Towards Collaborative Curating: Contemporary Curatorial Education in the Age of the Global Art Market

The 4th edition of AICA Armenia’s Summer School brought together a motley crew of academics, curators, theorists, educators and other art practitioners, spanning from Poland, UK, Hungary, Georgia, to Turkey, Italy and Serbia. Old Europe meets New Europe and all beyond and in-between, which made for an interestingly heterogeneous party of people. I had visited neighbouring Georgia in 2003, but was not very much in the know regarding Armenia and its art scene.

Yerevan is perhaps not the most inspiring city in Armenia, because of its rather uninviting (post-)Soviet feel. Beautiful green Dilijan in the North-East, Gyumri still struggling to come to terms with the devastating 1988 earthquake and its aftermath, and the eery industrial runs of Alaverdi yield a far richer visual palette. Yet Yerevan’s outdoor café culture, wonderful restaurants and buzz make it a lively place, as does its socio-political urban history – not necessarily instantly visible. During this rainy summer Armenians from the diaspora flooded the city streets, and the steady stream of Ladas and marshrutkas (mini vans) were occasionally interrupted by Hummers and luxury cars. If the topics of this seminar were questioning the post-Soviet condition, matters of globalisation, and tensions between so-called centres and peripheries, then these was literally enacted in the streets of Yerevan, and the choice of the organisers to hold the seminars and panels in a downtrodden Yerevan suburb with bleak housing estates, which the locals know as “Bangladesh”. After the collapse of the Soviet Union (1991) and Armenian independence (1991), the city centre became highly commercialised, making a move to the suburbs for artists for their activities often a necessity. In defence of contextual curating and fieldwork, getting out of the conference venue, and spending time after the seminar exploring Yerevan and other cities, proved invaluable.

During my public presentation I spoke about “The Curatorial Affect: Surplus Value in an Age of Globalisation”, basing my analysis on works of Palestinian and Lebanese artists. Though geographically close to the Middle East, and with significant diasporic populations of Armenians in Lebanon and Syria, there is little artistic exchange or collaboration taking place. This while many common themes are shared: trauma (genocide, civil war, displacement), the Ottoman yoke, political tutelage and occupation (Soviet, Israeli, Syrian), the struggle for self-determination and national identity, the diasporic condition, historical amnesia and individual and collective memory. The talk resonated with many in the audience, though few Armenian artists actually grapple with the Armenia’s Soviet past, and focussed the past decades on formulating an Armenian identity in opposition to a Soviet one, and more recently urban changes and gender issues.

Critic and curator Angela Harutyunyan put it clearly during an informal interview with me: ”There is an oblivion. Memory and history cannot be critically revised.” It will be interesting to follow which type of practice and issues a new generation of Armenian artists and curators will put on the table.