“Mikhail Karikis” Performance - 10th September, 2010
The artist participated in the 7th Gyumri Biennale with a performance. The 7 min performance was an extract from his current work “Xenon” opera (see below). The performance was not mentioned in the Biennale program or booklets because it was planned to be an unexpected and shocking intervention and the artist decided to make it during the opening ceremony when he was invited to give a speech as a guest of the event.

The artist noticed after the performance: “When I spoke to individuals in English (my second language), many did not understand me; when I performed in my artist language, the response was immense.” The performance was very successful. Some guests where very interested in Mikhails work and followed us to Yerevan to participate in Mikhail’s presentation in Yerevan on 12th September.

Sound workshop and performance - 12th September, 2010
The presentation/workshop at The CLUB
During his presentation, the artist talked about his recent art work, including his current collaborative project entitled XENON: an exploded opera which involves over 20 other international artists and explores issues of encounters with strangers evoking questions on human rights, territory, belonging, memory, independence and impossibility.
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Mikhail Karikis is a Greek-born and London-based artist with studies in music, art and architecture, Karikis has developed an art practice that is equally embraced by art galleries and concert halls and his collaborators range from international visual artists to choirs, choreographers and designers. Karikis works cross-disciplinarily in performance art, visual art and music, focusing particularly on notions of encounters with strangers, often employing the voice as a tool to explore ideas and politics of empowerment and difference. Coined by critics a ‘sound alchemist’ (Le Monde) and noted for his ‘sumptuous experimentalism’ (WIRE), Karikis's first music-release on a Björk album was followed by his critically acclaimed album Orphica (Sub Rosa, 2007) and his award nominated project Morphica (2009). Mikhail’s work has been shown at Tate Britain (London), Nederlands Dans Theater (Amsterdam), Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts (Lausanne), Coreana Museum (Seoul) and elsewhere.

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The aim of making this archive is to map some ideas of women art production, examine particular feminist strategies through the years, and discuss how these strategies have been translated into current discourses and projects.

Up to day artists and activists have been interviewed in LA, London, Chicago and N.Y. (USA), in Vienna (Austria), Costa Rica, Mexico, Switzerland, Beirut (Lebanon), Yerevan (Armenia) and Istanbul (Turkey).

During her residencies in Yerevan, Kirsten Dufour has interviewed Armenian female artists and activists, as well as edited and subtitled the interviews shot in Yerevan back in 2005 and in 2009. The interviews of Armenian artists and activists will become part of the overall archive.

During this residencies an important decision was made about further development and institutionalisation of this project. Firstly, Utopiana became a full partner of this project and started undertaking an important role in archiving interviews and further developing the project. For this purpose, a permanent working group was created which includes a technician, a translator and a project coordinator. Now the project is searching for funds in order to continue the archive development.

The project “Let us speak now” (LUSN) has been funded by DCA (Danish contemporary art center) and Danish Art Foundation and the State´s Art Fund.

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Following activities have been conducted during the residency.

Presentation the Club -21.07.2010
“Socialism Failed, Capitalism is Bankrupt. What comes Next?” A project by Oliver Ressler

The project “Socialism Failed, Capitalism is Bankrupt. What comes Next?” focuses on the political and economic situation in the Republic of Armenia, one of the successor states of the Soviet Union. The project materializes in two different formats: a short film “Socialism Failed, Capitalism is Bankrupt. What comes Next?” (19 min., 2010) and a 2-channel video installation that will be accomplished by a photo-based floor piece.

The film “Socialism Failed, Capitalism is Bankrupt. What comes Next?” was recorded in summer 2010 in Yerevan’s largest bazaar, called “Bangladesh”. Every day more than 1000 people try to survive as traders in the “Bangladesh” bazaar, where an average vendor does not earn more than 100 to 250 Euros per month. In the film, the market’s traders talk about their struggles to survive during crises in a post-socialist state that closed most Soviet-era factories and dissolved social safety nets. The market’s traders, primarily former factory-workers, describe how their living conditions worsened after the end of the Soviet Union; they speak about their hopes and expectations for social change. While they live in misery, a small but highly influential class of corrupt politicians and super-rich oligarchs team up with international corporations in order to fill their pockets with profits from transferring state property and licenses for mining.

The project also produced a photo-based floor piece with three-meter diameter in the shape of Armenia; the floor piece provides an illustration of this extremely uneven distribution of wealth.

In the 2-channel video installation, the “Bangladesh” video is combined with a (silent) video, which focuses on former Soviet factories in Yerevan that were shut down or produce at reduced capacity or were transformed into something else. Each factory was filmed with a single shot of 20 seconds, followed by information that includes the factory’s name, what it produced, when it closed, the current owner and the new utilization.
The research and interviews where made during the residency in Yrerevan in collaboration with artist Vahe Budumyan and activist Arpineh Galfayan. The editing and masterising of the videos were made at Utopiana’s media lab.

The project will be presented in Yerevan during the final exhibition of “Eat and Work” project in September 2011.

Meeting with activits - Presentation at IDHR – 6th August 2010
During his residency the artist also got aquainted and collaborated with Armenian leftist actrivists and artists, as well as collaborated with IDHR (Institute for Democracy and Human Rights) NGO, where he presented his “Comuna Under Construction” film (film 94 min) by himself and Dario Azzelini.

The film was screened in Spanish, with English subtitles. Verbal Armenian translation was also available.

All the presented materials are available at Utopiana’s library.

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He produced a video on the hour-long encirclement of demonstrators by the police at a demonstration against the World Economic Forum in 2001 in Salzburg, and one on the “Disobbedienti” (with Dario Azellini). “What Would It Mean To Win?” (with Zanny Begg) was filmed on the blockades at the G8 summit in Heiligendamm, Germany in June 2007. Ressler created banners for demonstrations (with David Thorne) and was involved in the self-organized collaborative art project Holy Damn It (www.holy-damn-it.org), that produced 50.000 posters to mobilize against the G8 summit in Heiligendamm. Besides these direct interventions with art in political movements, Oliver Ressler will talk about his major ongoing exhibition project “Alternative Economics, Alternative Societies”, which has been realized since 2003. “Alternative Economics, Alternative Societies” focuses on diverse concepts and models for alternative economies and societies, which all share a rejection of the capitalist system of rule. After the presentation, the film “What Would It Mean To Win?” (2008, 40 min. english) will be screened it its entire length.

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Oliver Ressler (born 1970 in Austria) produces exhibitions, projects in the public space and videos which blur the boundaries between art and activism. His projects have been exhibited in solo-exhibitions at the Berkeley Art Museum; Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Center, Istanbul; Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade; Kunstraum der Universität Lüneburg, Germany; Centro Cultural Conde Duque, Madrid and in Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum in Egypt. He participated in the biennials in Prague, 2005; Seville, 2006; Moscow, 2007, Taipei, 2008 and Lyon, 2009. For the Taipei Biennial 2008 Ressler curated an exhibition on the counter-globalization movement, “A World Where Many Worlds ”, which was also shown at Foreman Art Gallery of Bishop’s University in Sherbrooke, Canada in 2010. Artsist's webpage

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