Offers a short history of the MA program in Art History and Curating launched at the American Uni... more Offers a short history of the MA program in Art History and Curating launched at the American University of Beirut in 2017.
The document presents two separate articles with the same title –“What is Hamasteghtsakan Art” – ... more The document presents two separate articles with the same title –“What is Hamasteghtsakan Art” – by artist Arman Grigoryan and art critic Nazareth Karoyan, published in Armenia in 1994 and 1996 respectively. Translated from Armenian and introduced by Angela Harutyunyan both articles have been formative for the development of contemporary art in Armenia. While presenting diverging views on the meaning of hamasteghtsakan (translated as collectively created), the concept was circulated as a definition for a broad range of post-medium artistic practices in late Soviet and post-Soviet Armenia. These practices formed an oppositional discourse to both Socialist Realism and Armenian National modernism. Harutyunyan's introduction locates the texts in a broader context of artistic institutional transformations in the late 1980s and early 1994 in Armenia.
The notion of the public sphere, as elaborated in western European and Anglo-American academic di... more The notion of the public sphere, as elaborated in western European and Anglo-American academic discourses, has been largely associated with the emergence of liberalism and civil society. Even those theories that critique Jürgen Habermas's notion of the public sphere for its ignorance of the politics of exclusion and inclusion , nevertheless rely on the notion of the public sphere as an arena in which identity finds representation: the public sphere here is constituted as a battleground for recognition and representation of identities within the already established structures of legitimization. Developed in radically different circumstances from those of western Europe and North America, in countries where state socialism prevailed, the notion of the public sphere calls for a different conception and identification with the state. By questioning the notion and its conceptualization in a post-Soviet context, this article discusses the practices of the group ACT in Armenia in 1994-96 and the ways in which these practices construct a public sphere not by transgressive acts of refusal and criticality but through the affirmation of the existing state. ACT's
Active Withdrawals: Life and Death of Institutional Critique, 2016
The collapse of the bi--polar world order with the demise of the Berlin Wall has triggered a pre... more The collapse of the bi--polar world order with the demise of the Berlin Wall has triggered a previously uncharted cartography of the art world. The incorporation of the newly emerging contemporary art contexts into the globalized art scene, which operates on the claim of democratizing the art system and absorbing yet "undiscovered" cultural territories, has arguably followed the trajectory of neo--liberal economics. The newly discovered art worlds for the increasingly globalizing art system have been those with natural resources, financial markets and geopolitical currencies. This economic and cultural expansion has been often coupled with the post 9/11 Bush doctrine that hails negative liberty as a positive notion by coercively imposing "freedom" onto various post--colonial contexts formerly aligned with one of the Cold War vectors of power. We can call these contexts post--peripheries since with globalization and increasing transnationalization of capital, the age--old center--periphery distinction is no longer viable. However, this does not mean that peripheries are extinct, but rather this suggests that power itself is dispersed to the extent that it becomes intangible. Dispersion and fragmentation of power and the subsequent complexity of center--periphery distinctions mask the real operation of capital that is always a totality. I define post--peripheries as discursive, geographic and cultural spaces that can and do exist in traditional centers of power and not only in the formerly colonized territories: increasing marginalization of the working classes and the structural exclusion of the unemployed from social life in the UK and the US post 1980s is one example of a post--periphery. Post--peripheries are those spaces and discourses wherein technologies and techniques developed in the center are consumed rather than produce. But these can also be consumed subversively, by misuse or misappropriation. Transnational art events such as biennales and festivals structurally reproduce the characteristics of the post--periphery: the means of representation and the discursive tropes emanate from the center, yet these are used and consumed in other geographies sometimes with conformism and at other times critically and subversively. Geographically dispersed and varied, transnational art events often promote a mobile cast of cultural workers and artists with repeated appearances in Gwangju, Sharjah, São Paolo, Istanbul and Dubai sequentially or at time synchronically. What the political and cultural geographies of various post--peripheries share is the ways in which the globalized art scene has constructed the notion of the art event which in turn relies on the
Offers a short history of the MA program in Art History and Curating launched at the American Uni... more Offers a short history of the MA program in Art History and Curating launched at the American University of Beirut in 2017.
The document presents two separate articles with the same title –“What is Hamasteghtsakan Art” – ... more The document presents two separate articles with the same title –“What is Hamasteghtsakan Art” – by artist Arman Grigoryan and art critic Nazareth Karoyan, published in Armenia in 1994 and 1996 respectively. Translated from Armenian and introduced by Angela Harutyunyan both articles have been formative for the development of contemporary art in Armenia. While presenting diverging views on the meaning of hamasteghtsakan (translated as collectively created), the concept was circulated as a definition for a broad range of post-medium artistic practices in late Soviet and post-Soviet Armenia. These practices formed an oppositional discourse to both Socialist Realism and Armenian National modernism. Harutyunyan's introduction locates the texts in a broader context of artistic institutional transformations in the late 1980s and early 1994 in Armenia.
The notion of the public sphere, as elaborated in western European and Anglo-American academic di... more The notion of the public sphere, as elaborated in western European and Anglo-American academic discourses, has been largely associated with the emergence of liberalism and civil society. Even those theories that critique Jürgen Habermas's notion of the public sphere for its ignorance of the politics of exclusion and inclusion , nevertheless rely on the notion of the public sphere as an arena in which identity finds representation: the public sphere here is constituted as a battleground for recognition and representation of identities within the already established structures of legitimization. Developed in radically different circumstances from those of western Europe and North America, in countries where state socialism prevailed, the notion of the public sphere calls for a different conception and identification with the state. By questioning the notion and its conceptualization in a post-Soviet context, this article discusses the practices of the group ACT in Armenia in 1994-96 and the ways in which these practices construct a public sphere not by transgressive acts of refusal and criticality but through the affirmation of the existing state. ACT's
Active Withdrawals: Life and Death of Institutional Critique, 2016
The collapse of the bi--polar world order with the demise of the Berlin Wall has triggered a pre... more The collapse of the bi--polar world order with the demise of the Berlin Wall has triggered a previously uncharted cartography of the art world. The incorporation of the newly emerging contemporary art contexts into the globalized art scene, which operates on the claim of democratizing the art system and absorbing yet "undiscovered" cultural territories, has arguably followed the trajectory of neo--liberal economics. The newly discovered art worlds for the increasingly globalizing art system have been those with natural resources, financial markets and geopolitical currencies. This economic and cultural expansion has been often coupled with the post 9/11 Bush doctrine that hails negative liberty as a positive notion by coercively imposing "freedom" onto various post--colonial contexts formerly aligned with one of the Cold War vectors of power. We can call these contexts post--peripheries since with globalization and increasing transnationalization of capital, the age--old center--periphery distinction is no longer viable. However, this does not mean that peripheries are extinct, but rather this suggests that power itself is dispersed to the extent that it becomes intangible. Dispersion and fragmentation of power and the subsequent complexity of center--periphery distinctions mask the real operation of capital that is always a totality. I define post--peripheries as discursive, geographic and cultural spaces that can and do exist in traditional centers of power and not only in the formerly colonized territories: increasing marginalization of the working classes and the structural exclusion of the unemployed from social life in the UK and the US post 1980s is one example of a post--periphery. Post--peripheries are those spaces and discourses wherein technologies and techniques developed in the center are consumed rather than produce. But these can also be consumed subversively, by misuse or misappropriation. Transnational art events such as biennales and festivals structurally reproduce the characteristics of the post--periphery: the means of representation and the discursive tropes emanate from the center, yet these are used and consumed in other geographies sometimes with conformism and at other times critically and subversively. Geographically dispersed and varied, transnational art events often promote a mobile cast of cultural workers and artists with repeated appearances in Gwangju, Sharjah, São Paolo, Istanbul and Dubai sequentially or at time synchronically. What the political and cultural geographies of various post--peripheries share is the ways in which the globalized art scene has constructed the notion of the art event which in turn relies on the
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