetts, 2008.

--“Back from the Future”, in Third Text, vol. 17., issue 4, 2003, pp. 323-331.

Manchev, Boyan, Anti-Modernism - Radical Revisions of Collective Identity, Vol. four (Discourses of Collective Identity in Central and Southeast Europe), Central European University Press, 2007.

Victor Misiano, “The Cultural Contradictions of the Tusovka” in Moscow Art Magazine, digest, 1995-2003.

Victor Voronkov, “Life & Death of the Public Sphere in the Soviet Union”, in Tatiana
Goryucheva, Eric Kluitenberg (Eds.), Debates & Credits (Media / Art / Public
Domain). Cat. De Balie – Centre for Culture and Politics, Amsterdam, 2002.

Theories of (Aesthetic) Communities

Ranciere, Jacques, The Politics of Aesthetics. Continuum: London, New York, 2004.

--“Aesthetic Separation, Aesthetic Community” in Art and Research: Journal of
Ideas, Contexts and Methods, vol. 2, no. 1, Summer, 2008.

Jean-Luc Nancy, Inoperative Community, University Of Minnesota Press; 1 edition (June 1, 1991)

Vijay Devadas & Jane Mummery, “Community Without Community”, in http://www.borderlands.net.au/vol6no1_2007/devadasmummery_intro.htm

Borderlands, volume 6, number 1, 2007 - online

Giorgio Agamben, Coming Community, Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press; 1 edition (February 26, 1993)

5th Summer Seminars for Art Curators

2010-04-19T12:48:00.000-07:00

(Photograph by Nvard Yerkanyan)

5th Summer Seminars for Art Curators

Aesthetic Communities and Contextual Translation of Communal Art
August 15-20, 2010, Yerevan and Ijevan, Armenia

Call for Participation

There is always a loss in any work of interpretation, and this does not necessarily refer to the loss of the original meaning (the original historical context or the authenticity of an art work) as such but to the loss of the original conditions of reception. In regard to the Soviet art of Stalinism and beyond, art critic Viktor Tsupitsyn argues in The Museological Unconscious that these works were produced with the collective aspect of reception embedded in the very production and he describes this phenomenon as a “collective museological unconscious.” With the loss of the communal aspects of seeing which came with the demise of communism, these monuments of the times past are inherently deterritorialized and displaced when viewed in the context of Western representational structures, which condition an atomized, isolated and individuated viewer. The question then is, how is it possible to recapture or rather representationally translate communal reception when the embedded specificity of communist community has itself undergone such a radical transformation? What is the role of the curator in the perceptual politics that perpetuates through and around a work of art? Can a work of art intended for a collective optical unconscious in the original context of its production create new forms of undetermined and situational communities when exposed, represented and reinterpreted anew? What happens to the work when both its intended message and its addressee are lost? What becomes of a specific community in which the work is situated? What is the role of the one –the critic, curator, historian and writer, who exposes, reinterprets and repositions the communal work?
Would like to pose the double question of communal art’s function within communities in which these works are physically located as well as the aesthetic communities that come into being temporarily around a work of art.
The program is comprised of two parts. The first part entitled “Aesthetic Communities and Contextual Translation of Communal Art” will take place in Yerevan, in August 15-17th, while the second part “The Communal Function of a Monument” will be held in Ijevan, in August 18-20, a city located in Northern Armenia and close to the Georgian and Azerbaijani borders. For the first part in Yerevan we would like to invite proposals that deal with various theoretical frameworks, historical experiences and examples of aesthetic communities and contextual aspects of reception in terms of the production of aesthetic experience. The second part takes the artistic forum called “International Symposium for Sculpture” organized in Ijevan in 1985-1991 by art critic Saro Sarukhanian in the context of perestroika politics and dissipation of pressure of the centralised bureaucratic and ideological apparatus of the communist party as a starting point to pose questions related to curatorial practices. Can these practices be connected to community art or it is an artistic prerogative to produce a communally visible and viable art? How can aesthetic objects from the past be engaged in re-evaluation of a site specific public sculpture in ways that this re-evaluation may empower local communities to engage in the striving for cultural and social change? How can we communally re-evaluate the work in ways that might permit escape from oblivion on the one hand and sacralisation on the other?
The Program is structured to accommodate daily lectures by invited specialists, round-table discussions and presentations by the participants. The presentations should focus on curating and aesthetic communities or curating community art.
There is no fee for participation. However, the participants are expected to cover their own travel and accommodation costs. AICA-Armenia does not provide funding for logistics.
To participate, please send us your CV and a 300 word abstract of your proposed presentation by May 15th, 2010.
All materials should be sent to Marianna Hovhannisyan at m.a.hovhannisyan@gmail.com

Towards Commaborative Curating: Curatorial Education Redefined

2010-01-04T05:20:00.001-08:00

Coming soon--a collaborative publication from AICA-Armenia and SCCA-Ljubljana, documenting our activities within the World of Art and the Summer Seminars Program for Art Curators.

Edited by Angela Harutyunyan
Design and Layout by Lusine Talalyan, Nazareth Karoyan
Production manager Dušan Dovč

Table of Contents

Introduction
by Angela Harutyunyan

SCCA-Ljubljana – World of Art: Overview
by Sasa Nabergoj

AICA-Armenia – Summer Seminars Program
by Angela Harutyunyan

The Significance Of Inter-Regional Integration For Curatorial Practices
by Petja Grafenauer

Courses for Cultural Operators

2009-09-04T04:37:00.001-07:00

The National Association of Art Critics (AICA Armenia) relaunches courses related to the curatorial practice, history and theory of Western European and North American as well as Armenian contemporary art from October 2009. To participate in the 9-months long program, the applicants are required to have a bachelor degree as a minimum. People of various professions interested in art and culture, artists and others can also apply.

The courses provide an opportunity to intrude into a sphere in which art, culture and politics are intertwined, where the artist, art critic, curator and historian could have common ambitions. Separate subjects will be presented by the president of the association, art critic Nazareth Karoyan, by the leading professor of the Academy of Fine Arts, art historian and philosophy translator Vardan Azatyan, cultural experts Vardan Jaloyan and Harch Bayadyan, independent curator Eva Khachatryan, Angela Harutyunyan, Misak Xostikyan, artists Arman Grigoryan and Vahram Aghasyan and others.

The course are unique and come to fill in the gap of educational initiatives for contemporary cultural operators in former Soviet countries.

To obtain more information about the process of application and terms for participation, please, contact Nazareth Karoyan: naz.karoyan@gmail.com

The courses will be held in Armenian

Վերջն ամենուր է Արվեստի կուրատորների 4-րդ ամառային սեմինարներ Արվեստի քննադատների ազգային ասոցիացիա Երևան, հուլիսի 26-օգոստոսի 2

2009-09-04T04:06:00.000-07:00

Համայնքների կազմավորման համար թերևս երկու ճանապարհ կա՝ միավորվել՝ որոշակի գաղափար առաջ տանելու համար կամ պարզապես համախմբվել՝ հաղթահարելու միայնության զգացումը, որ ժամանակակից քոչվորական կենսաձև է ենթադրում։ Արվեստային համայնքները սովորաբար այս երկուսի մեջտեղում են. գոյություն ունեն վիրտուալ տարածության մեջ, բայց և ժամանակ առ ժամանակ նյութականանում են «արվեստի դաշտ» կոչվող հարթության վրա։ Համայնքները կազմավորվում են իրավիճակայնորեն՝ բանավիճելու, փաստարկելու, արդեն ծանոթ երևույթներն այլ կերպ պատկերացնելու, «կառուցելու» համախոհներ ու այլախոհներ, ցանցեր ու ճյուղավորումներ, շփվելու ու հակազդելու, պատասխանելու ու պատասխանից խուսափելու համար։ Սակայն նրանք, ովքեր կազմավորում են այս համայնքները, նաև արտադրում, աշխատում են ու հետք թողնում ընդհանուր այս դաշտի վրա փորձի միջոցով, որն ընդմիշտ և միայն եզակի է։ Ամեն անգամ, երբ ես, Նազարեթը և բոլոր նրանք, ովքեր ներգրավված են սեմինարների մեջ, փորձում ենք երևակայել մի համայնք՝ «ուտոպիական հանդիպումների» մի վայր, որ կնյութականա Երևանում, Բանգլադեշում, լողավազանի շուրջ (Մխիթար Սեբաստացու անվան կրթահամալիր, գեղարվեստի ավագ դպրոց), այս տեսիլը և՝ իրականանում է, և՝ ձախողվում։ Read More

Over is All Over: 2009

2009-08-05T23:42:00.000-07:00

photo: Lusine Talalian, Sevan, 2009

There are perhaps two main ways for a coming together of a community: to unite to advance a certain cause or to simply come together to overcome the feeling of loneliness and isolation that contemporary nomadic patterns of movement often entail. Artistic communities are often the combination of these two, existing both materially, but also virtually, ephemerally and quite concretely, through a common plateau called “the art field”. These come together situationally to debate, to argue, to imagine the already familiar phenomena differently, constructing associations and dissociations, networks and rhizomes, allies and rivals; to react and interact, to respond and withdraw. But those who constitute these communities also produce, work and make an impact upon this common field through an experience that is always already singular. Each and every time Nazareth, me and others who are involved in the Summer Seminars Program try to imagine a community –a utopian encounter, which would materialize in Armenia, in Yerevan, in “Bangladesh” –in and around the swimming pool. Each and every time this vision is both realized and betrayed at the same time.

Unlike the previous Summer Seminars from 2006 on, which were largely educational initiatives confined within the classroom format which implies a division between the roles of the one who teaches and those who were instructed, the 2009 seminars were driven from the need to collaboratively discuss and research methods of contemporary curatorial education within conditions that are radically different from the way the art market functions internationally, to share experiences, drinks, cigarettes, food and at times a bed. The 4th edition of the seminars program then served for two immediate but not necessarily simply identifiable goals: to provide the local scene with intellectual resources and ideas to initiate an alternative educational program on the other hand, and to help those invited to explore some of the ways in which it is still possible to articulate different models within the Euro-American academic and curatorial institutions, which would break away from the educational paradigm of instruction.

The program involved three components: daily morning lectures which ranged from the issues of culture industry within the post-fordist modes of economic and social relations (Aras Ozgun); alternate models of collective collaborative research and the physical and conceptual shape that future study collections might take (Clementine Deliss); aesthetic production between instrumentalization of creativity by private capital and modernist autonomy of art (Mel Jordan and Andy Hewitt) as well as some of the ways in which it might be possible not to instrumentalize art education for social and economic productivity (Malcolm Miles).

The second component of the program were round-table discussions. Even though these had a pre-defined conceptual framework and agenda, through diverse and antagonistic contribution by the participants of differing background it often drifted from this framework opening up new exciting avenues for discussion and intellectual exchange. These discussions moderated by Marko Stemenkovic, Sari Stenczer, Joanna Sokolowska, Lali Partenava and myself in the background (including Clementine Deliss’ subversive and course changing interventions) included themes which would echo the morning lectures without directly reflecting upon these: Art and/as Economy; Art Education as a Site of Critical Practice, Curating in the Expanded Field and The Politics of Pedagogy. These discussions never aimed at producing a general product or a consensus upon the debated themes or being used for some external goal other than communication. However, these provided stimuli to return to the specific context of Yerevan-- to the contemporary art scene here, to the politics of institutionalization (or de-institutionalization of contemporary art), and finally, to the political, cultural and social context of Mkhitar Sebastatsi Fine Arts College in “Bangladesh” which has been hosting the seminars since their conception in 2006.

Evening presentations by local and invited artists and curators were more dynamic, involving a larger public (since translation was provided, re: me acting as St. Sebastian). Without a specific thematic line, these presentations included the questions related to archiving and memory (Arpi Adamyan, Arax, Lusine Talalian, Astghik Melkonyan, Mher Azatyan as well as Joanna Sokolowska and Lali Partenava), affective curating (Nat Muller), experiences with institutions (or lack of them) and exhibition making practices (Sari Stenczer, Vivianna Checchia, Vahram Aghasyan and Marianna Hovhannisian). At times the topics drifted away from the main program, becoming insider-outsiders, such as the conversation between Marko Stamenkovic and myself. This latter came into being through a tension between my own desire to reflect upon the sea as a metaphor as well as a non-place and Marko Stamenkovic’s attempts to bring the sea closer to the ground.

A presentation by Eva Khachatryan also served to provide information about the local context, but this was information that can be always in doubt as much as we can question an easy access to a set of relationships, practices and experiences which we call “the context”. Through an experiment which I called “topographical curating” I tried to transport the audience into another space –the garden of Utopiana in August, 2008. What I disregarded was the specific topography (and climate conditions) of Sevan (where the presentation took place) as well as the specific “topography of mood” triggered by Grigor Khachatryan’s 55% apricot vodka.

Perhaps the seminars themselves were a topographical and relational engagement which can materialize differently while its story is being told through different emotional and intellectual (or as Nat Muller calls it-- affective) experiences. At least after the “guests” left and the hosts stayed, I realized that there is a medical condition called a post-summerseminars’ syndrome.

Summer Seminars 4: Towards Collaborative Curating

2009-07-19T02:06:00.000-07:00

Towards Collaborative Curating: Contemporary Curatorial Education in the Age of the Global Art Market
Summer Seminars’ For Contemporary Art Curators,
4th Annual Edition
27 July – 2 August, 2009

Is it still possible to break away from the cycle of reproducing the already existing and inherently hierarchical systems of representation? How do individual curatorial practices reaffirm or subvert the ways in which the global art market functions? Can curating function outside of market conditions? Is it possible to come up with common theories for contemporary curatorial education across heterogeneous contexts, or is curating only a context- specific and context-sensitive practice? What are the main problems facing the curatorial education today? Is it possible to prepare curators who are able to address ever- changing art practices? What role do theories of curating play in practice? These are some of the questions we would like to discuss within the framework of AICA-Armenia’s annual curatorial program, focusing on the intersection of curatorial education, theories and practices.

The 4th edition of the Summer Seminars’ Program for Contemporary Art Curators entitled Towards Collaborative Curating: Contemporary Art in the Age of the Global Art Market brings together art curators, theorists and academics, who are involved in the ongoing theoretical and practical issues of researching and finding adequate methods and modules for curatorial education and practice. The week-long seminars are comprised of lectures, round-table discussions and public presentations.

PROGRAM

Monday, July 27th: Towards Critical Education And New Modes of Research
10:00-10:45 -Introductory Note: Nazareth Karoyan and Angela Harutyunyan, AICA-Armenia,"Art Criticism And/As Education"
11:00-12:30 -Lecture: Dr Clémentine Deliss, Director, Future Academy, Edinburgh College of Art
"Future Research Collections in a Period of Recessional Curating"
13:30- 14:30-Round-Table (moderated by Lali Parteneva and Marianna Hovhannisian): Art Education as a Site of Critical Practice
19:00-20:30 -Artists' Talk. Lusine Davidyan and Arpi Adamyan, "Ghost Archive Project"; Mher Azatyan "An Archeology of the Everyday"

Tuesday, July 28th : Art And/As Economy
10:00-11:30 -Lecture by Aras Ozgun, New School for Social Research, "Post-Fordism, Neo-Liberalism, and Cultural Production"
13:00- 14:30 -Round-Table (moderated by Marko Stamenkovic) Economy of Art, Art Education and Curating within the circulation of the Global Art Market
19:00-19:45 - Public Presentation by Nat Muller, free-lance curator, "The Curatorial Affect: Surplus Value in an Age of Globalisation
20:00-20:45 - Public Presentation by Marianna Hovhannisian, Open University, Yerevan, "Season 18: L'Ecole du Magasin"

Wednesday, July 29th: Curator as Producer
10:00-11:30 - Lecture: Mel Jordan and Andy Hewitt (Freee Art Collective ), "On Co-production"
13:00-14:30 - Round-Table: Curating in the Expanded Field (moderated by Joanna Sokolowska ans Sara Stenczer): Curating and Creativity: Curator as Mediator/Translator
19:00-19:45 Public Presentation by Sára Stenczer (curator)
20:00-20:45-Public Presentation by Lali Pertenava (Independent curator and researcher)

Thursday, July 30th: The Practice and Methods of Education
10:00-11:30 Lecture by Malcolm Miles, University of Plymouth, "Contemporary Art, Theory, and Education"
13:00-14:30 Round-Table (moderated by Sara Stenczer): The Pedagogy of Education: Reading Session. Jacques Ranciere’s The Ignorant Schoolmaster
19:00-19:45 Public Presentation by Joanna Sokolowska, Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst in Leipzig, Another City, Another Life - of the Archives, video screening with introduction
20:00-20:45 Public Presentation by Viviana Checchia, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Slovakia, FRAME

Friday, July 31: Open Program
10:00-11:00 Video Screening Program I Eva Khachatryan
11:00-13:00- Lunch and Swimming Lessons by Grigor Khachatryan
14:00-15:00 – Visit to an artists’ studio
19:00-20:00 A public conversation with Marko Stamenkovic, conducted by Angela Haryutunyan

*Lectures and Round-Tables take place in Mkhitar Sebastatsi Fine Arts College. Public presentations will take place in Gallery One.

For more information, including abstracts for papers and biographies, please, log on to our website at www.naac.am

The Project is Supported by Open Society Institute

From Elsewhere: Reflections on the Symposium

2009-01-24T08:47:00.000-08:00

Angela Harutyunyan

The symposium with a laconic but vague title From Elsewhere took place on Nov. 6th at the Project Room of SCCA-Ljubljana, as a part of the networking meeting between several partners who established a collaboration of curatorial education-- Towards Collaborative Curating: Art Education in the Age of the Global Art Market. The individuals involved were Dusan Dovc, Petja Grafenauer and Barbara Borcic from SCCA-Ljubljana, Angela Harutyunyan and Nazareth Karoyan from AICA-Armenia, Renatta Papsch from Anadolu Kültür in Istanbul, Turkey, Valeria Ibraeva from SCCA-Alma-Aty in Kazakhstan and Laura Canderera from Townhouse Gallery in Cairo, Egypt.
Even though there was a lack of moderation, which did not provide the signposts for the audience to understand the purpose of the public symposium, it did not prevent an active and lively semi-formal discussion to flow after the presentation. The announced titles of papers were essentially the same (“The current condition of the contemporary art scene in Armenia (--Egypt, Kazakhtsan, Turkey) and the state of curatorial practices.”). However, the speakers presented rather heterogeneous views as well as structurally very different papers. Nazareth Karoyan addressed several artistic practices and curatorial positions in which the artistic/curatorial subjectivisation takes evolves on a spatial dynamic, as a relational exchange between different actors in the context of the Armenian contemporary art scene. The paper, while quite intriguing in its argument, nevertheless lacked in structure, which prevented the audience from getting a clear idea of the speaker’s own position within the presented discourse. Valeria Ibraeva told a compelling story about the ways in which contemporary Orientalism functions in relation to Central Asia and South Asia and the artistic challenges to this specific exercise of power, on the example of the exhibition “Destination Asia”. However, the speaker failed to address the context of the contemporary art scene in Kazakhstan or the artists’ specific positions within the discourses of subverting Orientalist assumptions.
Laura Canderera’s and Renatta Papsch’s presentations shared structural similarities in that both aimed at giving a clear and comprehensive idea about contemporary art institutions in Cairo and Istanbul respectively. Laura Canderera especially focused on the role of Townhouse Gallery in shaping the landscape of contemporary art in Egypt in the last 10 years, and its importance in bridging the gap between art as an exclusive, class-based place for subjective creativity and harsh and dystopian everyday life in Cairo. Renatta Papsch’s paper was mostly informative in that it comprehensively presented all the significant actors within the contemporary art field in Istanbul and their positions within this field.
With all the differences between the presented contexts, the speakers shared a similar concern about the lack of cultural practitioners, such as art curators, writers, critics and managers, and underscored the primacy of developing human recourses in these areas, as a priority. The round-table discussion which followed was mostly centered around the above-mentioned issues and more specifically, whether it is possible to establish shared paradigms and methods for curatorial education or the latter is always a context-specific and context-sensitive practice. The question did not receive definite closures, but the mere fact of bringing it up is perhaps more important for the process of reflection than finding quick and definite answers.
In my view, the symposium largely succeeded, if we are to stress the importance of communication between different cultural and geographical contexts rather than the presentation of simplified and easily digestible total knowledge about complex and heterogeneous contexts.

Networking Meeting: Towards Collaborative Curating

2008-11-22T06:31:00.000-08:00

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

2008-10-05T15:40:00.000-07:00

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

2008-08-31T14:26:00.000-07:00

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

2008-08-23T17:33:00.000-07:00

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

2008-08-19T00:28:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-08-14T01:03:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-08T03:57:00.000-08:00

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

Suggestions for topics

2007-09-11T06:26:00.000-07:00

Dear All,
these are my suggestions for the next summer seminars:
1)Alternative institutions, curatorial and artistic initiatives, networking, self-organization - decentralization, democratization of art and of socio-political discourses? – (proposals for presentations: WHW, Zagreb; Chto Delat?, St. Petersburg; Rotor, Graz, Wyspa Art Institute, Gdansk)
If sb is interested in this topic – please add of the names of interesting organizations

2)Shifting public spaces, cities in transition. Positioning of art in public debates and production of public spaces in post-socialist countries.
(proposal for presentation: Marius Babias, Berlin/Bucharest
(your suggestons are welcomed).
Also, I confirm the interest in the topics suggested during the feedback session:
-Nationalism and Globalization in Post-Socialist Condition
-Methodologies of Art History, Critical Writing and Curating

Suggestions Needed: from Angela

2007-09-07T04:34:00.001-07:00

I wanted to ask for your suggestions for next year's summer seminars' topic. Also, if you would like to suggest people for leading the courses and giving presentations, please, post them in the blog.
Any contribution is welcome.
Subject to funding, there might be a possibility to organize an alumni network meeting sometime in March. I will keep you informed about the outcomes.

Welcome speech :-))))

2007-08-18T10:19:00.000-07:00

Finally I could log in and can post my original comment as a new posting.

Another suggestion will follow this one.

Nadul',
you rock. Thanks a lot. I will also tell last year's participants about the blog. Meanwhile I suggest that we exchange the links related to our professional activities that we have mentioned during the presentations and beyond.
Here are some contributions from me:
--for some texts on Armenian art: www.naac.am
--ACCEA updates its website quite often: www.accea.info
--Utopiana's site is always underconstruction: www.utopiana.am
--for the alternative Armenian pavilion in Venice Biennale: www.underconstructionhome.net
--A version of my presentation that did not take place, can be found on SCCA-Ljubljana's website: http://www.worldofart.org/current/archives/28

This is all from me for now. I will aslo make a selection of the photos you left on the desktop and post them. Also, Grigor is preparing a dvd. I will get hold of it and copy for all of you once I go back to Armenia in October.

Stay tuned.
angela

Some photos from Joanna

2007-08-17T06:35:00.000-07:00

posted by nadia