In 2009, Utopiana.am plans to organize screenings of a series of environmental films, in cooperation with Armenian environmentalists. The admission was free to all interested individuals. No prior selection of participants was conducted. The meeting was recorded by Utopiana.am media lab, and is available to all those interested.

Utopiana.am organizes weekly film screening and discussion events. The selection of films is open in terms of both, thematic and origin. In 2008, movies by directors such as Atom Egoian, Takeshi Kitanon, Luis Bunuel, Ralf de Here and others were screened.

In the framework of this project, Utopiana.am cooperated with The CLUB.

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The project aims at creating a new network which will bring together individual artists, art technicians and organizations working in the sphere of art and technologies in Central Asia, Caucasus, Balkans and Turkish countries.

The main objectives of the project are

Contribute to the exchange of experience and knowledge among artists, art technicians and cultural organizations;
Support the mobility of the artist and art pieces, for the purpose of development of art dialogue;
Increase the quantities of cultural cooperation;
Develop digital technologies as art media and contribute to the increased use of digital technologies in art;
Increase the number of audience in participating countries;
Create a new group, which will develop new artistic expressions in the sphere of global arts and technologies, bringing together different sorts of artists;
Increase visibility and accessibility of artists and their works in this huge and culturally diverse artists;
Create a soft transition between Istanbul, European, Middle Asian and Turkish countries.

Formats of possible cooperation, borders of the network and possible participating states, the issue of Europe being an observer or a member, were discussed on the meeting. The future plans are: Development of a website, which will provide an opportunity to post country context for each state, information about institutions, news section, etc. Creation of a mailing-list; Discussions on the following issues: Technologies as a means of progress, mastering governance tools; Technology as a new world, a space for another life; Technology as a recording tool; a means of preserving the past, producing memory.

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The exhibition was a discourse-oriented project, rather than a presentation. This explained the absence of a single thematic line, and the factor of posing questions rather than suggesting answers. It offered a conversation on the phenomenological experiences of concrete women, but at the same time it had no aim of presenting or expressing this experience; it was about homosexual and queer sight. In a time when the policy of post-modernist identities merchandises identities and differences and takes external and self-styled expressions as signs of these differences, when the wishes are commercialized and bureaucratized,the project “I’m coming to you not to be with you” did not/does not exclude failure of the wish or the wish of not wanting. It is an ongoing dialogue, which does not even exclude the possibility of failure of dialogue. During the exhibition project many demanded direct and abrupt statements. Instead of revolutionary urgency and activeness the project offered self-reflection and negotiation; is visibility always empowering?

The project was carried out in the garden of Utopiana.am. The exhibition as well as the further discussion were video-recorded by Utopiana.am media lab and are available to all interested.

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Copies of these issues of the literary journal are available in Utopiana.am library, and are accessible for interested individuals.

Cooperation with Armenian writers, June-December 2008 Throughout the year 2008 Utopiana.am had continuous and long-term cooperation with professional and amateur contemporary writers. Utopiana.am conducted weekly meetings with writers in its premises, discussions on different topics and literary pieces.

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During the workshop expressions and interpretation of queer identity and love were observed in international contemporary art and audio-video culture. Expressions of sexuality in art, mass media, publicity and movies were discussed within the context of democratic political theory, gender and homosexual studies. Pawel Leszkowicz is a critic and essayist; he is a professor at Poznan University of Contemporary Art after Adam Mickewicz. His research and literary activity is focused on homosexual studies, contemporary art and culture and correlations of related critical theories. He has published several essays and catalogues. He was the curator of exhibition “Love and Democracy”, exhibited in Poznan in 2005 and in Gdansk in 2006.

The workshop was followed by a meeting with the members of Utopiana.am, where the methods of struggle through image were discussed. The discussion focused on visual and sexual/love relationships together with the sexual rights and means of their expression in the contemporary democratic societies. The meeting was conducted in the framework of International Summer School initiated by the National Association of Art Critics.

The meetings and discussion were recorded by Utopinana.am media lab.

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The training courses were directed to all amateurs, and in particular to artists, in order to allow them to realize their independent projects. Nine participants took part in these seminars and all the technical material necessary was made available to them through the media lab. Each of the participants was provided theoretical material and, which they were later using practically, to create their own material. Furthermore, nine films had completed production and postproduction by the end of the seminar series; these films were presented on a single DVD. The training courses, as well as all other work, were carried out in Utopiana’s media lab.