10th Annual Alternative Art Festival
May 27, 2008 – June 7, 2008
Contemporary experience The struggle for freedom of speech against Soviet totalitarianism was a central trend in alternative dissident art of Armenia as well as of the Soviet Union as a whole. The fight for basic human freedoms is a process that brings about not only liberation from external restrictions but also broadening of inner understanding. After an artist obtains his or her individual freedom, he / she then endeavors to spread it throughout the society. The current discourse of contemporary art is shaped in the process of the above described dynamic relationship between the individual and the society.
Totalitarian systems always tend to cut back the individuality, imposing on people false goals and fear. As a result, individual’s subjective feelings are changed, he or she gets the false conviction that the necessary is more important than the desirable, that everything personal is to be sacrificed in order to build a blissful society where everyone will be happy. This paradoxical logic gives rise to an infinite waiting.
The Annual Alternative Art Festival, being organized at ACCEA since 1998, has as its main objective giving chance to young, beginner artists to exhibit their work. This year’s exhibition will include artists not only from Yerevan, but also from other cities and regions of Armenia – to contribute to decentralization of the cultural life.
The 10th Annual Alternative Art Festival has “Contemporary experience” as its motto. It is a multidisciplinary festival, open to all arts and art genres. Seeking to break cultural clichés, the Annual Alternative Art Festival stresses the importance of individual’s personal experience as a means to find solutions to problems of modern society.
Curator: David Kareyan
