Crossing-views online

This fourth post is a part of my third episode. The interview I made with Marianna Hovhannisyan, a young curator and co-editor of this blog, questions the topic she chose as it is connected to the notion of identity and representation through online positions. By choosing this methodology Marianna proposes a definition of history, memory and archive, through taking a position of acting on it by the interviews about education and collaboration. She expresses that this process of archiving can help her to have a reflection on what is her role in the ongoing contemporary art and curatorial practice in Armenia.

Internet as a tool seems to be the adapted solution because it is simultaneous and what is important is how internet allows a process with which to have distance to yourself. How can it be a protection to the reality? Or to yourself? How can this virtual screen help to find a position in the artistic community?

Elodie Dufour
In your curatorial research in the L’Ecole du Magasin curatorial training program, you focused your enquiry on how archives can be understood as a process, introducing by each episode certain artistic or curatorial practices from the Armenian contemporary art situation. Could you talk about how you see your position in terms of being a young curator?

Marianna Hovhannisyan
The choice to work on Archive-Practice proposition is to re-approach the experiences and relations that I had in the Armenian contemporary art situation. From the position how to talk about the archives introducing the concrete practices and activities and emphasizing their importance from the educational part that involves and connects different generations around an aim and promotes collaboration. The choice of interview as a working format provides a possibility on the one hand to archive, on the other hand to link the interviewees by quoting some ideas from the previous interviews, or receiving answers about the same period with different positions.

For example in the case of Nazareth Karoyan his involvement in the educational field was conditioned by understanding the necessity to overcome the problems of unequal inter-relations established between a post-Soviet art environment and western art markets in the 1990’s. In the case of Ruben Arevshatyan it is connected with the fact that neither the artists, critics nor curators from the contemporary art scene were not involved in the academic educational structures and so on. Or in the case of Soviet AgitArt. Restoration project the question of education is introduced based on Samvel Baghdasaryan’s artistic experience and by the collaboration of young artist Armine Hovhannisyan and so on. These different explanations and approaches give a basis to develop the proposition with various vectors and me as a young curator to start something new.

ED
What do you mean by “to start something new”? You consider it as a goal or a need?

MH
By starting something new I mean that this research-proposition methodology allows me to orient and work further with new questions and propositions. For example the next interview will introduce a conversation with Susanna Gyulamiryan, a woman curator and art critic whose curatorial and theoretical research has been exploring and presenting women’s artistic practices in contemporary art, and with an Armenian focus. I think it will be another subject for the archives to be introduced as a practice.

ED
To be involved in the construction of archives by being the interviewer would be the link to your generation?

MH
All the questions discussed inside the interviews are like connections between generations, and reflect certain gaps in history. So it is also questioning how to work with certain people, institutions or projects in the Armenian contemporary art system. From which kind of position can these also be a part of your research or experience? For me, to make this connection should be adjusted by the initiative of both sides, which refers then to the exchange of knowledge and experiences on different levels, and that links my generation to another.

ED
To have traces also?

MH
Yes and also to have a certain visible production. Even the work can be on the process.

ED
How do you consider the interview online as a tool or a space? Is it an interactive one? Once you said that online format gives a certain distance but also is very flexible, as if you can also be a part of the contents - in translating for example?

MH
Mostly the interview is like a space, but as you said flexible and communicative, taking into the consideration from the beginning of the preparatory letters and discussions until the realization. The interview format is the methodology at some point in order to bring our relations on another level by the questions raised.That’s why for both sides there is much more focus on the issues that can be discussed inside the interviews.

ED
How can you connect the notion of archiving with the art practice but for the Armenian ongoing practice?

MH
As much as I have been involved in the discussion and initiatives in Armenia around how to archive and how to approach it, and how to write the history of Armenian contemporary art, I can say that it is a discourse on the way of formation. And to assume by the Archive-Practice proposition my position, which is if you do not take an initiative how it is possible to have a material for archive?