The gradual evolution of social processes from liberal and romantic-nationalistic cultural approaches to a neoliberal political, economic and cultural reality imparted new tendencies to the post-Soviet contemporary art situation in Armenia. The artists of the »new wave«, who were trying to overcome the notorious social order inherited from the formal and informal Soviet system, viewed the reformative ideas and esthetics aimed at asserting the liberal system of values and multi-culturalism with a fundamental caution that gradually changed into an indifferent, »pragmatic« approach. Despite the fact that social »rationalization« (from the inside as well as the outside) has played a notable role in the formative process - one that has been expressed not only on the institutional plane, but also on conscious and unconscious artistic levels -, a confrontative tendency towards the new social and cultural demands has developed. Artistic reflections on the new, fast-evolving social and cultural conditions, under which prior value systems have been subject to some rather speculative applications, have begun to focus more often on the correlation between individuals and social structures.

The attraction of the new society to universalism and a formal, fetishistic conception of art as an economic and political product intended to fill the cultural rift between the individual and the artificiality of the social structures has led to various artistic approaches in which the inconsistent character of neoliberal social pragmatism is revealed. These artistic methods mostly displayed no aggressivity towards society and tried to establish identifications between the audience (society) and the artist - for example, » Art Referendum« (1994) by David Kareyan, ART Demonstration by the ACT group (1995), the »Capacity« project by Arevik Arevshatyan and Ruben Grigoryan (1997), »I am an artist - 2000« video by Arman Grigorian.

In contrast to these works, the series of projects or, to be more exact, artistic actions initiated by artist Karen Andreassian since 1996 do manifest aggressive traits in their interaction of social structures and artistic situations. The expeditions organized by the artist were informed by an alienated perception - a typical approach in the local scene - of the great art forums like Documenta, Manifesta and Venice Biennials, seeing them not only as important international artistic arenas that accumulate esthetic and theoretical reflections of certain periods and from different cultural zones, but also as social and political events that, by their focus on specific contexts, also format the situational diversities.

The large audience that turned up to the HAY-ART cultural center, Yerevan, on July 13, 2002, had a vague idea that there was going to be a presentation of a new »expedition« organized by Karen Andreassian. But its anticipation gradually turned into bewilderment. On three screens installed in the darkened space of the centre were projected familiar advertising scenes and personalities from local public TV, Armenian texts, and indistinct pictures of exhibition halls, European urban environments, street episodes, some interviews, and fragments of video art. The chaotic, barely comprehensible nature of the situation was also emphasized by the bad quality of the projections and interruptions by the digital label »No Signal,« because the thick concrete walls of the centre affected the reception. The presentation, which was produced for public Armenian TV, lasted 27 minutes, after which the audience scattered with confused impressions, uncertain whether their time spent on the territory of »contemporary art« had been rationally used. In actual fact, they could not have realized that what they had just attended was the final phase of the artist's »expedition« to Documenta 11 and Manifesta.

Three days later, at a talk and discussion with the artist, he presented two films, the internet version of the »expedition« (http://www.format.am), and physical evidence of the expedition in the form of artifacts - an orange ball (from one of his sponsors) and a small, old-fashioned suitcase belonging to the artist, full of documentation related to the expedition. The first film was the same one that was telecast at the public presentation and the second one was a short film in which the artist presents a fax correspondence - the result of a communications problem with the landlady of a private house in Kassel. The correspondence concerned a compensation demand of 212 euros, insisted on by the landlady, and brought about by the loss of the reservation the artist had applied for through the »Kassel Service« tourist agency.

»Expeditions« initiated by Karen Andreassian have become an inseparable, or even traditional, part of the Armenian contemporary art scene ever since the very first expedition, conceived as a pseudo-journalistic report on the Tbilisi Biennial in 1996. The second expedition - GEOKUNST - was an unofficial participation at Documenta X in 1997: the expedition group had set itself the goal of creating transitions from the »alternative spaces« (underpasses, railway stations, bus stops, etc.) to the space of Documenta X. The »BIOKUNST« expedition is the third project in the series.

The actions of the artist include a sort of a pseudo-social import - Andreassian's »expedition« presupposes public involvement in terms of sponsoring and in the public presentation of evidence and results coming from the investigation, which are actually based on an irrational artistic proposal. The last expedition was sponsored by the Armenian representative of the »Puma« company and faithful supporters of the Armenian contemporary art scene living in the diaspora: Dr. Raffy and Vicki Hovanessian, art collectors from Chicago. The project was promoted by Armenian public TV. Despite the fact that private sponsorship of contemporary art events is not a usual phenomenon in Armenia, the factor of »private - regional - cultural« complicity in »big cultural events« works on the same logic as when postcolonial countries aspire to become integrated into the »global economy« while disdaining the development of a local economic infrastructure. That is how distortion also occurs in the customary concept of »sponsorship,« where the question of status dislodges that of complicity. The »expedition« started as usual with correspondence presenting the idea to the press departments of Documenta XI and Manifesta. Both of them kindly responded to the initiative proposed by the artist, providing the supposed three members of the expedition with official invitations. The group was supposed to consist of an artist, an art critic and a sociologist. By force of circumstances, the expedition was carried out by the artist alone.

In one film, the focus on the inconspicuous, mundane details forming the urban atmosphere surrounding Manifesta and Documenta created a certain superposition of parallel situations and social, cultural and esthetic accumulations. Textual fragments (from Documenta XI and Manifesta catalogues) were translated into Armenian and dubbed in by obviously non-professional speakers. The fact that the latter belonged to various social classes on the basis of their occupation, which was mentioned next to their names in the closing credits, accented the perception of the content as a new form of cultural accumulation. The second film, which related an episode based on private experience, also created a narrative space in which a new »myth« based on a private experience of communicative distortion dislodged the import of reproduced social and cultural structures. In the context of that superposition, the distortion in fact became a materialized metaphor for the phenomenon of formal perception and generalization that occur as a result of communicative inability (fear) or the intention to remove the reality from social and cultural distinctions.

The focus on the »bio« aspect, which in that context becomes the only way of adjusting the complicity between different geo-situations, cannot, however, avoid the issue of social and cultural differentiation. The subjective adaptation to social, political and economic strategies in the intensively concentrated time within the new reality creates a new cultural consciousness in which the estrangement from the predetermined social discourse becomes the main topic for subjective consideration and analysis based on private experience. From the artist's perspective, private behavior in that context denotes an absolute inert complicity, which finally concludes with the presentation of evidence of subjective affections shifted onto the esthetic level (like the tense reading of fax correspondence and sweat stains under the armpits of the T-shirt as a result of nervousness). These proofs of emotion, which occur as a result of inconsistency as well as of complicity in the incidental or logical conflux of different social, economical, political and cultural situations, give the »bio« factor a new social and cultural basis.

 

 

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