Event Horizon

Public program

• April 27,  19:00. at Art Kvartal (Pushkin 4)
• Art Talk with the participating artists

Ana-Catalina, Kevin, Laura, Giorgio, and Gochan have spent the past two months living and creating in the village of Araks, developing their artistic practices within the residency. This event provides an excellent opportunity to learn about each artist’s unique style and philosophy, explore the artworks produced during their residency, and engage with their contributions to the festival.

The meeting will be held in English.

• May 2, 19:30. at NPAK

• Art talk with Francois Maurin

Born in 1989, François Maurin lives and works in the Paris region. He graduated from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts in Paris in 2013. He also studied at the Kunstakademie der Bildenden in Karlsruhe (De). His work is regularly presented in personal and group exhibitions in France and abroad. His works are present in various public and private collections.

Between sculpture and painting, his practice combines a daily formal exploration in the studio with successive projects that question some of the foundations of our cultural structures. He conceives his works as transitive devices aimed at revealing our individual singularities. For François Maurin, observation and action proceed in a complementary manner. Whether his works are to be viewed and/or handled, exhibited in a conventional space as if housed in the pocket of a cloth or even accessible via an online platform, his work questions the capacity of art to enrich our social network. 

Through this research, the artist explores a possible foundation of the faculty of imagination.

The talk will be held in French, with translation into Armenian.

• May 4, starting from 12:00. Araks
• Open Studios in Araks

As part of the 29th Annual Festival of Alternative Art, the NPAK Art Residency is hosting an Open Studio Day.
This is a unique opportunity to explore the works created by the artists in residence, engage in conversations with them, and dive deeper into their ideas and concepts.

Join us by visiting the village of Araks, where the Art Shelter is located.

• May 10  16:00,  at NPAK

• Look into the Kaleidoscope: Workshop

As a part of the 29th Annual Festival of Alternative Art that explores the event horizon, this workshop will focus on one of the most thought-provoking of thresholds: the passing of the text from the author’s into the reader’s hands. When asked by a student whether a particular interpretation is “in the text,” Stanley Fish famously answers: “Is there a text in this class?” 

This is the question we’ll be tackling in this workshop—with a keen interest in writing as well as reading, of course!

You don’t have to be a writer to enjoy this workshop. Just bring a willingness to jot down some words and dive into the kaleidoscope of words your peers jot down.

Evita Arakelian’s poetry has been published in several literary journals including “Talon Review” and “Eunoia Review,”  and nominated for the 2022 Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net Anthology. She holds a Master’s degree in Creative Writing and can be found playing with the family pets (a dog and a cat) when she’s not working or teaching.

• May 11, starting from 13:00, in Araks
• Drawing Araks, workshop

How do you see Araks? How would you like to see it? In the framework of the 29th Annual Festival of Alternative Art this participatory workshop invites the  community to transform their sensory experiences of Araks into a collective visual and tactile map.  Participants will document their surroundings through observation, capturing overlooked details of  the environment and using simple, accessible materials to create a shared representation of the  territory. 

• The workshop will be led by Giorgio Granata
• Workshop language: English
• Workshop duration: 3 hours

For more information about the location or any other inquiries, please contact us through the page.

Emerging artist from Sicily. With a 10 years background in philosophical studies. He participated in different artist based residencies, such as in Foundation B.A.D. in Rotterdam. In partnership with Viafarini he has been the curator of the 4th Annual Festival of Installation Art at the NPAK-Armenian Center for Contemporary Experimental Art. Now he is in residency for the NPAK at Araks village.

• May 11, starting from 17:30, in Araks

• Taking apart pieces from an exhibition lost and found through the memories of the visitors. Performance

Performance by Ana-Catalina Gubandru, which will take place at the NPAK Art Residency in Araks village, Armavir region.

Ana-Catalina is a resident of the NPAK Art Residency program. Based in Romania, her artistic practice engages deeply with nature, people, spaces, and landscapes. In her performances, she explores personal experiences and observes spatial elements through the lens of her own identity.

Her performance, “Taking apart pieces from an exhibition lost and found through the memories of the visitors,” combines spoken (live) word and performative action. The text is a free talk in English, inspired by the village and the NPAK garden, interwoven with personal and intimate insights. It is translated into Armenian using Google Translate and read at first glance—without knowledge of the language. This process, with its inherent mistranslations and disruptions, transforms the act of reading into a performative experience.

Duration: 40 minutes

• May 17, 16:00. at NPAK
• Comics Workshop

We warmly invite you to participate in the comics creation workshop.
During the workshop, we will tour the festival exhibition, reflect together on the main concept of the festival, and create our own comics on the spot.
The workshop is open to everyone.

Participation is free

• May 17, 19:00 , at NPAK
• Constructive interference. workshop

Workshop  by Vardan Harutyunyan.

In the realm of waveforms we have two kinds of radical relationships, resonance and interference: resonance comes as a synchronism, harmony, consonant intervals in music, it represents simple numbers, we call it as well a constructive interference; and (destructive) interference brings forth chaos, novelty, diversity in rhythm, dissonant intervals, unpredictability, it is associated with complex numbers.

We say radical, but obviously order and chaos are relative; chaos carries complex order and order is always a bit imperfect. These two in ancient mythology were called Tiamat and Marduk, in other words the worldly chaos and the power of structure, order, as well associated with the human mind in a way. 

We will talk about these two extremes and discuss how they work in sound, and in reality in general as well. 

Besides that we will observe numbers and their relationship in the overtone scale, that is the general core of any sound; the overtone scale in other words can be described as a set of fluctuations that, in superposition with each other, do create the specific timbre of this or that kind of sound.

We could point out that odd numbers in waves do create interference patterns, and even numbers are more harmonious in general, the prime numbers create all the new tones in the scale. We will try to listen to the scale, and try to identify all frequencies that build the overtone scale, and observe the differences in ratios in case of even and odd numbers, prime numbers. 

The main idea of this work in fact is not to get to know overtones, or kinds of interferences there are, but to try and use this metaphor in order to understand how it represents nature, reality, society and other important aspects.