PRESS RELEASE

Armenian Center for Contemporary Experimental Art
(“NPAK” in Armenian acronym)
1/3 Pavstos Biuzand Blvd.
Yerevan, Republic of Armenia
Contact: Eva Khachatrian
Tel: +3741 568225 & 568325
Fax: +3741 560216
E-mail: accea@netsys.am
Web:

ARMENIA TO TAKE PART AT VENICE BIENNALE
FOR THE 6TH CONSECUTIVE TIME

YEREVAN, ARMENIA, MARCH 27, 2005 – Ministry of Culture of the
Republic of Armenia has one more time appointed the Armenian Center
for Contemporary Experimental Art (“NPAK” in Armenian acronym) to
organize the Pavilion of the Republic of Armenia at International Art
Biennale of Venice. The upcoming Biennale will be hosted by the
Makhitarian Congregation at Palazzo Zenobio (The Murad Rafaelian
College) in Venice from June 12 through November 6, 2005.

“This is the sixth consecutive time that Armenia is going to
participate at Venice Biennale. We at NPAK are proud that we have
been the initiator and organizer of this very important presence of
the Armenian culture at this most significant international arena of
the arts. We should not let this chain of continuity break. As
before, we shall do our utmost to make it happen in 2005 as well,”
said New York artist Sonia Balassanian, the Founder and Senior
Artistic Director of NPAK.

Dr. Edward Balassanian, Co-Founder of NPAK and the Commissioner of
the Armenian Pavilion at Venice Biennale (1999, 2001, 2003 and 2005)
proudly states that “since the very beginning (1995) funding of the
Armenian Pavilion has been secured by Diaspora donations without
burdening the National Budget of the Republic of Armenia. And this
time is no exception.”

The interested public and art-enthusiasts are urged to respond to the
fund-raising drive, which is underway now. Tax-deductible
contributions can be made to “ACCEA” (81 Murray Street, New York, NY
10007), tel. (212)732-3598.

Venice Biennale veteran artist David Kareyan has been appointed to
curate the pavilion. An open and competitive process of selection has
taken place and artists of 2005 have been chosen. The statement of
the curator of the pavilion, which includes introductory review of
each artist’s work, is presented below.

* * *

RESISTANCE THROUGH ART
By David KAREYAN
Curator of the Armenian Pavilion at Venice Biennale 2005

>>From mid-nineties, the enthusiasm of revolution in post-Soviet
Armenia has turned into an overall state of crisis. This is dominated
by apathy, a subjectivist attitude towards social life, and mounting
nostalgia for the bipolar world, where poverty and deprivation were
compensated by the illusive pride of being a citizen of a nuclear
superpower. This social phenomenon, which has accompanies the process
of globalization, is one of the basic obstacles to democracy in
post-Soviet republics.

Globalization forces the artist to select between making a conscious
choice or conforming. This is not a simple choice between the past
and the future, east and west, war and peace, or between “mine” and
“yours”. This choice is an act of resistance. According to Theodor W.
Adorno, “Affirmativeness resists the worst, the development of
barbarism. … Life asserts itself by means of culture, including the
hope for a better, dignified, true and worthy human life.”

Building on this idea, the artists of the project “Resistance through
Art”, using psychological and aesthetic contradictions, display the
“clash of the bodily with the spiritual”, and ask whether it is
possible to live without violence. What is man’s natural environment?
Why is culture, which is supposed to be the mechanism of sublimation,
unable to determine the boundaries of our natural environment? Why do
humans try to escape from the world they create?

Diana HAGOPIAN in her video “The Logic of Power”, by displaying the
roles assigned to women together with statistics from opinion polls
is directly asking whether it is possible to reconcile with violence.
Is it possible to create a society where self-admiration and
authority do not appear as “attractive games”?

Images which follow one another in a fast “Rock and Roll” pace create
a dynamic chain, which by its imagery reminds us of the positive
effects of the emancipation movements of the 1960’s and 70’s.
Diana Hagopian tries to take the viewer on a journey of emancipation
which, however, is continuously colliding with various expressions of
the neo-patriarchal justification of “the logic of power”, its
senseless exploitation and consumption.

Sona ABGARIAN’s video-installation “Tomorrow at the Same Time” is
another example of a woman’s inability to articulate her identity.
The girl, by manipulating a monster’s mask, simultaneously discovers
her own: a mask she had worn in the past at an unknown party. Lonely
and abandoned by the guests, she tries to show her present face to
her past mask. The theatricality of movements and gestures
demonstrate the total bankruptcy of the stereotypes of the mass
culture, where the artificial veils its artificiality. The same act
is repeated on a second monitor with a time-lapse, as if observing
that the only origins of fear and emptiness are the signs of lust and
untamed pleasure. On the photographs mounted on the backdrop of the
monitors there are the same images, scratched and frayed, as a
desperate attempt to flee from falling into the trap of the
mass-consumption models of show business.

Tigran KHACHATRIAN’s video “Thodicy”, according to the artist belongs
to his “Corner of the Room” or “Garage Film Production” series, which
he began in 2000. In this series the artist adopts a unique method of
re-mixing, where the famous films of internationally acclaimed and
commonly “leftist” film directors are revisited. The artist insists
that this reenactment returns the original attributes of humanity and
simplicity to the idolized films. Tigran Khachatrian believes that
periodic retrospection of art is didactically effective for the
self-consciousness of society: This, in his opinion, is a unique
traditionalism.

Vahram AGHASYAN in his double screen video-installation “Factories in
the Sky” presents an abandoned, 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 blows artificial “stage smoke”, which
is the only tangible reality. If history was written first and later
attempted to be enacted, then the world has been turned into smoke.
These four representatives of “The Art of Resistance” believe that
art has an influence on life, hence on how the world should be. From
the exhibition “Crisis” (1999) on, the basic feature of exhibitions
organized at the Armenian Center for Contemporary Experimental Art
(organizer of the Armenian Pavilion) is the fact that artists reflect
upon their real human and social experiences.