RE-DIRECTING: EAST. Conversations
# 7: Harutyun Alpetyan, Armenia

July 10, 2013 at 5.30 p.m., Laboratory building CCA
The presentations are held in English.

Harutyun Alpetyan: "Industry of forced exchange"

Evidently, in the course of the last two decades we got used to the notion of cultural exchange as if it were the most vital thing for the culture itself to exist at all. Even more it, may seem sometimes that as such it tends to substitute its proper object, or that which is to be exchanged. And even accepting certain basic necessity beyond this notion – one that essentially refers to the market – shouldn’t we nonetheless attempt to question its particular manifestations and examine our relationship with it? We can pose the following questions: do we really conduct an exchange and if so, what exactly do we exchange, what is the real currency we use, and should we think about its purpose? And eventually: what if we refuse this exchange, what if we deny it in the very form it is suggested to employ? Then, can we consider or at least conceive of any other kind of communication or interaction?

So considering even such a seemingly harmless and innocent way of exchange as the public presentations or private conversations we may nonetheless become suspicious of them in the abovementioned terms. And then what about even more extensive events like shows and festivals engaging bigger audience?

Through a specific example of an exhibition that took place in Yerevan in 2012 we will try to explore and discuss the way in which particular institutional formations and their representatives adopt certain modes of representation of what we generally call an art scene. An activity that tends not only to represent the current art scene, and even the art scene of the recent twenty years, but also to render it exportable and suitable for the global exchange.

Harutyun Alpetyan is a freelance cultural worker based in Yerevan. Balancing between curatorial and artistic activities he endeavours to explore the actual effectiveness of his praxis in terms of social change and institutional development within the cultural domain. He coordinates the project lab at the Institute for Contemporary Art in Yerevan and has been a co-founder of the AJZ space – an informal non-commercial art space. One of the recent projects, called the "Economy of Hope" was accomplished as part of the 8th Gyumri Biennial of Contemporary Art in 2012. Currently works on a project Camera Futura: storage for (im)possible realities.