| An aura of uncertainty and wavering between conflicting values is overwhelming the new generation of intellectuals of nations, which have emerged from the ruins of the collapsed Empire. The clash between market and moral values-the pragmatic vs. intellectual-is becoming more and more painful and difficult to comprehend and reconcile. Commonly accepted means of exchange are being rejected and declined from... A slow-burning anger and rebellion is building up in the inner world of this generation. The work presented in this year’s pavilion of the Republic of Armenia is reflective of this state of mind and psyche. | |
| The piece is a multi-media project composed of video art projected on several screens, augmented with a choreographed performance. The work is based on turn-of-the-century Armenian revolutionary-political as well as literary-poet, Yeghishé Charents’s following verse: | |
| “Look, | |
| today | |
| a burning steel laughter | |
| is licking you...” | |
| In the piece words have been “transfigured” beyond recognition, even to the Armenians-the text is read backwards, from end to the front, and has been electronically reversed! | |
| Artist David Kareyan explains: | |
| “There are instances in life when words become useless, and it seems like the World has not been created by words, and it is possible to communicate by the most intimate language: language of the body... | |
| When mind does not get into conflict with body, and body starts to talk by giving information about itself, a super-communicative field is created, which reinstates the disrupted history of civilization and nature.” | |
| Indeed. Words have been abandoned as means of communication in this work. One does not understand the words-overwhelming majority of viewers in Venice would not understand the Armenian verse, anyway-but the rebellious spirit of the poet is there, and comes through loud and clear... Primitive drumbeats on the back of empty tar-barrels accompanied by shrieking sounds of vibrating metal sheets pierce the ear... In the background dramatic sounding “deformed verses” of Charents fill the air... | |
| Video scenes projected at an elevation above spectators’ heads depict “dancing” human torso with superimposed images of machines, fire, and frenzied crowds, while underneath, at the center of the space, black-robed figures drum the barrels. Another group criss-crosses the area, vehemently vibrating shiny metal sheets, while maintaining impression-less composure and posture. | |
| Absent refined and meticulously produced art, one would perhaps feel transplanted into “Futurist” milieu of the turn of the century, where the scent of industrial sludge and burned fuel would be the order of the day. But this is not the case. Artists, as their forefather, rebel against tautology of words and denounce ideologies stemming from them. They defy standards and mores by stripping off these exponents of “civilization”, and attempt to liberate from them. | |
| The dichotomy between utopia and bitter reality is overwhelming... The idealist revolutionary, who was also often subversive and self-destructing-symbolized in the person of Yeghishé Charents-embodies the central theme of the work. | |
| In this part of the World-the former Soviet Union- a new generation is emerging who has only theoretical-descriptive-information on the era just past. And this “blows their minds”. Reverberations of the egalitarian social order advocated/propagated by the communist ideology, together with the horror stories of decadence and disappearance of standards of social and individual morality have reached this new generation only intellectually. Yet they see that the present conditions are in essence not much different. They see and experience conditions, which appear to be reminiscent of the ones they have only heard of. They are not sure if they should aspire or negate them... | |
| Hence, in desperation they utter words such as: | |
| “No more history... | |
| You get up in the morning and you don’t know what to do. | |
| Life has become mechanical and unbearable. | |
| You have lost your ideals. | |
| To act for satisfaction is as senseless as not to act. | |
| Nature does not obey you. | |
|
You grow old. |
|
| You strive for illusions, for forgetting reality, which is indifferent towards you. | |
| You have appeared in the middle of a frantic storm. | |
| You do not know how, and on whom to take revenge: | |
| To become a terrorist or to commit suicide.” | |
| And they conclude: | |
| “If this emotional state is familiar to you, you are in a crisis of personality, you have reached an impasse, and are unable to distinguish wish from expediency”. | |