ARMENIAN TRANSNATION: KROSSING COLATERAL EVENT FOR THE 53RD INTERNATIONAL ART EXHIBITION IN VENICE

Art Daily
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May 26 2009

VENICE.- In the sphere of national and transnational belonging,
the positioning of VOULU / OBLIGÃ~I (desire/obligation) as distant
points on the same spectrum opens avenues of approach to the wide
field of political and cultural heritage in a very fertile way. To
renounce an idea, only because it contradicts another would mean to
deny whole worlds.

The exhibition VOULU / OBLIGÃ~I, outskirts of a small contradiction is
the latest project of underconstruction, a large scale collaboration
that has been in progress for four years. During that time, this
platform for Armenian artists has focused on recurring, sensitive
issues in a globalizing and â~@~^internetizing" world, including
identity, nationality, citizenship and social cohesion. In those
four years, artists and intellectuals have worked together to find
possible answers through virtual and real dialogues in the form of
artistic works, exhibitions, writings, and meetings. Some of the
questions explored: What does ‘being Armenian’, or an identity ‘under
construction’ mean in the 21st century? Who are the Armenians anyway
and how do they want to be seen by themselves and others? Can a virtual
community of Armenian artists legitimate itself as a sustainable
settlement? How possible is it to have meaningful dialogue with
partners spread around the world? Is it possible to develop common
goals and real, qualitative communication in virtual space? One of the
outcomes of this whole process is shown in the exhibition Krossing,
a collateral event of the 53rd Venice Biennale.

The underconstruction artists’ commitment, a powerful resource
and altogether a metaphor for the rhizomatic construction of the
transnation, proposes works which do not claim the univocality
and solidity of national symbols, but which aim to be like strings
composing a plot. Being out of place, displaced, in geographical
and symbolic senses, becomes an affirmative option for eluding the
established categories which organize the production and circulation
of art and knowledge in terms defined from the centre.