From Elsewhere: Reflections on the Symposium

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

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


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

Angela

New Impressions from Old Yerevan: by Rana Ozturk

Photo: Alena Boika

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



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

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

Some Yerevan Impressions from Pawel

One Week in Yerevan: Art, Politics, and Sexuality

Pawel Leszkowicz's post on rhiz.eu

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

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

Armenian Apricot Soup

Hey everyone!

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

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

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

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

Armenian Apricot Soup

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

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

Add the cumin and stir well.

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

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

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

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

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

Serves 8 to 10.


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

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

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

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

Post Socialism and Media Transformations: Strategies of Representation

Participants

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

Courses

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

Instructor: Olesya Turkina

10 sessions

Art History

Painting in the Era of the New Media

Instructor: Petja Grafenauer Kranc

5 sessions

Curatorial Methods II: Relations of Representation

Instructor: Anthony Auerbach

5 sessions

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

Practical Workshop: Dominique Abensour

10 Sessions

Presenters

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

Organizers - AICA-Armenia, Nazareth Karoyan and Angela Harutyunyan

and Open Society Institute

Culturesfrance Embassy of France in Armenia