Armenian National Congress Attempts to Change ‘Dictatorial’ Cultural Model

During the Armenian National Congress (HAK) culture committee session today, “The Basis of Current Cultural Policy,” a document developed by committee members, will be discussed.

As told to Epress.am by the co-author of this new cultural strategy, theater critic Ara Nedolyan, “The dictatorial cultural model operating in Armenia implies that culture is created from above, by a certain center, by certain ‘experts,’ and later broadcast, brought down, forced upon all ‘residents,’ who in this case cannot be considered citizens.”

The committee’s cultural strategy, according to Nedolyan, views culture as a way of people relating to one another in society, “so that culture includes a political culture, an economic culture, and so on.”

“HAK and its culture committee’s mission is to unquestionably deflect this situation, and determine the basic margin and value of decentralization,” said Nedolyan. 

 

The document, according to Nedolyan, says that culture is created by individuals and free associations of individuals, there is no one culture (there are many cultures), and the basis of cultural policy, that is the state’s role, is to welcome, support and protect these sovereign cultures, and ratify, through rule or law, their freely reached agreements and rules of correlation.   

The state is something like a notary, reads the document, it doesn’t produce culture, so-called “national culture,” it neither produces policy, nor does it participate in the economy. This is all done by sovereign entities, each acting independently or freely chosen as part of his/her team who are creating it all, while the state only protects him/her from infringement and affirms the agreements he/she has signed with others. 

Culture, as well as politics, as well as economy, will become not representative, but rather participatory, according to the document.

The document doesn’t require that it go before the authorities in order to be implemented: it will begin to be in effect here and now, said Nedolyan, changing the political arena, forming the methods and principles of the form of citizens’ involvement in political, social and cultural life. 

The theater critic noted that HAK is not only a purely political phenomenon, and mentioned the two other HAK committees that are working in other sectors. 

“The two [health, and science and education] committees also came to the realization that what is essential is not supporting relevant establishments and institutions, but rather the main operating entity, the student, the scientist, [and] the citizen in need of healthcare,” concluded Nedolyan.