REPUBBLICA DI ARMENIA
RESISTANCE THROUGH ART
Sona Abgarian, Vahram Aghasyan, Diana Hakobian, Tigran Khachatrian
Commissario: Edward Balassanian. Commissario Onorario: Jean Boghossian. Curatore: David Kareyan.
Sede: Collegio Armeno Murad Rafaelian, Palazzo Zenobio, Dorsoduro
www.accea.info/venice/2005biennale.htm


RESISTANCE THROUGH ART



From mid-nineties in almost all sectors of the society the enthusiasm of revolution turned into overall state of crisis. It was pregnant with apathy, subjective attitude towards social life, and mounting nostalgia for the double-summit world, a world where poverty and deprivation were compensated by illusive pride of citizenship of a nuclear superpower. This inclination which had emerged in Armenia and other post-soviet countries is the basic obstacle of creation of a democratic society.



Today processes of globalization more than ever attach importance to the civic attitude of every person, particularly that of the individual artist. But this is not an automatic simple choice. This is not a choice between the past and the future, between the east and the west, the war and peace, or between “mine” and “yours”.



The choice which is made by the artist today, is rather an act of resistance. As stated by Adorno “Affirmativeness resists the worst, the development of barbarism; it not only suppresses nature, but also preserves it because of this suppression. ... Life asserts itself by means of culture, including the hope for better, dignified, true and worthy human life. ... Affirmativeness doesn't wind the halo of innocence around the existing; it vigorously resists death, the telos of all power, all hegemony, while sympathizing everything that exists”.



Participating artists of “Resistance Through Art” have had very active role in all of the activities which have taken place in Armenia in the nineties, outside the sphere of institutions inherited from the Soviet era.

The Armenian Center for Contemporary Experimental Art (“NPAK” in Armenian acronym) became the venue where artists gathered and freely exhibited the hidden, unconformable, and oppressed layers of socio-cultural and psychological conflicts. In particular exhibitions entitled “Crisis”, “Collapse of Illusions”, “Civic Commotion”, “Anoush”, and their culmination: “Politics Under 180 Degree” should be noted, where the hysteric and crazed outbursts of “revolutionary reconstruction” of farmer-breeder culture, and industrial modernization were acutely displayed. These are conflicts which we witness when the ideology tending towards the singular center collides with reality.

Artists of this wave of resistance, using psychological and aesthetic contradictions, display the “clash of the material and the spiritual” as the reverberation of already non-existent world, whose acoustic reverberations may endanger the existence of all of us. Is it possible to live without violence? Which is the natural environment of man? Why is it that culture, which is supposed to be the mechanism of sublimation, is unable to manifest the boundaries within which we would feel in our natural environment? Why is man trying to escape from the world of his own creation? Why does he think that his natural environment is the sea and the jungle?



Diana Hagopian in her “Logic of Power” triptych video, by displaying the roles assigned to women together with statistics of opinion polls is directly asking the question of whether it is possible to reconcile with the violence prevalent in the world? Is it possible to create a society, where self-admiration and authority do not appear as “desirable play”?

The images which follow one another in a fast “Rock and Roll” pace create a dynamic chain, which by its imagery reminds the positive input of emancipating processes of the sixties and seventies towards liberalization of social behavior. No matter how weak or insignificant was the impact of early soviet liberalizations in Soviet Armenia; it is not anymore possible to subordinate the idea of gender equality to some other important goal. Liberation of sexual orientation/life, gave many people the feeling of mastering their own destiny. It has become possible to change residence, profession, gender, color of skin, etc.

Diana Hagopian tries to awaken the viewer's memory by including him in the emancipation process. A process of a long journey continuously colliding with variety of expressions of neo-patriarchism justifying “logic of power”, its senseless exploitation and consumption.



Sona Abgarian's “Tomorrow at the Same Time” video-installation is another example of inhibition of woman's identity and her ability of free expression in society. It seems like the woman, by manipulating a monster's mask is studying her past face, which she was wearing during some unknown festivity. Lonely and abandoned by guests she tries to show her today's face to her yesterday's mask. Moreover, she tries to reanimate both, away from any socially imperative activity and usefulness. The entire theatricality of movements and gestures prove total bankruptcy of the stereotypes of the mass culture, where the artificial hides its artificiality. The same act is repeated on the second monitor with time-lapse; as if it wants to emphasize that the signs of lust and “untamed pleasure” give birth only to fears and emptiness. On the photographs mounted on the backdrop of the monitors there are again the same images, scratched and frayed, as a desperate attempt to flee from the trap of ever-multiplying models of the mass culture.

By this persistent repetition Sona Abgarian presents the crisis of individuality as, if anything, the absence of specific form of communication for uniting with others and the world.



Tigran Khachatrian's video of “Todis” as the artist puts it belongs to his “Corner of the Room Productions” or “Garage Films” series. Beginning from 2000 Tigran Khachatrian has produced a series of video-films: “Color of Eggplant”, “Stalker”, “Romeo”, “J-L Godard”, etc. Under the name of “Corner of the Room Productions” the artist adopts a unique method of re-mixes, whereby internationally famed, basically “left” cinematographers' famous films are re-valued. As the artist insists this reenactment returns the original humanity and simplicity to the idolized films.

In “Todis” appear the shaving Santa Clause, the “MGM” lion with hammer-and-cycle-printed underwear worn over and erotic scenes of Pasolini's “The flower of One Thousand And One Night”. Here Paul Elluard's “Freedom” poem is recited concurrent with image of a nude personage of the “hippy” era with a guitar. All of this is nothing but an attempt to liberate cinema from a production process which is alien to the viewer, and has turned the movie theater into “Platonic Cave”.

Tigran Khachatrian is convinced that periodic retrospection of art has positive effect on self-recognition of society: This is a unique traditionalism.



Vahram Aghassian in his “Factories in the Sky” double screen video-installation presents a dilapidated factory from the era of “the glorious industrial achievement” of the one-time Soviet Armenia. He tries to break free from the prejudiced stare of the viewer who in post-soviet artists' works searches for documentary description of financial cataclysms. In the passage between very closely placed projection screens the artist spreads artificial “stage smoke” which is the only tangible reality. More precisely it is the only reality encompassing us. If the history was first written and later tried to make what was written to happen, then the world has been turned into smoke.



These four representatives of Art of Resistance are convinced that art has influence on our life, hence on how the world should be. Beginning with the “Crisis” exhibition (1999) until today, the basic characteristic of exhibitions organized at NPAK is in the fact that artists reflect upon their real human and social experiences.

David Kareyan
Curator