Since the removal of the State of Emergency, Freedom Square, having been witness to a number of “dangerous” days, has been defended by soldiers and military equipment. It’s a fairly laughable picture - a square that is singed by the army and placards at the same time; on the one hand, an invitation for leisure sites and placards and on the other, military restriction. On one side the provincial mechanism for the “production of desires” and the other, the unpolished punishing hand of the authorities. In this way, the temptation of pleasure and the threat of punishment are ironically coming together in one location.

Of course, these are the two extremes of the “regime-society” relations; coercion, with the corresponding parts of the state machinery and “spiritual and moral governance” that are realized through cultural means to reach mutual agreement amongst strata of the society. And this combination would appear to be a sign of the dramatic imbalance of the society, its crisis of unity.

These days the entire city, if not the country, has become the arena of various protest actions - environmental concerns (“Hands off Teghut”), demonstrations in support of political prisoners, numerous hunger strikes, from Yerevan to the villages of Shirak, protest activities taking place in prison isolation cells and the courtroom…And what strikes the eye in all this is the breakdown in communication that divides the society from the authorities. In my view, what we have been witness to in Armenia since the year 2000 is a crisis of the new model of unfolding social relations (which could have seemed to have somehow solved the problem of social unification), and this article is a preparatory attempt at analyzing certain aspects of it.

The first section of the article will study the contribution that the electronic media and other means of image representation have had in that process; a process where drastic transformations taking pace in the urban space characteristically come together. I have already written about the role played by the personal media, but what’s also understandable is that the developments of the past months have literally been tattooed on the body of the city, are associated with certain locations, attributing and galvanizing certain meanings of the struggle with those locations.

One of the assumptions of the analysis is that in Armenia during those years a certain westernization, in the most narrowest of meanings, took place that was accompanied by the return and intervention of numerous Soviet and pre-Soviet realities.

Life in the city is characterized by a certain lifestyle that has been written about by many theorists, including Simmel and representatives of the Chicago School - huge numbers of strangers living side by side, the fast pace of life, for most residents the short-lived and superficial nature of their encounters, the dominance of competition concerning cooperation, the distance created between residents and urban life, etc. Today, one of the themes being studied is the “virtual city” or the “information city. Even though socialist cities differed from capitalist ones in the essential principles of design and planning, already in the post-Soviet period the transformation of Yerevan carried the stamp of a certain westernization - the appearance of private property, the first signs semblances of a market economy, and the stratification of society would be expressed through spatial and visual forms.

The ideology of visual representation

In general the modern world is known for its pronounced visual expression. Culture is becoming more and more visual and visual information is taking on a dominant position in regards to verbalized expression (both oral and written). As Susan Sontag observes, “a society becomes ‘modern’ when one of its chief activities is producing and consuming images.” Market competition, the necessity to formulate and satisfy ever new consumer needs unavoidably receive visual expression, giving birth to an unimaginable visual diversity of both objects and the appearance of their advertisement. This is especially true for cities. Urbanization’s ever growing expanses, the heterogeneity of urban lifestyles, the commercialization of urban space, are a rich   source of visual experience. Certain similar things took place in post-Soviet Yerevan where one of the essential processes taking place was the spread of consumerism.

By the late 1990’s and early 2000, the still crumbling streets and squares of Yerevan were flooded with billboards. Moreover, they were mostly adverts for cigarettes, the main objects of consumption with a rich variety. This was the first step in the formation of the new consumer needs but it indirectly represented the nouveau-rich, assisting their consolidation, since those values were identified with their businesses - commerce and entertainment. Hence, they were the lifestyle gurus to be encouraged with their perfect consuming abilities. Following the logic of the development of visual representation, we note that already by 2007, for the first time in post-Soviet Armenia, a great space of open-air advertising was being put into the service for ideological aims. What we are talking about here is the series of, “My weapon is my…” This scheme, by the way, not only served political objectives but also had clear allusions regarding the forms of consolidation of social solidarity. (See: “My weapon” article).

Open-air adverts are impossible to separate from broadcast media. The above-mentioned post-Soviet processes allow one to claim the practicing of certain elements of western theories regarding the situation of the Armenian media. It was representatives of the Frankfurt School who undertook one of the first fundamental drafts of the media’s social significance. In the article, “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception”, by Theodor Adorno and Max Hockheimer, what is being analyzed is the transformation of culture in one system formed from the cinema, radio and magazines of market goods (when there still wasn’t TV). Let’s underline one of the essential claims - the industry of culture not only produces a standardized content for the masses but also at the same time a corresponding audience for the content. In accordance with that, the media is a system of social integration which assumes “obedience to hierarchy”, the loss of individuality (the creation of one-dimensional man), etc.

Antonio Gramcci introduced the concept of hegemony, attempting to overcome one of the more glaring shortcomings of Marxist thought which postulated the “thesis of false consciousness” and the belief according to which an individual’s ideological position essentially derives from ones economic conditions. Hegemony signifies that a state of mutual concession is realized between the ruling and ruled strata, rather than a certain ideological system being imposed by the rulers. Together along with the apparatus of coercion (the law, police, army) there are institutions that “convince” as well. In this category, along with the media, are such institutions as the education system, the church and the family, According to Gramcci, commonsense elements of the ruled strata are also included in the ideology so that it simply becomes a more systematized form of common sense, where the average citizen sees the inevitability of the existing state of affairs and the absence of any alternative. Moreover, ideology isn’t something set in stone but rather an arena of continuous struggle and give and take, where the ruling class constantly strive to maintain within certain acceptable boundaries the cultural practices of making meaning that redefine a given aspect of social reality.

Let me provide some examples of the application of these theoretical propositions. When they speak of the high ratings enjoyed by this or that TV program, when they claim that the viewing audience enjoys watching a certain TV series (something that the directors of H1TV like to do), they either fail to observe or forget that the audience they point to was especially created for such programs and that, as propounded by Adorno and Hockheimer broadcast content has already created its respective audience.

The link between the dominant ideology and everyday commonsense clearly comes into view, in the words of the urban folklore with Soviet roots, when it enters the TV industry with psychological stereotypes and slang language and is turned into an important element of the ideology of the authorities. For example, the program “Our Courtyard” and other similar shows hence cultivate such heroes, the spirit of courtyard sociability and neighborhood authorities. In this instance, of course, the problem of changing the social reality doesn’t come up, but rather to skillfully and cleverly get accustomed, to “get by”.

The reconstruction of urban space

Let us again quickly follow the dramatic changes to the urban landscape of post-Soviet Yerevan, joining it to the radical developments taking place in the society - the furious process of reconstruction, new strata and urban spaces, new forms of activities and practices and of identities and values.

The history of the appropriation of the center of Yerevan, which began with the privatization of urban space, has the possibility of continuing when we consider the renovation project already underway with the assistance of the Lincy Foundation that was followed by the dynamic flourishing of the leisure industry. The sharp increase in real estate prices in the center was the next step giving rise to conditions in which the realization of plans for “elite buildings” and mass scale renewal (Buzant Street and Northern Avenue) appeared to be self-explanatory. In these rebuilt areas the displaced residents would be substituted with the newly formed elite.

It’s worthy to note that the intensive building going on in the city center, that violates all planning standards, is being accompanied by work, new main thoroughfares, overpasses, roads circling the center, etc,  attempting to lighten the traffic load within the center. Of course, these initiatives permitted the seizure and manipulation of huge additional funds both before and during the elections, to provide work to thousands and by doing so to mollify social discontent. But the fact remains that the center belongs to them, to exploit and to empty-out.

The relationships of the regime certainly have a spatial expression. Regardless of who actually will reside there, the rebuilding of the Yerevan city center embodies the drastic transformation that has occurred in social relations. It symbolizes the victorious establishment of the new elite on the top rung of the social hierarchical ladder.

We will see that the arena encompassing the current forms of the social struggle not only is one of the media, when personal technologies (cell phones, digital camcorders, internet services) provide alternative information and communication spaces, but also one of specific urban spaces (Freedom Square, Northern Avenue) and they remind us of the desire to take back the city from the newly emerged elite.