Pause/Play: Culture under pressure. How artists in exile seek a new identity

BERLIN, GERMANY, March 25, 2024 /EINPresswire.com/ -- This fall for the second time project Pause/Play: Culture under Pressure* gathered artists and cultural practitioners based in Armenia, Georgia and Germany, as well as professionals who have had to leave their home countries due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

* Pause/Play: Culture under Pressure is curated and organized by Kulturschafft e. V. and CSN Lab, Yerevan, in partnership with Untitled Tbilisi, with financial support from the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The project included online and offline lectures, presentations, and QA sessions with international speakers and mentors, followed by the lab and public events, including an open discussion on challenges of self-organizations "Art Communities on the Move", which gathered together both migrant and local art and cultural initiatives, a discussion on decolonization through the art scene, presentation & conversation on funding opportunities for art & cultural projects and others In extend to the group sessions participants visited the old area of Yerevan - Kond district and explored its urban transformation.

The online educational module led by international art practitioners was designed around learning and exchanging knowledge and experience on digital technologies for artistic practices. It inspired participants to use new digital tools (VR, Blockchain, AR, and AI) and platforms in their projects.

Lectures by invited experts introduced participants to current tools for implementing decentralized art projects of any complexity.

During the two parts, participants developed their own artistic projects, using digital technologies and dedicated to the topics of migration, integration and political resistance. The result and culmination of the program was

The subsequent exhibition "Translating Transition" at Goethe Center in Yerevan became an important part of the program.

The process of translation entails finding the correct way to convey meaning from one language to another. The title, both metaphorically and in practice alludes to the perpetual need to discover new methods of translation to adapt to the evolving circumstances of life in exile, particularly for those who recently had to leave their homes due to political and geopolitical reasons. People who were forced to leave their home countries, to cut a lot of both professional and personal ties are facing the challenges of the need to "translate" not only the language and new cultural semiotic system into everyday life as immigrants but also to make everyday efforts to get to know and comprehend the otherness, to integrate into the new cultural context and social structures and to reevaluate their own identity in these new circumstances. The projects presented at the exhibition primarily reflect or are influenced by the struggles and the process of discovering new grounds and means to forge fresh ties and get new meanings. The exhibition consists of the art projects realized by participants of the project Pause/Play: Culture under Pressure from the previous year as well as work-in-progress projects from the current year.

The presented artworks were in completely different mediums and formats. Still, they have one thing in common - all projects are filled with acute experiences, reflections of what is happening now in the history of countries and the personal history of each.

- "Miscarriage" by Oleksii Chumak & Olya Makhno
- "Vishapagorg" by Gray Cake (Katya Pryanik, Alexander Serechenko), and Anna Ghazaryan
- "Biasphere" by Anton Alter
- "Dumb as a fish" by Serafima Truevtseva
- "Dreamscapes of Alternative History" by Diana Meyerhold & Anastasia Marochkina
- "Everyday Life of Military Service Documents" by Anna Mariia Filippova
- "Urban Dialogue" by COBALT urban think-tank
- "Growing Homelessness" by Lena Holub
- "Whispered Shouts" by Nino Khundadze
- "ան.ժամանակ / time:less" by otar (Narek Buniatyan)
- "Maramora" by Hanna Palei and Natallia Trenina
- "Lost and Found Bureau" by Maria Kremer
- “The Library of Dreams” by Jane Rzheznikova
- “Tmp_space” by Elena Slobtseva and tmp_space collective

"The Translating Transition exhibition is in a way a public extension of the laboratory that took place during the program, and we see it as an attempt to initiate communication - whether it's a conversation or a dialogue, or in some cases an intimate monologue - about the struggles and the ongoing process of re-evaluation of self-identification and the search for ways of integration into new circumstances of life in exile."

Anna Titovets Intektra, Exhibition curator

April, 25 2024 the final event of the program will take place at nGbK Berlin, in collaboration with Disruption Network Lab. A dedicated publication (Zine) and a virtual version of the exhibition will be presented there.

To follow the news - https://cultureunderpressure.art/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/culture_under_pressure/

Video-Trailer: Narek Dallakyan

Alexandra Goloborodko
Pause/Play: Culture under Pressure
[email protected]
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