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Aghavni Eghiazaryan

A Shifting Landscape with Stops along the Way

"The key to the success of the Voghchaberd project is that it brings the problem to contemporary art, which creates another way of looking at things, another attitude, which activates the role of culture. I am not saying that contemporary art provides a solution to the problem, but it creates a different approach. No one knows anything about contemporary art in Armenia, it is put into a box, removed from the society, because they don't work with the social situation," explained Karen Andreasyan, the creator of the websitewww.voghchaberd.am.

Andreasyan initiated the Voghchaberd project in May 2003 in collaboration with Utopiana (www.utopiana.am). He studied the village of Voghchaberd, ten kilometers from Yerevan, and transferred it to an electronic environment. In 1970s, Voghchaberd was a prosperous and prestigious residential area where the leaders of the republic built their summerhouses. Today Voghchaberd is literally sliding off a cliff.

"The husband of a friend of my wife's is from Voghchaberd; he told us about their village, about how they build something and live there, and then it is destroyed and they live in these destroyed structures. I wondered about how something was created from nothing, then became more concrete, and then vanished from this concrete state again," Andreasyan said.

The processes of destruction and landslide had always existed in Voghchaberd, but the 1988 earthquake hastened and deepened them. The humidity of the soil, however, causes fertility as well as landslides, creating relative social stability within the existing instability.

Andreasyan placed the village in the electronic environment and built his project on the movable nature of the settlement and on the will of the residents to stay there. "I got interested in the village. We studied it and realized that it is a created space that has no prospects. All this coincided with a project presented by thewww.utopiana.am coordinator, Anna Barseghyan, to the Geneva Contemporary Image Centre, and I began working with this project," Andreasyan continued.

In its structure, the website is unique. It contains a master plan of the village, an interactive map on which visitors can navigate through the "layers" of the village. The history and the daily life of the village is presented through stories told local residents - you can listen to or read the story of the family of Zohrap Sargisyan of Voghchaberd, view pictures of the members of his clan, learn about how they live, what kind of crops they grow, and so on. This site is the creative reproduction of the real situation.

www.voghchaberd.am is interlinked with www.format.am. The main connection is that within the period of time between two clicks of the mouse in www.voghchaberd.am, the visitor is transferred to www.format.am; this becomes matter-time. According to the creator of the site, in the future this "pure time" will be utilized.

This distinctive website has attracted the attention of the European contemporary art world. Both the German Springerin and the EnglishFrieze have written about the project.

"After appearing in the pages of those magazines, I can consider that I have overcome something, achieved something. The role of art is very strong within the European reality; it has almost achieved the level of journalism. If a problem enters art it will surely attract attention. Today art is traveling. If you possess technology you can freely travel with anyone; equal communication and contacts exist now. The situation today makes it possible to think locally but work globally, avoiding all kinds of systems - political, governmental. For example, at an event in Germany, I was introduced to the minister of culture, Hovik Hoveyan, who was surprised that I had gotten there without contacting the ministry," Andreasyan said.

Although it has been written about in European magazines, very few people in Armenia know that the Voghchaberd site exists. According to Andreasyan, experts in the field are busy making declarations, and the public is not involved in contemporary art. "We have not yet able yet to create this community in Armenia because they turn contemporary art into a set of stereotypes and say it is beyond the understanding of most people. And the Voghchaberd project is contemporary art, but it has no problem with mixing with the public. I can speak about this project more easily with an ordinary villager than with an art expert," he said.

It is Andreasyan's use of migrating images and repeated words that turn the history of Voghchaberd into a work of contemporary art. "This project is already independent of me; it will never be complete; it is a shifting landscape with stops along the way," he said. Imaging the future of the site Andreasyan added, "I think the best way of developing this site will be to donate it to the schoolchildren of Voghchaberd when they are able to interact with the site, and to let them make their history into art."

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