Dear friends, This is an open letter about the future strategies of our development. I think it is necessary to raise some issues just before the Tallinn exhibition, which will play an important role in our self understanding.

Remember the intensive May 2008 meeting in Berlin with artists and curators both from our group and from Estonia. We did not only learn about each other, and present our own work and positions, but, for our proposed exhibition in the Tallinn City Hall Gallery, also had to find a clear answer to the question “why develop a trans-national group project for a national public institution?”. There was also the complex problem of finding a satisfying “common denominator” for Armenian diaspora artists and the Estonia related artists.

The first working title proposed was „displaced persons“. This was meant in a positive sense, referring to two small nations with many historical and current parallel issues, including those of diaspora, minorities, immigration, being a “toy ball” of larger geopolitical interests, and so on. On one hand it was felt this would be a catchy name, probably guaranteeing a clear discourse; however it could also trap the viewer into stereotypes. This kind of “victim” position, politically correct and frequently found in contemporary art, had something unacceptable, deconstructing our group philosophy badly. That was the point at which we had to debate and persuade so that the emphasis was moved. Finally, a solution in the form of a different title, “thisPLACEd”, was suggested by Silvina.

We as a group of Armenia related artists do not have a worked out doctrine to relate; instead what we have developed is a number of significant projects. One starting point was the 2003 exhibition “Getting Closer” in Berlin's ifa-galerie¹. The basic concept was the decision not to show predictable images intended to arouse in viewers what one might call “social-pornographic” feelings. For instance, there were no sentimental black and white photos of the regions that suffered from the 1988 earthquake, no defenceless refugees, no “clochards” and other victims of a failed “communist utopia”. And still it was a very “Armenian” show, or maybe it is better to say “diasporic” show in its best way – a collaboration, based on trust, respect for and real interest in every artist and every piece. Later on, Silvina der Meguerditchian, Achot Achot and I organized other projects, integrating a whole landscape of other artists. The constellation of participants was always different, depending on context and possibilities: the experience became our common practice. There were exhibitions in institutions such as museums in Helsinki, Belgrade, Skopje, Medellin. There were video screenings and presentations in galleries, artist run spaces and other venues in Berlin, Bonn, Paris, Buenos Aires and Venice.

We developed as artists in a belief that contemporary art is a universal language, and the early hope of our under_construction group was to integrate dispersed artists of Armenian descent and, importantly, to activate Armenian communities, making them interested in us as artists performing modern concepts of identity. We started to speak about nonmainstream topics. We wanted more than another line on a CV, more than exhibitions in “good venues”; we wanted a creative manifestation and real experience, understanding that we as Armenian diaspora artists are already in a situation which many artists of other nationalities are beginning to have to face, as the times of a national state are gone.

One thing that has become clear to me and to the other artists is that in the late 90s and up to the present, those living in countries with developed art systems have found themselves excluded from serious support and interest. They are already cut off from their homeland community, but are not real “aborigines” anymore – to be shown to the western public as an exotic example illustrating the clichéd “insights” of the mass media and politicians. This might be seen as a sort of paranoia, but it comes from personal experience, seeing firsthand how nationalistic clichés have been pushed through international exhibition halls with help of “compradores”, “kulturträger”, and other knights of the cold war period who wear grey suits, make capital on middle class resentments and play a huge role in turning art into show business.

Probably it is more than coincidence that the main creative core of our group in one or another way have not followed the Archi Galentz common, usual artistic career path. Being somewhat apart from the “system”, many of us facefinancial problems as artists and have

to search for uncommon resources. In 2006 a known French museum was gathering video works from Armenia based artists for a group of exhibitions for the “year of French-Armenian cultural exchange”. We as diaspora artists were not welcomed to participate. The local Armenian curator got paid for a text in the catalogue, but local artists received just 100 Euro for an entire years display of their works in museum and other institutions. This is an example of how democratisation of the contemporary art business goes hand in hand with its “proletarianisation”. I think our group should continue to use every possibility to cooperate with foundations and institutions, but from the position of the emancipated and skeptical player. I find it is more valid to make a living as a designer or restorer, teacher or translator and so on. Let us keep in mind the historical figure of Spinoza the Jewish philosopher of the Enlightenment who lived in a diaspora and preferred to make his living as a lens polisher but be free to develop his own philosophy, rather than to deny his ideas and beliefs, beholden to his orthodox community. Could he be our new saint?

We have to find time to start to construct some clearly defined philosophy, possibly acting in other fields, not only in artistic expression: the example of our collaboration forces us to continue discussions of what it is what we are doing and why it is good to share. Today we are preparing for the exhibition with Estonia related artists and hope to use the week of coming together for intensive face to face communication. Being as we are transnational, or multi-geographied, we have an opportunity to avoid falling into the role of the “victim”: in fact, we are survival experts. We have arrived at this position of stressing the positive aspects of being different, alone, geographically dispersed and un-integrated: we should take the next logical step and realize that we will probably always keep one foot out of the contemporary art system. Its strength is in its flexibility: the changes are already happening and we better face them as prepared actors and not marrionettes.

There are some brave thinkers like German media theorist Peter Weibel who, for instance, explains that the whole of western art is written from the position of the cold war, going so far as to announce that all the books on art of the 20th century are “maculature”². That’s why the most professional thing to do is to write own histories. I consider it is the time for us to decide if we are ready to stop running after the “train that left”, consolidate our efforts and to decide clearly which way to move tomorrow.

For me personally, the position of an independent artist is very near to that of an arrieregardist fighter. Contemporary art uses this term mostly to name something back oriented, a phonetic contradiction to an avantgarde³. I use it as in the sense meant by the fathers of military theory Jomini and Klausewitz, to speak about the one who faces the enemy without a reserve army behind him, and without a general who watches and commands. The arrieregarde fighter, this metaphor, is very much about survival, about keeping contact with your comrade, about taking care. A craftsman artist becomes not a compromise, but a healthy constellation: I suggest we see this position as a chance. One of my favorite contemporary thinkers, the Slovenian born Slavoj Zizek criticized the new European oppositions to the neo liberal order, comparing them not as usual with the marginal, but with the strategy of the hysteric who needles his master permanently with unrealistic demands. The same happens also in art: criticism is an important part of and is exposed proudly from the system, to present its tolerant nature, but the requests are from the same unemancipated manner: more exhibition space, more money for whatever, more attention from mass media…

We are often expected to play the role of the victim, but we build instead our own virtual and physical spaces. This means for me, let us stop thinking of playing a passive role in an old system, where someone else knows what is better, but let us keep on searching for new and independent criteria. Let us become “thisPLACEd”.

Archi Galentz, Berlin, last days of 2008

1) See exhibition catalogue "Getting Closer - four Armenians are looking for a way out" ifa-galerie Berlin 2003.
2)See Peter Weibel “Der Kalte Krieg und die Kunst” in “Zurück aus der Zukunft”, Edition Suhrkamp 2452, 2005, page 49.
3) See Clement Greenberg’s “Avantgarde and kitsch”, essay from 1939, the beginning of part 2