(It would be) NICE TO MEET YOU, TOO
Anna Kamay and Melikset Panosian
9th March 2020
On August 16, 2019, artists Duygu Bostancı (Turkey), Valentina Maz (Armenia) and Joanna Zabielska (Poland/Austria) alongside invited curator Tereza Davtyan (Armenia), and local curators Lea Frohlicher (Switzerland) and Stefanie Steinmann (Switzerland) presented the outcomes of their residency at Künstlerhaus S11, which served as a place of production and exchange in Solothurn, Switzerland. The common denominator of the invited artists was their connection to Yerevan.
The pieces created in Solothurn were showcased as part of a dialogue with pieces created in Yerevan in the frames of the project “Nice to Meet You, Yerevan”. The parallel event “Nice to Meet You Too” curated by Anna Kamay at ICA Yerevan featured an audio textual performance by Narek Simonian and Melikset Panosian, paintings by Vahag Hamalbashyan and video art by Ruzan Petrosyan. This was an experimental project trying to tackle the issues of presence and dialogue between Armenia and Europe. While Yerevan was the reference point for all the artists, the Armenian participants of the project all had issues with bureaucracy when trying to obtain a visa to exhibit their works, participate in a residency or do research in Europe, while their European counterparts did not have to face such difficulties.
How is it possible to establish a real dialogue between post-Soviet space and Europe in the contemporary art sphere in times of globally operating markets? What are the obstacles that art practitioners are facing when in need of exchange with their peers from the West? How can we escape geography designed in terms of centre and periphery? One of the biggest obstacles to overcome this common colonial dialectics is a necessity for certain groups and nationalities to obtain entry visas before travelling.
To obtain an entry visa to “Fortress Europe” we have to book an online appointment. On the day I got my passport back. I met a friend in the street who had been trying to make an appointment in the German Embassy since May. She said she is annoyed about the fact that she won’t apply for any visa in the future unless visas are abolished. She won’t go to a country which requires an entry visa from her.
While applying for permission to enter the western country there are usually long delays, high costs, short validity periods and the possibility of rejection despite all provided documents and invested time and money. All these are obstacles to the circulation of cultural workers as well as ideas. The waiting in the embassies dehumanizes you and makes you forget about the very aim of your trip. It’s like a proper exam, even though everything is written on paper and documents provided. One still has to go through the humiliation of answering correctly to the interviewer, who is sitting behind the glass dividing them and me into two opposing sides. It makes you feel less human and inferior to the people across the thick glass windows, which functions like a real border, a very visible one. Then there is the day to get the passport back with or without the precious stamp in it. If it’s in, you will most probably take a red-eye flight mostly with a layover or two, and get to the desired destination in the unreachable fortress the next day.
Sadly, although Schengen visas have been eliminated for Georgians recently, because of the rise of asylum seekers from Georgia into the EU, the EU has decided to deploy border control guards directly on the border in Georgia. There, in Georgia, French border guards are to filter those travellers whom they deem unfit to enter the Schengen or who most likely won’t be back to Georgia from the “Fortress” for a good while. What're the criteria?
The mobility of cultural workers is a necessity in the process of artistic creation, and there is one major political issue at the heart of this magic word of cultural cooperation, founded, in principle, on the desire for discovery, for reflection and for working together with those who operate in different cultural contexts. The disparity in the conditions of mobility increases inequality between us. Though substantial research is being done by European curators, art critics and academics in the South Caucasus, and it is “flattering” to be noticed (since these countries are still considered an “exotic” land for studies), local community-based art practitioners rarely try to attempt to venture to Europe for a similar research or an exchange. The number of researches on Armenia by foreigners far outnumbers the ones about Europe conducted by Armenians. This alone should be the indicator that equality is missing.
The next thing is wait. You wait for an answer for days and days. Will I even get that sticker in my passport? What about the last shot tickets that skyrocket in price at the last minute? Should I book them at all? What if I don’t get the visa? What if I had to decline the freelance opportunity that just came across?
If we believe that the future of art and society, in general, is community-based and participatory, we need to realize that when cultural workers with aligned interests find each other, for the discourse to happen, they need to be on equal grounds, thus cultural mobility is precious. It is time for Armenian cultural actors to also travel more to learn, to understand how to work in, and with Europe. If the aim is to promote mobility widely, without turning constantly to the same ‘privileged’ artists but instead reaching the underrepresented cultural actors, it is important to consider educational and social factors, e.g. taking into account adaptations for people who do not have the facility for foreign languages or who don’t have the necessary intellectual baggage to develop a well-constructed argumentation as requested in application procedures. Because equal mobility is also about considering what's happening artistically in a region. It concerns everyone and not only those who live there.
Anna Kamay is an independent curator and cultural manager hailing from Yerevan, Armenia. Anna organizes community-based art projects with the goal of using public space and art to meet local needs and manages Nest Artist Residency and Community Center at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Yerevan.
Melikset Panosian is a writer and translator from Gyumri, Armenia. He participated in artistic projects focusing on the troubled past of Gyumri, borders, conflicts and consequent traumas since 2012. Panosian contributed to a number of literary magazines in Armenia such as Queering Yerevan, Gretert and Yeghegan Pogh. He also participated in the translation of Hannah Arendt’s “We refugees” into the Armenian language. Melikset Panosian’s published works include art book “Out In Head” (2012), “Silent Stroll”, a novella he authored in 2014, and the Armenian translation of Kardash Onnig’s “Savage Chic: A Fool's Chronicle of the Caucasus” published in 2017.
Babi Badalov is a visual artist and poet, born in Lerik (Azerbaïdjan). After having lived in Russia, he tried to settle in Cardiff (UK), but his asylum application was refused. Sent back in Azerbaijan, he finally got the right to stay and live in France in 2011. Great traveller and poet himself, Babi Badalov often introduces his own texts in his work: by combining it with manipulated political pictures, he creates installations, objects, paintings and happenings that he used to qualified as «visual poetry». Several Babi Badalov's artworks are part of international public collections such as FRAC Ile-de-France (France), FRAC Midi-Pyrénées les Abattoirs de Toulouse (France), Russian Museum in St. Petersburg (Russia), MuHKA Museum Contemporary Art Antwerp (Belgium) etc.