Lecture
ANGELA HARUTYUNYAN:
Importing "Curator": Politics of Representation and Recognition in
Contemporary Armenian Art

SCCA Project Room, Metelkova 6, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Thursday, January 18, 2007, at 7. p.m.

World of Art, School of Contemporary Arts was introduced in 1997 as the annual educational program now including Course for curators, Seminar for writing, Series of public lectures, and Anthology.

In November 2006 (as a part of regular program) the school has launched a platform for discussions on different educational models in the field of contemporary arts. The lecture of Angela Harutyunyan is the second event within this platform.

Importing "Curator": Politics of Representation and Recognition in Contemporary Armenian Art

Angela Harutyunyan: "In the first part of my talk I will introduce the word 'curator' (and its constructed Armenian equivalent - 'hamadrogh') as an imported concept in the context of contemporary Armenian art which participates in the ongoing signification of other imported terms. I will trace its origins and implications by contextualizing it within several artistic and curatorial practices in Armenia.

I will then proceed to critically outline the history of curating since the mid 90's in the context of the endemic politics of representation and recognition. I will do this by discussing two prevailing modes of curatorial engagement - the artist as curator and the curator as artist. As opposed to these dominant trends, I will argue that the critical role of the curator today is not to pursue (self-)representation but to offer a critique of such a position. I hold that it is precisely when the curator manages to facilitate dialog between the artists, the artist and the audience, as well as the artist/audience and herself, curating takes on the role of a cultural hermeneutic and intermediation beyond self-representation. This resists the hierarchical relation of artistic representation over and above the act of curatorial reflection. Such an approach I argue, complicates the curator's role as someone who combines the intermediation of relations with the function of evaluation and reflection.

In the second part of my discussion, I will address the tasks, aims as well as the relevance of the curators' summer school that I am involved in organizing with art critic and curator Nazareth Karoyan. Finally, with the hope of engaging the audience into a critical debate and discussion, I will address methodological, conceptual and practical problems and difficulties we have been facing since the beginning of this initiative."

The lecture will be given in English.

Kindly invited!

Angela Harutyunyan
PHd candidate in Art History and Visual Studies at University of Machester, UK. Member of the National Association of Art Critics in Armenia. She received her first graduate degree in Art History from Yerevan State University in Armenia. As a curator in the Armenian Center for Contemporary Experimental Art from 2002-2004, she has organized several solo exhibitions of contemporary Armenian artists as well as curated an international festival of media art called "Public_Media_Space" in Yerevan, Armenia. In 2006 she was a coordinator of the First International Summer School for Art Curators, Yerevan, Armenia.

The National Association of Art Critics from Armenia (www.naac.am) among its activities organizes the two-week summer school, which offers an opportunity to attend seminars, lectures and a workshop instructed by experienced and well-known curators as well as highly qualified professors of art history and theory from different academic institutions.

After successfully completing and summarizing the results of the First International Summer School For Art Curators organized in July 2006 in Yerevan, Armenia, the National Association of Art Critics now intends to further develop the program focusing on partnership and networking with regional actors in the field of art criticism and curatorship: Soros Centre for Contemporary Art (Almaty, Kazakhstan), Beral Madra Centre for Contemporary Art (Istanbul, Turkey) and SCCA, Center for Contemporary Arts - Ljubljana (Slovenia).

SCCA-Ljubljana is a member of Asociacija, the association of non-government organisations and independent creators in the field of culture and art in Slovenia.