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From Cultural Politics To The Politics Of Pure Representation: The A

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  • From Cultural Politics To The Politics Of Pure Representation: The A

    FROM CULTURAL POLITICS TO THE POLITICS OF PURE REPRESENTATION: THE ARMENIAN PAVILION IN VENICE

    epress.am
    06.23.2011

    The article below was provided by Angela Harutyunyan, an art curator
    originally from Armenia but now based in Egypt who attended the
    opening of the Biennale di Venezia (the Venice Art Biennial) earlier
    this month.

    The Armenian Pavilion at the 54th International Art Exhibition
    of la Biennale di Venezia (the Venice Art Biennial) entitled
    "Manuals: Subjects of a New Universality" conceptually deals with the
    relationship of the particular with the universal in the context of
    identity and offers various aesthetic solutions to the politics and
    economics of survival.

    By overidentifying with the attributes of the dominant power, Grigor
    Khachatryan's National Center for Planning Accidents (pictured, below)
    presents power as a theatrical act and a performance. In a designated
    room in the Armenian Mekhitarist Mourad Rafaelian College (also known
    as Palazzo Zenobio) Khachatryan has reproduced a room for official
    meetings with attributes such as a central carpet, a long table,
    soft office chairs, tall natural flowers placed along the length of
    the table as well as photographic documentation of previous official
    meetings. Even the attendant of the Pavilion automatically becomes
    Khachatryan's secretary.

    Mher Azatyan's installation (pictured, below) delves into a formula for
    survival in verbal and visual fragments of the everyday. The ruins of
    soviet universality-photographic snapshots of abandoned and accidental
    objects and sites are uncomfortably crowded on the walls of the hallway
    connecting two larger rooms, as if the positioning of one photograph
    intervenes into the space of another. As opposed to this piling up
    of the visual fragments, Azatyan's texts seem to breathe freely in a
    larger room where they appear and disappear according to the viewer's
    movements in the room. Azatyan's short samples of "minimalist poetry"
    are either collected from the vernacular language or "authored" by the
    artist. Even though most of them are authored, nevertheless, they are
    collectively produced utterances that structure everyday communication,
    or often the lack of it: "We burn wood, and another winter will pass,"
    "The bee produces honey. What does the artist produce?" and "Money
    doesn't like equality."

    The narrative of the Manuals concludes with Astghik Melkonyan's
    guidebook on daily survival or instructions on how to manage one's
    monthly salary (pictured, below). The construction made of steel and
    Plexiglas carries various prescriptions useful especially for artists
    living in the socio-economic conditions of today's Armenia. Both
    Melkonyan's work and the Odyssey of its transportation to Venice
    epitomize the cultural politics in contemporary Armenia as well as
    raise fundamental issues related to the status of the artist as well
    as art's symbolic and material value.

    On Jun. 4, during the crowded opening of the Armenian Pavilion, the
    doors of the room reserved for Melkonyan's installation were locked. A
    note was hanging with an inscription that due to the "loss" of the
    work during its transportation, a second opening was scheduled on Jun.

    10. The reason for this failure was the fact that various elements
    of the construction were forgotten and left behind in Yerevan. What
    followed where haphazard, uncalculated and ultimately failed attempts
    to manufacture and construct the installation from aluminum, until
    a decision was made to open the Pavilion without Melkonyan's work.

    However, neither the curator's neutralizing ascription of
    responsibility to a third person, nor the celebratory attitude of
    the organizers could conceal the fact that in case of the Armenian
    Pavilion it was not the artist who appeared in the center of the
    project - instead, it was the glitter of pure representation spiced
    up with a large audience, clinking wine glasses and even the presence
    of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili who visited the Pavilion
    in a move of cultural diplomacy.

    What lies between the curatorial team's initial mission to use the
    Pavilion as an opportunity to locally intervene into the cultural
    politics and the project's ultimate destiny as pure representation is
    a long and painful negotiation of power, establishment of professional
    positions vis-a-vis the Ministry of Culture and the commissioner and
    manifestations of these positions. The curatorial team consisting of
    Vardan Azatyan, Ruben Arevshatyan and Nazareth Karoyan experienced
    some "casualties" before Venice as Azatyan formally withdrew from
    the team three weeks before the opening of the Biennale.

    According to Azatyan's interview to Epress.am, the main reason for his
    withdrawal was the delay of financial resources that the commissioner
    was to secure. This created a situation when the failure of a single
    miniscule detail could result in the collapse of the entire project.

    However, behind Azatyan's solely pragmatic decision stand serious
    professional considerations with ethical consequences which have
    ramifications for cultural politics. In a situation when a failure
    to oversee small details due to the lack of finances threatens
    the entire project, curators are forced to find situational and
    momentary solutions. This can create conditions in which not only
    their professional integrity is threatened as the production of the
    project is essentially out of their control, but also their working
    relationship with the artists and the responsibility towards the
    project. But most importantly, according to Azatyan, "as a result,
    the vicious work method common in Armenia was again employed - based
    on sacrifice... Instead of carrying out their direct duties, they
    [public institutions] act as symbolic bureaus, which in the name of
    the 'homeland', in the name of 'the nation's honor,' are 'authorized'
    to exploit and decimate the country's most expensive resource -
    human energy."

    Instead of becoming a catalyst to have an impact on local
    cultural politics in Armenia, the Pavilion (even if it is an
    engaging exhibition) turns into a space for pure representation
    where the curators (willingly or by default), organizers and those
    accompanying them project their phantasmagoria (related to power and
    recognition), where the contact with contemporary art becomes a matter
    of "lifestyle" and the artist turns into a tool to fuel these desires
    and associations. When art is measured according to how many tons
    it weighs, representation as an event becomes the guarantor of the
    project's success, situationism turns into the only possible working
    method and the artist appears as merely a reason to secure the success
    of the event, then it is pointless to expect a curatorial position,
    reflection or responsibility. What might seem a simple failure to
    bring together one installation is a symptom of deeper processes and
    attitudes within the cultural politics in Armenia.

    To expect responsibility from the Ministry of Culture or the
    commissioner is in vain since, according to Karoyan, they are
    "inexperienced" in the organization of the Pavilion or dealing with
    the contemporary art scene. But also, Arevshatyan's and Karoyan's
    decision at the time of Azatyan's withdrawal to carry on with
    the project and "save" it, arguably, did not allow the official
    institutions and their actors to realize their share of responsibility
    and gain "experience." In this situation, the whole responsibility
    by default lies with the curators whose most important task (apart
    from playing cultural politics with public institutions and their
    private appointees) is to closely engage with an artist's practice and
    provide the best possible conditions for the production of the work and
    subsequently, the exhibition. This is possible only when the artist's
    practice appears at the center of the project. Within our specific
    economy and distribution of resources, it is the curator's task to
    enable the artist as much as possible to become the main economic
    subject as well as the subject of aesthetic decisions. The curator's
    task is not so much the mediation and translation between the art
    work and its publics (only those works need "medical hermeneutics,"
    if we borrow Boris Groys' term, that need to be "saved"). Neither is
    it the desire to slice a bigger pie of art's symbolic economy, but to
    be attentive and serious about the most trivial of administrative,
    organizational and formal details - starting from the artist's
    accommodation to the preparation of the press release.

    Finally, it is the curator's task to work with the artist, and not
    at the expense of the artist. It is only then we can celebrate the
    representational success of the Pavilion when the experience of its
    organization results in an impact in the local cultural policy. The
    participation in the world's oldest and most prestigious Biennale
    certainly involves a branding operation and carries with it cultural
    capital that can translate into the local cultural politics. This
    involves a changed attitude towards the artist's practice, a demand
    from public institutions to provide access to its resources for the
    producers of contemporary art and its discourses as well as active
    involvement in the dominant politics of representation.

    When the artist's experience with the Biennale ironically becomes
    identical to the content of her work (a manual of how-to-do with
    the per diem and accommodation and how to construct a laborious
    installation out of nothing) and turns into a strategy and tactic
    of survival, then we can easily conclude that the cultural politics
    of the Pavilion have failed, even if the representation of the event
    has succeeded.

    All photos property of and provided by the artists.

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