“Armenians” Attack Artists

The open-air performance held near Yerevan’s Republic Metro Station as part of the “HuZANQ u ZANG” performing art project was “attended” by disrupters fighting against the Istanbul Convention (to combat domestic violence and gender-based violence) and perversion of the Armenian nation. About 10 minutes after the start of the performance, one of disrupters cut off the electric wires after which a mob started chanting “shame”, “no to perversion”, “sovereign Armenia”.

After electric transmission was resumed, they brought in loudspeakers in order to downplay the background music. Parallel to the performance, the men acting against it were speaking about the salvation of national values, perversion and Minister of Education, Culture and Science, Arayik Harutyunyan who was accused of rejecting censorship. The defenders of national values, in essence, were demanding to recover censorship and not to support “perverts, foreign things, Satanism and LGBT.” They were calling on the participants of the performance and their supporters to “leave Armenia”.

While the attempts to disrupt the performance were persising, the performance continued. Towards the end, one of the anti-istanbul-convention activists tried to attack the artists, however was stopped on his way. Another disrupter spilled “zelyonka” dye (green antiseptic solution) in the direction of the participants, a popular tactics among Russia’s pro-government operatives. He promised that “as long as he lived, there would never be a propaganda of satanism”.

Epress.am asked them what is the relation of Satanism with the performance, to which one of the disrupters said that it “was not appropriate for a women,” and another one advised to “ask the favorite Arayik Harutyunyan”.

At the end of the performance, the artists bowed and thanked all who had come to support. They also thanked the police ensuring the safety of the participants and stopping the attacks. The disrupters, on their turn, embarked on dancing “kochari”.

The artists made a public alert one day before the performance that an attack was planned as during their rehearsal two men attached them and disrupted the final rehearsal, insulted them and accused of “anti-national, satanistic, LGBT”  acts, a behavior “not appropriate for an Armenian woman”, punched Lilit Petrosyan, one of the artists and a witnessing tourst during an argument and later promised “to come back.” The police were involved over this incident.

“HuZANQ u ZANG” is a performing art project synthesizing contemporary dance and poetic rhythm. The performance is based on experimental reading of the futuristic poetry of the 1920s (Kara Darvish, Gevorg Abov, Azat Vshtuni) with Lilit Petrosyan’s signature poetic interventions and Hasmik Tangyan’s geography of future-oriented movement.

Futurism is the voice of the future in the past that comes to proclaim the presence of the artist and makes a creative effort, does experiments of a mobile lab comprised of humans and liberates the body of the woman by doing art. “HuZANQ u ZANG” questions the public perception of a woman’s behavior, manner of speaking and moving.

The project is implemented with the support of the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sports.