Epress.am News from Armenia
The week-long sit-in/rally at Yerevan’s Liberty Square recently organized by the opposition Armenian National Congress (HAK) and its supporters was, in some respects, critical for the development of culture, theater critic, publicist Ara Nedolyan told Epress.am.
“After spending three days and nights in the square, [art curator] Nazaret Karoyan and I departed for Poland, to a conference dedicated to theater and performance arts, and there, upon Nazaret’s initiative, we facilitated a live feed from Liberty Square via Skype, and we said to the conference participants, see, this is contemporary art, performance art today — it is from here that the transformation of global art is going to begin. Culture, art, theater and performative art is not that which exists on stage and in galleries; those are only memories of platforms and squares, their artificial reproduction during non-revolutionary times. But that which you are seeing now is the source of art itself; that art which is not… entertainment, but directly a political tool, a political method,” said Nedolyan, adding that from the beginning, the aim of theater, dance, performative and participatory arts has been to tear down the invisible wall which separates the audience from the stage, “to involve everyone in the work of shaping freedom.”
“And the goal of democratic policy is the same, to give power to each person, to engage everyone to freely create in the political domain. And that’s what took place these days in our square. Public policy is a priority in the performative arts; basically, this is what mankind’s first, Greek tragedies portrayed,” he said.