POLITICS UNDER 180'
Armenian News Network / Groong
October 27, 2003

By Angela Harutyunian


In September, an exhibition titled "Politics Under 180 Degree" was
organized at the Armenian Center for Contemporary Experimental Art
(ACCEA), curated by art critic Vardan Azatyan.

Political art originates and gets feedback directly from existing
social conditions and relations. Local and global political atmosphere
serves as incitement for it. Can politics-related art be a protest, a
cry and reaction, or is it art serving totalitarian ideology? And
lastly, which is the border that separates political art from
politicized art, and allows viewing them on different poles? Can a
politicized human being create art free from cliches and stereotypes?

The artist is not a passive subject absorbed in strivings of his inner
spiritual world. The image of an artist that represents him as an
anti-political creature that can only be in abstract spiritual sphere
is rather passé and has lost its actuality. Instead, the artist not
only reflects upon burning political issues but also strives to be an
active participant and moreover, to be able to make important
political decisions.

A work of art carries direct influence of politics. There is direct
interaction between politics and art. Given that there exists no
public service system completely removed from politics (and art is
also partially a part of the public sphere), the discourse of art's
autonomy, upon which modern Western art is founded, is by its very
nature a political construction. In consumer oriented societies, where
all actions are directed towards providing people with as high a
quality as possible of public service and satisfying maximum demands
of consumer, one of the main objectives of today's Western art has
become conversion of artistic creation into consumer product.

In the 20th century, because of the two World Wars and the Cold War
following World War II, society and art became more politicized.
Consequently art of political posters, which were expressing visual
utopias of a politicized human being, flourished. During the first
half of the century these means of expression did not go further than
two-dimensional images on paper and canvas. Whereas today political
art is not anymore confined to public squares, where demonstrations
and political protests take place, or using posters as the only form
of political expression. It also utilizes the closed environments of
museums and exhibition spaces and employs a wider spectrum of media;
all available and possible technological means of the post-industrial
era, including video and digital art.

Use of a multitude of techniques and generally multi-media works of
political art are somehow expressions of the political and creative
pluralism that artists strive to reach by adopting social positions of
often anti-governmental posture.


"Politics under 180'"

Is art capable of discovering and sometimes exposing aspects of
politics that are hidden under multiple layers of relations,
institutions and intrigues and have significant impact on political
decision-making process, and on politics in general?  This is not
politics or art in pure form but interaction of these two: how does
politics change under the light of art, and how does art transfer
politics into an aesthetic environment and the exhibition space?

Relation between art and politics is interesting especially from the
point of view of the post-soviet man and artist. In this case one
needs courage to touch political subjects in art, as absence of
separation between political art and politicized art during seventy
years of the Soviet rule has now given way to caution in touching
politics.

But the exhibition that took place at the ACCEA proved the opposite.
Artists of a younger generation managed to overcome the complex and
the sensitivity left from the totalitarian regime and touch upon local
issues and subjects, simultaneous with those which are contemporary in
the West. For example, fear of discrimination and confrontation of the
society against any kind of marginality and losing the ability to
communicate (Astghik Gevorgian); fear of being a lonely leader of a
revolution in vain (Sona Abgarian), intangible fears in the Armenian
reality in early 1990's (Hovhannes Marganian).

Other subjects included transformation of human body from nature to
industry in the soviet context (David Kareyan).  The goal of the
exhibition was to discover the hidden, - and from at first sight
unimportant, - side-factors that help formulate politics. There were
also questions which needed deeper indulgence into the layers of the
past: Isn't a society that had a painful past of total collectivism
and aims to move towards individualism threatened by neo-collectivism?
Today artists are occupied with authoritarian images and signs of the
past as social commentaries to the present (Mher Azatian).

Politics is a highly social phenomenon; society elects those who
govern, and who are supposed to express collective will of the
society. Even dictatorships under the yoke of which people suffer,
come to power only because their entrance into the state institutions
is prepared by conscious and unconscious desires, needs and malaise of
the masses. Art often becomes a victim of politics (USSR, Hitler's
Germany, etc) and goes through transformation adapting to the demands
and dictates of the political apparatus. But politics itself sometimes
undergoes multiple phases of transformation in artists' work, and
presents itself in an aesthetic milieu, sometimes touching purely
aesthetic issues laden with political overtones (Arthur Zakarian).

Politics is a game. This famous aphorism passing through creative
metamorphoses by an artist, gains a totally different meaning.
Politics is not more serious than a child's play, and is as light and
short-lived (Diana Hakobian). This is the rather ironic attitude of
the artist towards seriousness with which society approaches
politics. Maybe it is the state and the rulers that turn the
individual into a toy with the aim of repressing every expression of
individualism and reach "flattened" human attributes. It is much
easier to rule "gray" and faceless masses.


--
Angela Harutyunian is an MA student at Yerevan State University, and
is a curator at the Armenian Center for Contemporary Experimental Art
in Yerevan. She recenly curated the "Instinct to Create" exhibition of
Tigran Khachatryan and "Crash # 60528" - a project of Hovhannes
Margaryan. Her current research is on The Problem of Motion in
Contemporary Sculpture.