To build (a landscape)
Creating a context where it’s possible to re-think the dimension “national” belonging, beyond a specific geography. Questioning the relationship between centre/periphery (Diaspora and the Republic of Armenia). Approaching our self understanding not as an archipelago1, but rather as the system of a river delta, flowing from land into one ocean, lake, another river… a landscape formed by accumulations of sediments carried by the stream as the flow leaves the mouth of the river2: the islands and islets, the canals and new bifurcations of this stream are in constant movement and evolution. Relating to the water stream. Thinking further a dynamic that follows the cycle of water condensing to steam, building clouds and raining over the earth. Changing different estates of density, but not living in the liquid modernity defined by Zygmunt Bauman, nor the evanescent structure of Sloterdijk’s foam theory of society…3 because our landscape transports sediments, therefore being a combination of water and earth… Relating us to the delta landscape. Reinforcing the existing links and creating through exchange new and stronger streams. One might speculate that Mesopotamia4, formed by the Tigris and the Euphrates, which leads into a delta, and was also the first geography of the Armenians, continues to structure their mental landscape thousands of years later.

To give
Giving is the warm energy that flows, nourishing, bringing life, curiosity and respect for the other in this delta as the gulfstream does in the sea. Taking time to understand the other. Cultivating the interest for the other and not only interest for the self, which is so widespread in contemporary society. Giving a real sense to the word dialog, a term that has become commonplace, but that still is not well understood by most people. Cultivating the model of a mobile personality, whose central feature is empathy, "the ability of the human being to see himself in the situation of others”. Pushing the next dialectic turn of the spiral. Moving from Silvina Der-Meguerditchian Performative acts 53 times marked by the marketing slogan “Geiz ist geil” (Miserliness is cool!) to Sloterdijk’s “period of balance between Thymos (the awareness driven by those proud to be able to give something) and Eros, (the desire driven by lack) that has been dominant in recent years”5.

To include
Making our equation look to others as potential partners, rather as potential contenders. Sharing information, knowledge, feelings, connections, resources and professional tools. Using the surfaces of the field of contemporary art, without becoming subordinate to its rules. Integrating our dispersed situation into our identity, not fighting against it. Using the tools created by new technology to achieve our purposes. Adding pilgrims/intellectuals from other fields (historians, sociologists, psychologists, philosophers, musicians, writers) to our landscape. Adding our historical absences to our pragmatic reality. Enjoying presences. Learning from the experience of duality/plurality of other cultures, such as in this case, the Estonian/Russian culture.

To flow
Sowing contemporary gardens (the garden of democracy, the garden of human rights, the garden of respect, the garden of memory, the garden of equality). Cultivating joy. Helping new gardens and gardeners to flourish, gardeners who will take care, irrigate and raise our delicate seedlings, here and now. Nobody can deny our right to cultivate our culture, music, writing, painting... Cultures that don’t develop become museum artefacts, nations that don’t produce culture become “fossil nations”. If we want to live, we have to flow, and not in only one direction.

To legitimate
Accepting the nebulosity of the Diaspora. Recognizing our nature as a cascade of paradoxes and contradictions: to be in and out of society at the same time. Sharing our points of view because we have the ability to feel the dimensions of closeness and remoteness simultaneously. Considering this historical consciousness of cultural autonomy as skill. Valorising the regulating and innovating power of minorities for the society. Understanding that our primary conscience of the earth “as an open space where we live with others” is a precious experience and richness worth sharing.

1) In “D’ Armenie“ « La Diaspora: periferique or archipelique? » in Arménographie : dispersion des lieux- discontinuité de temps, Anna Barseghian and Stefan Kristensen. In the essay the authors suggest to consider the notion of archipelago to approach the interrogation of identity in the Diaspora, where the different Armenian communities are islands and the Republic Armenia is the bigger island.

2) According to the different aglomerations and migrations, (Lebanese-Armenians, Iranian- Armenians in the 1970s, the exodus from the Republic of Armenia to the USA and Europe in the past 15 years, to speak only of the largest migrations from the last 30 years).

3) Sloterdijk uses the image of foam to describe society as a conglomeration of multiple cells, fragile, different, isolated and permeable. In Sloterdijk’s theory of society foam is also a metaphor used to describe multitudes of tissues and habitats embedded one inside the other.

4) Etymologically: “in between rivers”.

5) DIE ZEIT, Dez. 2008-Interview


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Agamben Giorgio, Das Offene, Der Mensch und das Tier, Frankfurt, 2003

Dabag Mihran- Platt Kristin, Ed. Identität in der Fremde, Bochum, 1993

Kristeva Julia, Fremde sind wir uns selbst, Frankfurt, 1990 Le langage, cet inconnu, Paris, 1981

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Altounian Janine, La survivance- Traduire le trauma collectif, Paris, 2000