The first exhibition space for the workshop’s creations was the Tumanyan bus stop on the M6 highway. This stop is the road, it’s emigration, it’s the starting point of a place where we have been finding shelter for three years now. The bus stop is a public, nobody’s space, a place of waiting, observation, and transition from one state to another.
“This is not my home, this is not my mountain, this is not my story, this is not my responsibility.”
Our activity is a conversation about choice and responsibility for it. About the impact of globalization and centralization on small communities, their destruction, the depriving of people of initiative and their own development path. It’s about how these people remain on the sidelines, while history rushes past, pushing unresolved issues to the periphery, excluding these problems from its field of view and responsibility.
This story is about how through the attitude towards resources, one’s own and others’ labor and time, we can restore value, self-sufficiency, and autonomy.
Thanks to everyone who participates, helps, and supports!
(For the artworks, we used plastic bags collected by the community during Abastan seasons 2023–2025, as well as those brought to Letters and Numbers (this was a one-time collection for the workshop and our masterclass)
The place: a bus stop on the M6 highway between Yerevan and Tbilisi, between the railroad and the Debed River, between the pulpulak and the bakery, a Soviet-era reinforced concrete structure with a childishly drawn horse, with a mossy and grassy island of a roof. Not quite a curbside, a strange assemblage point, a shelter turned inside out. Where the walls are inside and you're outside. Neutral territory, accessible to anyone. No longer a settlement, but not yet a road.
We drew there the attention of birds, rocks, thorny shrubs, an occasional hiker, a driver, and the wind whipping through the gorge. We played accompanying the Debed River, the trucks and the railroad. We hung paintings on the pillar walls. Boiled water on a gas burner, brewed coffee and greeted friends. Then saw off those who were heading back, packed up the exhibition and left.
Neutral territory. Home. Road. Stop. 3 years that we have been here.
Dissonantia
The main goal of the works and the exhibition was to create dissonance. To directly connect the elitism of art and “garbage,” “disposable” and “eternal,”, to make visible what we push out of our field of vision, striving for “beauty.”
Using similar processes of formation of rocks and minerals in the earth’s crust (heating and pressure), we create “man-made” works, excluding the “idea” or vision of the “author.” The material becomes a work without affecting its visual component of the artist in its classical understanding.
The result is a work generated / compiled by both material and immaterial products of society’s life.
This exhibition is one of the ways to explore society and the language of art.
With the help of technical possibilities and visual language, we want to focus the attention of creators (after all, each of us is a creator of culture, including acting as a consumer) on the attitude to resources, on personal choices and their impact on the present and future and on cultural traces we leave, creating an environment for future generations.
Sponsors and support:
Abastan Community
Artists at Risk Connection (ARC)
CISR Berlin e.V.
