-
Public Performance
Artists: Susu Shuling Shih (Taiwan), Raffie Davtian (Aremenia and Iran)
Supporting Artists: Ulrika Ferm (Finland), Guillaume Aubry (France), Nazeli Nazinyan (Russia and Armenia), Stas Shulepov (Russia and Armenia)
Charles Aznavour Square, Yerevan
December 4, 2008
In the Ancient Greece, the ‘praxis’ and the ‘theory’ were clearly divided. According to Plato, the shift from one to another was a ‘Metanoya’ – a way which people had to pass to go out of the cave to achieve a godlike view upon the world. Contemporary ‘Metanoya’ by B. Groys is based on the opposite – today’s individuals form images of the world by the means of mass media which allow them to have a holistic view of the world. Today, we are the eyewitnesses of the society’s growing visualization, the spreading of various image technologies, the grasp of presentation modes, and the globalization which is a perspective inspired by global media. Thus, not only the perception of present facts, but also our view of the history is mediated by visual technologies and by certain strategies of representation.
The idea of the project is about how the Government uses the media as a tool for controlling and leading people. The project is a symbolical show on ‘modus operandi’ of the individuals with the Reality. It is also important to relate this brief view of processes to the 2008 social and civil movement in Armenia and the fact of coherent actions of the authorities to crush the movement. It was not a nation-wide movement; it was a social and civil movement, a struggle between two parts of the society on one hand, and a struggle for democratic values on the other hand. Mass media do not link the ideology of the movement to social and civic consciousness. They view it as an organized struggle to satisfy someone’s personal political ambitions.