After a short 90 minute flight our group arrives in Yerevan, the capital of the Republic of Armenia and home to over a million people. While a taxi is driving us to our first stop, we get our first impressions of Yerevan and immediately notice its situation in a totally different climate and cultural context. Beneath a clear blue sky the temperatures have fallen to around 10°C (as opposed to 20°C in Teheran) and girls changed their headscarves for warm gloves.
After a short drive, we arrived at Kochar Str. 13, an impressive Soviet era building which houses a large amount of artist studios in quite basic conditions, in which I can imagine it must be tough to work during cold winters. The building hosts organisations such as Studio 20 where like-minded art professionals join forces. Studio 20 – a project of the ArtBasis Organization – serves as a communal space for discussion and creativity.
It’s goal is to provide a collaborative and informal platform for intimate gatherings, discussions, reflection, information exchange and production. During a 3-hour session, a core group of Armenian artists, curators and activists from different generations informs our group about the contemporary art scene in Yerevan. Due to the lack of presentation platforms, a dominant art market, the absence of support by the government, the insufficient quality of Modern Art Museum and a conservative Academy of Fine Arts, the local art scene is operating in a melting pot of self founded, bottom-up initiatives. Art Schema, for example, is an online platform for visual arts professionals to create structured data, manage their own websites and present their works online. A second example is Video Art Archive Armenia, an online presentation platform for video art / performances and a starting point for various discursive paths. Unlike in Iran, where nearly no artist had a proper website or portfolio, these artists in Yerevan are obsessed by creating professional and semi professional websites, online archives and Facebook pages to make their work accessible for local and international public.
Later that evening our delegation was invited for a bbq & vodka party in the Epicurean garden of ICA: the Institute for Contemporary Art. This organization was established in 2006 by Nazareth Karoyan – to this day the driving force of this alternative school – and gradually transformed from a short term curatorial workshop into a four semester long comprehensive study program. Where the more traditional Academy of Fine Arts of Yerevan refuses to treat contemporary art and experimental topics, ICA confronts its students with what is necessary to fully understand current artistic movements. The garden was packed with people ranging from 17 to 90 years old. Once again we witnessed that the contemporary art scene in Yerevan is not only led by a group of young, upcoming people but is founded on a generation of artists from the sixties and seventies. This older generation is still passionate, present and engaged and therefore a ‘maître à penser’ for the following generations. There is no doubt in the absoluteness of this institution’s social role in the local art scene and as a breading ground for future projects. Both online and offline.
By Louise Osieka
Orientationtrip 2016 