Hello all,
My first article has been launched. The topic I am discussing is artists using history and archives in their work and I discuss their work in terms of Jacques Derrida's theory of the archive. Please read it and make comments. Also check out the articles from other writers. Click the link below.
http://ncphoffthewall.blogspot.com/2010/07/you-give-me-fever.html
Cheers,
Melissa
July 26, 2010
July 25, 2010
Physical Translating, part 3
We met outside this time, at 9:30. The weather was very pleasant. We started talking about Lusine Vayachyan's "Balagoie" and her physicality when describing a short stint in prison, and the question came up of whether it was literature because of her use of language, content, and theme. It was a rousing discussion, taking into account the reader and the writer's aims. We also talked about Julie Glaser's piece "Eat.and.Disorder " in the anthology Bent, an anthology of queer Canadian writers. Glaser wrote about being a vegetarian and how this was at odds with the culture of her family, which she then likened to her sexuality and general orientation as a writer.
We did a series of movement exercises and wrote briefly after each one: a few asanas led by Haykuhi, then I did an exercise I learned from Body Weather, wherein one person is blind and the other leads her to surfaces via her fingertip, to feel her way around a space. I also asked them to walk as slowly as they possbly could. For homework, the idea is to write on where in the body you feel free, where in the body you feel imprisoned, and what forces in your life make you feel free or imprisoned, and how those forces manifest in the body.
We didn't have nearly enough time to read, as usual, though I left about 50 mins at the end for it. So we'll continue in one more session next week. But those who read shared some really amazing stuff. It's obvious people are taking risks, and everyone seems excited about the reading on July 31st.
The cat was crazy, climbing in the tree above us to get out attention. We were so busy talking and reading and laughing that perhaps we weren't as aware of her.
We did a series of movement exercises and wrote briefly after each one: a few asanas led by Haykuhi, then I did an exercise I learned from Body Weather, wherein one person is blind and the other leads her to surfaces via her fingertip, to feel her way around a space. I also asked them to walk as slowly as they possbly could. For homework, the idea is to write on where in the body you feel free, where in the body you feel imprisoned, and what forces in your life make you feel free or imprisoned, and how those forces manifest in the body.
We didn't have nearly enough time to read, as usual, though I left about 50 mins at the end for it. So we'll continue in one more session next week. But those who read shared some really amazing stuff. It's obvious people are taking risks, and everyone seems excited about the reading on July 31st.
The cat was crazy, climbing in the tree above us to get out attention. We were so busy talking and reading and laughing that perhaps we weren't as aware of her.
July 24, 2010
2010 ՏԵ տեղի ունենալիքի ծրագիրը
ՀՈՒԼԻՍԻ 31 | Զարուբյան 34, Այգի
19:12
Մելինէ Տէր Մինասեան և Լողելին Քոենիգ
Ինքնահավաստում երկու ակվարիումների և մի չուներիի համար
Ձևախաղ Վիոլետ Գրիգորյանի «Ինքնահավաստում» բանաստեղծության շուրջ (ֆրանսերենով ու հայերենով)։
19:38
Լիլիա Խաչատրյան, Անեսթեզված տեքստ. թարգմանությունը որպես սնանկ հավակնություն, էսսե։
20:04
Արաքսի Ներկարարյան, Սիրո դրսևորում № 02. Պեպենակ, ընթացիկ պերֆորմանս։
20:06
Ծօմակ Օգա, Տատա, վիդեոկլիպ։
Լուսի Աբդալեան, ֆոտոշարք։
Լուսինե Վայաչյան, Մենք՝ որ հարցեր չտան, վիդեոիմպրովիզացիա։
Օկեան, Հոգմապար, ֆոտոշարք։
21:01
Մելիսա Բոյաջեան
Delicious Fruit (2010)
Կարճ փորձարարական վիդեո, որն օգտագործում է Փարաջանովի «Նռան գույնը» (1969) արքետիպային ֆիլմից վերակոնտեքստավորված կադրեր։
Լուսինե Վայաչյան, Մենք՝ որ հարցեր չտան, վիդեոիմպրովիզացիա։
Օկեան, Հոգմապար, ֆոտոշարք։
21:01
Մելիսա Բոյաջեան
Delicious Fruit (2010)
Կարճ փորձարարական վիդեո, որն օգտագործում է Փարաջանովի «Նռան գույնը» (1969) արքետիպային ֆիլմից վերակոնտեքստավորված կադրեր։
I need you to need me to need you (2010)
Երեք պանելով վիդեո, որտեղ արվեստագետներ Ֆրեդ Աթան և Մելիսա Բոյաջեանն օգտագործել են մանկական խաղեր որպես չափահաս հարաբերությունների իշխանության դինամիկան արտահայտող փոխաբերություն։
Basic Conversational Armenian (2007)
Երկու պանելով վիդեո կառուցված արևմտյան հայերենով ժապավենների վրա, որ հետազոտում է սփյուռքահայ ինքնության բարդույթներն ու փորձերը սովորեցնել ու սովորել տեղահանված լեզուն, հաշտեցնելով մինչ այդ լեզվում ներգրված գենդերային կոդերը, սեռականությունը և իշխանության պայքարը։
Tip of the Tongue Phenomenon (2006)
Փորձարարական վիդեո, որում սուբյեկտը չափազանցեցված ձևով կապում է իր լեզուն և այնուհետև փորձում խոսել։
21:58
Բաց քննարկում։
ՕԳՈՍՏՈՍԻ 1 | Զարուբյան 34, Այգի
19:07
Նենսի Ագաբեան, Անահիտ Հայրապետյան, Նուշիկ Սմբատյան, Հայկուհի Ավետիսյան, Հասմիկ Մանուկյան, Տաիշա Աբելար, Գայանե Մարտիրոսյան և Հասմիկ Սիմոնյան
Ֆիզիկական թարգմանություն
Նենսի Ագաբեանի վարած Ֆիզիկական մարմնի վրա հիմնված գրական ստեղծագործական արհեստանոց։ Մասնակիցները կընթերցեն նոր տեքստեր կապված ֆիզիկական փորձի՝ հիվանդության, դիսոցիացիայի, ցավի, ուրախության, փորձարկումների, աթլետիզմի, սեռականության, վերարտադրության, և այլնի հետ:
20:27
Լարա Ահարոնեան (in absentia)
Բ-ի և Լ-ի նամակագրությունը, կընթերցեն՝ Մելինէ Տէր Մինասեանը և Իլեյն Կրիկորեանը։
20:43
Շուշան Ավագյան և լուսինե թալալյան
Զարուբյանի կանայք, տեքստի ու լուսանկարի միջև դիալեկտիկայի հետազոտություն՝ հնարելով և մերկացնելով թարգմանական միջոցները։
Երեք պանելով վիդեո, որտեղ արվեստագետներ Ֆրեդ Աթան և Մելիսա Բոյաջեանն օգտագործել են մանկական խաղեր որպես չափահաս հարաբերությունների իշխանության դինամիկան արտահայտող փոխաբերություն։
Basic Conversational Armenian (2007)
Երկու պանելով վիդեո կառուցված արևմտյան հայերենով ժապավենների վրա, որ հետազոտում է սփյուռքահայ ինքնության բարդույթներն ու փորձերը սովորեցնել ու սովորել տեղահանված լեզուն, հաշտեցնելով մինչ այդ լեզվում ներգրված գենդերային կոդերը, սեռականությունը և իշխանության պայքարը։
Tip of the Tongue Phenomenon (2006)
Փորձարարական վիդեո, որում սուբյեկտը չափազանցեցված ձևով կապում է իր լեզուն և այնուհետև փորձում խոսել։
21:58
Բաց քննարկում։
ՕԳՈՍՏՈՍԻ 1 | Զարուբյան 34, Այգի
19:07
Նենսի Ագաբեան, Անահիտ Հայրապետյան, Նուշիկ Սմբատյան, Հայկուհի Ավետիսյան, Հասմիկ Մանուկյան, Տաիշա Աբելար, Գայանե Մարտիրոսյան և Հասմիկ Սիմոնյան
Ֆիզիկական թարգմանություն
Նենսի Ագաբեանի վարած Ֆիզիկական մարմնի վրա հիմնված գրական ստեղծագործական արհեստանոց։ Մասնակիցները կընթերցեն նոր տեքստեր կապված ֆիզիկական փորձի՝ հիվանդության, դիսոցիացիայի, ցավի, ուրախության, փորձարկումների, աթլետիզմի, սեռականության, վերարտադրության, և այլնի հետ:
20:27
Լարա Ահարոնեան (in absentia)
Բ-ի և Լ-ի նամակագրությունը, կընթերցեն՝ Մելինէ Տէր Մինասեանը և Իլեյն Կրիկորեանը։
20:43
Շուշան Ավագյան և լուսինե թալալյան
Զարուբյանի կանայք, տեքստի ու լուսանկարի միջև դիալեկտիկայի հետազոտություն՝ հնարելով և մերկացնելով թարգմանական միջոցները։
21:18
Արփի Ադամյան
Նեյտրալ լարվածություն
Փորձարարական վիդեո Մելինէ Տէր Մինասեանի ներկայացմամբ (28.05.10; Զարուբյան 34)՝ Տէր Մինասեանի և Կարին Գրիգորյանի թարգմանական (Ռոլան Բարտ, «Լուսավոր խցիկ»; ֆրանսերենից՝ հայերեն, անգլերենը որպես լինգուա ֆրանկա) պրոցեսի մասին:
լուսինե թալալյան
Տղայա՞, թե աղջիկ
Փորձարարական վիդեո, ոչինչ չէր մնում անելու մասին, քան պառկել ու չփախչել քաղաքից:
22:04
Բաց քննարկում։
July 23, 2010
The QY 2010 Art Intervention Program
JULY 31 | Zarubyan 34, Garden
19:12
Méliné Ter Minassian and Laureline Koenig
Autoconfirmation For Two Aquariums and a Chuneri
A game of forms around the poem “Autocomfirmation” by Violet Grigoryan in Armenian and French.
19:38
Lilia Khachatryan, The Anesthetized Text: Translation as a Bankrupt Claim, an essay.
Tatia Skhirtladze (in absentia), It’s a Real Dream, You Know, a photograph.
20:04
Araxi Nerkararyan, Expression of Love № 02: The Moth, a performance in progress.
20:06
Tsomak Oga, Tata, videoclip.
Lucie Abdalian, photography.
Lusine Vayachyan, We, so they don’t ask questions, video improvisation.
Ocean, Hogmapar, photography.
21:01
Melissa Boyajian
Delicious Fruit (2010)
A short experimental video utilizing recontextualized footage of Sergei Parajanov’s archetypal film The Color of Pomegranates (1969).
I need you to need me to need you (2010)
A three-channel video in which artists Fred Ata and Melissa Boyajian utilize children’s games as a metaphor that makes connections to power dynamics in adult relationships.
Basic Conversational Armenian (2007)
A two-channel video performance constructed from Western Armenian language tapes, exploring the complexities of Armenian identity of the diaspora and the attempts to teach and learn the displaced language while reconciling the embedded gender codes, sexuality and power struggle within the language.
Tip of the Tongue Phenomenon (2006)
An experimental video depicting a close-up shot of a mouth in which the subject exaggeratedly binds his/her tongue and then attempts to speak.
21:58
Open discussion
AUGUST 1 | Zarubyan 34, Garden
19:07
Nancy Agabian, Anahit Hayrapetyan, Nushik Smbatyan, Haykuhi Avetisyan, Hasmik Manukyan, Taisha Abelar, Gayane Martirosyan and Hasmik Simonyan
Physical Translating
A body-based creative writing workshop led by Nancy Agabian. Participants will read new texts related to physical experiences—in illness, disconnection, pain, joy, experimentation, athleticism, sexuality, reproduction, etc.
20:27
Lara Aharonian (in absentia)
The Correspondence of B and L, read by Méliné Ter Minassian and Elaine Krikorian.
20:43
Shushan Avagyan and lusine talalyan
Zarubyani kanayq (Zarubyan's Women)
An exploration in the dialectic of text and photography, devising and baring the devices of translation.
21:18
Arpi Adamyan
Neutral Tension
An experimental video on Méliné Ter Minassian’s presentation (28.05.10; Zarubyan 34) on her and Karin Grigoryan’s translation process of La Chambre claire (1980) by Roland Barthes (from French to Armenian, using English as a lingua franca).
lusine talalyan
Is It a Boy or a Girl?
An experimental video about that there was nothing else to do but lie down and not leave the town.
22:04
Open discussion
An Obituary to WOW
If you see us in the street we will not respond to being called WOW (Women-Oriented Women) any more.
How could you bare us this way for so long?
WOW no longer exists. The day is always short,
How could you bare us this way for so long?
WOW no longer exists. The day is always short,
we move on.
ՆՓԱԿ-ը ակտուալ չէ այսօր
լ.- ՍՈՆԻԿ, ինչի ես ցանկից ջնջել սեռական ուղղվածություն-ը
Ս.- դե դա ԷԼ ակտուալ չէ հայաստանում էտ հարցը լուծված է ես շատ ընկերներ ունեմ տենց ՆՅՈՒ - ՅՈՐՔ-ում օրինակ երբ ՕԲԱՄԱՆ դառավ նախագահ ԱՄՆ-ում մի քանի պաշտոնյա կա արդեն. էս անգամ ուզում եմ միայն երիտասարդ սկսնակ արվեստագետներ մասնակցեն ԿԱՅԱՑԱԾ արվեստագետներ չեմ ուզում որ լինեն. հա ձեր երկրի միակ խնդիրը քաղաքականություն է ԵՍ առաջինն էի որ քաղաքական գործ արեցի էստեղ. դու աննայի հետ էիր չէ աշխատում
լ. - հիմա չէ
Ս. - հա հիմա նոր խումբ ունեք բայց ես չեմ լսել դրա մասին, չէ ոնց որ լսել եմ
(գրված է քաքագույնով)
July 17, 2010
Physical Translating, session 2
We met in the kitchen today because it was raining. And we started earlier, at 9 am. A couple people did not make it, I think because they had to work; Monday is some kind of holiday. The cat Shushi slipped in and out and took up residence in laps and chairs.
We talked a bit about the descriptions of first getting one's period in Audre Lorde's "Zami: A New Spelling of My Name" and of the piece "Wetness" by the anonymous author in the Meem anthology. Both described physical details of the experience, but they also referred to menses as a time when one is "becoming a woman". Everyone sort of spontaneously spoke about what it had been like for them. It seemed to be a common experience to not have really been told or taught about it. We wrote about either this experience, or the concept of becoming a woman. After we read, people commented more on what they liked or what they wanted to hear more about. This took up most of our time. I was planning to do more, but I have to factor (language) translation into the time it takes to do exercises.
We also talked a bit about documenting, though our discussion was less about style and more about content. I ended with some summaries of Audre Lorde's and Virginia Woolf's views on women writing: breaking silences and "killing the Angel in the house"; both of them have to do with a certain type of freedom of the mind: that you can't be free till you break silences, and you can't really write till your mind is free. I thought it was important to bring this up as we'll move into writing more about ourselves in the present, rather than in the past.
Something interesting came up: myths of the body. What had people heard about their bodies that turned out to be untrue? So we decided to use that as an exercise during the week. I also asked people to write someplace they normally wouldn't, so that they might become more aware of their body or physical presence.
Lots of discussion, cross talking, excited words, and different perspectives in the kitchen.
We talked a bit about the descriptions of first getting one's period in Audre Lorde's "Zami: A New Spelling of My Name" and of the piece "Wetness" by the anonymous author in the Meem anthology. Both described physical details of the experience, but they also referred to menses as a time when one is "becoming a woman". Everyone sort of spontaneously spoke about what it had been like for them. It seemed to be a common experience to not have really been told or taught about it. We wrote about either this experience, or the concept of becoming a woman. After we read, people commented more on what they liked or what they wanted to hear more about. This took up most of our time. I was planning to do more, but I have to factor (language) translation into the time it takes to do exercises.
We also talked a bit about documenting, though our discussion was less about style and more about content. I ended with some summaries of Audre Lorde's and Virginia Woolf's views on women writing: breaking silences and "killing the Angel in the house"; both of them have to do with a certain type of freedom of the mind: that you can't be free till you break silences, and you can't really write till your mind is free. I thought it was important to bring this up as we'll move into writing more about ourselves in the present, rather than in the past.
Something interesting came up: myths of the body. What had people heard about their bodies that turned out to be untrue? So we decided to use that as an exercise during the week. I also asked people to write someplace they normally wouldn't, so that they might become more aware of their body or physical presence.
Lots of discussion, cross talking, excited words, and different perspectives in the kitchen.
July 16, 2010
Writing workshop
Last Saturday there were twelve of us who met in the garden at the Women's Resource Center. It wasn't yet too hot at 10 am. I was hoping to make a space where we could write together about physical experiences.
We started with some icebreakers: saying our names with a gesture to remember us by. Then we each taught each other something we used to do as children. One person would do her movement, and the rest of us would do it back at her. I was nervous people would think it was goofy, but it turned out to be fun, and people were clever, like the woman who kissed the woman who was standing next to her, so we all had to kiss the cheek of the woman standing to our right.
Afterwards, I asked people to write about what came up from doing or seeing the movements. What memories? I asked them to embody those memories and try to get them on the page.
To my surprise, everyone wanted to read afterwards. I was interested in the narratives that expressed some of the feelings of childhood, especially in how they shape identity. Some people described a childhood memory with an adult voice, but there were a variety of stylistic approaches, like more metaphorical or poetic or sound-based or journalistic responses -- and we talked about each one. In particular, we talked about whether it's truly possible to write in a child's voice. I asked the question because I was thinking about how it is that writers can embody a physical experience -- childhood or otherwise -- and translate it to the page.
It was pretty hot by the time we ended at 1 pm. The weather seems to have cooled down a bit, but we're going to meet again tomorrow, an hour earlier, and share a page or two of writing we did this week. I'll write more after we meet.
But I want to express how exciting it was to get a sense of everyone's writing, and to work with such thoughtful writers. Their experiments stayed with me this week as I was writing. I was also happy at everyone's willingness to work together.
We started with some icebreakers: saying our names with a gesture to remember us by. Then we each taught each other something we used to do as children. One person would do her movement, and the rest of us would do it back at her. I was nervous people would think it was goofy, but it turned out to be fun, and people were clever, like the woman who kissed the woman who was standing next to her, so we all had to kiss the cheek of the woman standing to our right.
Afterwards, I asked people to write about what came up from doing or seeing the movements. What memories? I asked them to embody those memories and try to get them on the page.
To my surprise, everyone wanted to read afterwards. I was interested in the narratives that expressed some of the feelings of childhood, especially in how they shape identity. Some people described a childhood memory with an adult voice, but there were a variety of stylistic approaches, like more metaphorical or poetic or sound-based or journalistic responses -- and we talked about each one. In particular, we talked about whether it's truly possible to write in a child's voice. I asked the question because I was thinking about how it is that writers can embody a physical experience -- childhood or otherwise -- and translate it to the page.
It was pretty hot by the time we ended at 1 pm. The weather seems to have cooled down a bit, but we're going to meet again tomorrow, an hour earlier, and share a page or two of writing we did this week. I'll write more after we meet.
But I want to express how exciting it was to get a sense of everyone's writing, and to work with such thoughtful writers. Their experiments stayed with me this week as I was writing. I was also happy at everyone's willingness to work together.
July 13, 2010
Երկրաչափականից անմիջապես հետո ու շուրջը նորից շրջան
>>>
(երկրորդական գաղափար կազմելու համար միայն, առավոտյան 7:19ին)
(պահեստների մի մասը փոխադրեցին վճռական գիծէն անդին ու կասկած չկա, որ այս պատշաճ որևէ բանը կարող է լոկ նշան լինել և ոչ գեղագիտական իրողություն)
(վինիլային ժապավեններից, փողոցային դետրիտից կախված կամ կոնստրուկտիվիզմից մղվող ուղղաձիգ դաստակներիդ մոտակայքում)
(ցանկության լեզվով, Օրեստես, որով յուրաքանչյուրս արդեն որոշակի շրջահայացությամբ պիտի բացահայտենք ինքնակարգավորող ապարատների ու պատկերի արտադրության ստանդարտացման՝ հանուն արվեստի իհարկե, նորարարությունները)
(ու հստակ է հիմա, ոչ էլ որտեղ պարտադիր կոչ են անում վերադառնալ)
(6:00ին եղածը լավագույն կերպով օգտագործելու ունակությամբ, կամ արձակվելով երկաթուղային տողերի կայ/ցարանից, քանի որ չես կարող չփոփոխել առարկաների ու նրանց հարաբերությունների այնպիսությունն ինչպես որ «են» ասելու համար)
(վիրակապերով մարդիկ ու հազարավոր մարդիկ իրենց ամենօրյա շարքերում ու որքան արագ կը հետեւին ընդհանուր շարժումին եւ որքան երկար կ'ընկերակցին անոր)
>>>
(երկրորդական գաղափար կազմելու համար միայն, առավոտյան 7:19ին)
(պահեստների մի մասը փոխադրեցին վճռական գիծէն անդին ու կասկած չկա, որ այս պատշաճ որևէ բանը կարող է լոկ նշան լինել և ոչ գեղագիտական իրողություն)
(վինիլային ժապավեններից, փողոցային դետրիտից կախված կամ կոնստրուկտիվիզմից մղվող ուղղաձիգ դաստակներիդ մոտակայքում)
(ցանկության լեզվով, Օրեստես, որով յուրաքանչյուրս արդեն որոշակի շրջահայացությամբ պիտի բացահայտենք ինքնակարգավորող ապարատների ու պատկերի արտադրության ստանդարտացման՝ հանուն արվեստի իհարկե, նորարարությունները)
(ու հստակ է հիմա, ոչ էլ որտեղ պարտադիր կոչ են անում վերադառնալ)
(6:00ին եղածը լավագույն կերպով օգտագործելու ունակությամբ, կամ արձակվելով երկաթուղային տողերի կայ/ցարանից, քանի որ չես կարող չփոփոխել առարկաների ու նրանց հարաբերությունների այնպիսությունն ինչպես որ «են» ասելու համար)
(վիրակապերով մարդիկ ու հազարավոր մարդիկ իրենց ամենօրյա շարքերում ու որքան արագ կը հետեւին ընդհանուր շարժումին եւ որքան երկար կ'ընկերակցին անոր)
>>>
June 29, 2010
Soon News
I wanted to share some news . . .
My memoir Me as her again has been shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing from Stanford University. This is a nice honor, considering the other 14 shortlisted books. I was happy to discover some new titles that look really innovative. So please be sure to check out these books, support small press writers, and send word of mouth to your friends about Me as her again, too.
The happening art blog Hyperallergic published my personal essay about resurrecting my L.A.-based folk/punk band Guitar Boy to perform at the wonderful Wonder Cabinet at Occidental College in April.
And finally, I will be in Yerevan, Armenia for the month of July to lead "Physical Translating" a workshop on body-based writing for women. It will culminate in a reading during the WOW Collective's "Art Intervention" at the Women's Resource Center in Yerevan on July 31st. This is something that I am really looking forward to, considering that candid writing by women about the body in literary works -- anywhere in the world -- is still taboo. And there seems to be a cultural shift underway in Armenia now . . . More updates to come, on my blog, http://onearmenianworld.
My memoir Me as her again has been shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing from Stanford University. This is a nice honor, considering the other 14 shortlisted books. I was happy to discover some new titles that look really innovative. So please be sure to check out these books, support small press writers, and send word of mouth to your friends about Me as her again, too.
The happening art blog Hyperallergic published my personal essay about resurrecting my L.A.-based folk/punk band Guitar Boy to perform at the wonderful Wonder Cabinet at Occidental College in April.
And finally, I will be in Yerevan, Armenia for the month of July to lead "Physical Translating" a workshop on body-based writing for women. It will culminate in a reading during the WOW Collective's "Art Intervention" at the Women's Resource Center in Yerevan on July 31st. This is something that I am really looking forward to, considering that candid writing by women about the body in literary works -- anywhere in the world -- is still taboo. And there seems to be a cultural shift underway in Armenia now . . . More updates to come, on my blog, http://onearmenianworld.
June 28, 2010
June 25, 2010
Հասկանալիության այսպիսի մեթոդների օգտագործումը զառիվերի վրա է
>>>
(անհամացած հեղուկի կարելիության չափը զինված ուժերի պես ներխուժելով քո փառահեղ դատարկության մեջ)
(գործողությունների մի այնպիսի հանրագումար, որը բացվում է դեպի այդ ուրիշ հասարակությունը)
(թարգմանության շնորհիվ այդ վերած/ցվող լեզուն, հոն ուր երեւան կու գան պատրաստակամութիւն, զոհուելու կամեցողութիւն եւ ուրեմն խորք)
(հեռու չէ երբեք այդպիսի իրավիճակի մը պարագային վատնումի՝ ավելի շուտ Անտոնիոնիական լռությունների կամ միմյանց այլևս ասելու բան չունեցողների, քան սպասվում էր)
(է, տրամադրելու առումով)
(քանի դեռ չես կատարում հոդից դուրս ընկած դարաշրջանի անսպասելի փոփոխության դրսևորման համար անհրաժեշտ ու երևութական տեղի կորուստը, նայելով բարձր առաստաղին և իրոք մոտ տասնվեց տարօրինակ օր չիմանալով, թե ով ես)
(իր հերթին, պիտի անտեսվի հաջորդների կողմից` մնալով միայն տեխնոլոգիաների հիշողության տեղավորված քաղաքի միաժամանակյա գոյակցման ձևերից մեկում)
(բանալացումից հետո նորից սարսափի մեթոդների ապահովության ներքո, գծի այս կողմը սակայն)
>>>
(անհամացած հեղուկի կարելիության չափը զինված ուժերի պես ներխուժելով քո փառահեղ դատարկության մեջ)
(գործողությունների մի այնպիսի հանրագումար, որը բացվում է դեպի այդ ուրիշ հասարակությունը)
(թարգմանության շնորհիվ այդ վերած/ցվող լեզուն, հոն ուր երեւան կու գան պատրաստակամութիւն, զոհուելու կամեցողութիւն եւ ուրեմն խորք)
(հեռու չէ երբեք այդպիսի իրավիճակի մը պարագային վատնումի՝ ավելի շուտ Անտոնիոնիական լռությունների կամ միմյանց այլևս ասելու բան չունեցողների, քան սպասվում էր)
(է, տրամադրելու առումով)
(քանի դեռ չես կատարում հոդից դուրս ընկած դարաշրջանի անսպասելի փոփոխության դրսևորման համար անհրաժեշտ ու երևութական տեղի կորուստը, նայելով բարձր առաստաղին և իրոք մոտ տասնվեց տարօրինակ օր չիմանալով, թե ով ես)
(իր հերթին, պիտի անտեսվի հաջորդների կողմից` մնալով միայն տեխնոլոգիաների հիշողության տեղավորված քաղաքի միաժամանակյա գոյակցման ձևերից մեկում)
(բանալացումից հետո նորից սարսափի մեթոդների ապահովության ներքո, գծի այս կողմը սակայն)
>>>
June 22, 2010
Chère L
Hier, Je me promenais paresseusement sur la rue Mont Royal imaginant les balcons dentelés de ta ville.
La pluie voulait se venger ce jour-là quand on s’est cachées derrière cette Eglise à forniquer langoureusement. Tu craignais le blasphème, et moi émue, j’arrosais les marguerites qui furtivement, s’échappaient en dessous de ta jupe fripée.
Le soir dans son vieux salon improvisé, ta mère nous avait offert du thé avec du mouraba de framboises. Elle avait le regard fixé sur ta jupe et ma main qui, maladroitement manipulait la tasse chaude et sucrée. Le silence pesait fort. La voisine grignotait des semushkas attentive à la série télévisée qui ne cessait de montrer des femmes en sanglot.
Tu souriais mesquine tout en sachant que la réalité ne correspondrait jamais à cette scène qui se déroulait lentement devant nos yeux.
V. avait raison je n’aurai jamais du venir dans ce coin maudit. Les ruines pesaient affreusement sur mon cœur et j’avais envie de vomir. Ta mère nous racontait qu’à Bakou ou elle était née, les maisons étaient plus belles, les gens mieux habillés et la vie plus intéressante. J’étais triste pour elle. Et toi tu n’écoutais plus. Tu ne voulais plus entendre, ces gémissements infinis d’une vie interrompue. Tu détestais même ce thé qui n’arrêtait pas de couler tout au long d’une journée, à travers toute une vie.
Embrasse ta mère de ma part,
je t’offrirai des marguerites.
B.
Pleased to meet you!
To the readers and writers of "Queering Yerevan,"
This is my first official post and I would like to thank everyone for inviting me! I will be in Hyastan exactly one month from yesterday. I am a visual artist using photography, video, installation and performance art working with themes of gender identity, the accuracy of historical representations, myth-making, bodily limitation, power dynamics, queerness, oppression and diasporan identity.
Here are a couple of my video pieces from the past several years--
www.vimeo.com/12657018
www.vimeo.com/12647535
www.vimeo.com/12648192
Tip of the Tongue Phenomenon
Basic Conversational Armenian
This is my first official post and I would like to thank everyone for inviting me! I will be in Hyastan exactly one month from yesterday. I am a visual artist using photography, video, installation and performance art working with themes of gender identity, the accuracy of historical representations, myth-making, bodily limitation, power dynamics, queerness, oppression and diasporan identity.
Here are a couple of my video pieces from the past several years--
www.vimeo.com/12657018
www.vimeo.com/12647535
www.vimeo.com/12648192
Tip of the Tongue Phenomenon
Basic Conversational Armenian
June 21, 2010
June 19, 2010
Dear B.
My empty body is in mourning. It is the silent retreat after the bloody struggle of the hormones followed by the sudden expulsion of the cursed pregnancy.
I wish you were here to swallow the remains. I can’t even think of a word defining what I feel for you.
I am spending these days, taking care of my mother. She doesn’t remember anything anymore. Her yellow teeth and blemishing hands are scaring me. They are announcing a death I am not prepared for.
I will soon start preparing the murabas for winter. The berries are ripe and sweet. I will gently caress them, roll them between my fingers and passionately slide them one by one in the intense sweetened stream. The smell will definitely mesmerize my senses. And once they immerse completely in the syrupy emulsion, I will close my eyes, drop my hands and exhale through a cinnamon and glove orgasm.
The ruins in this city can’t contain all the emotions that I release abruptly.
I kiss religiously the palms of your hands and smell a mulberry breeze between your fingers,
L.
June 15, 2010
A paper presented at the American Comparative Literature Association's Annual Conference
Nelli Sargsyan
ACLA Annual Meeting
New Orleans, Louisiana
April 3, 2010
Like many, I am skeptical of the term cosmopolitanism: rather, of the ways in which it is most often defined, theorized, and applied: focused on nurturing “a citizen of the world,” as a habit of mind and way of life; referencing Kant’s ethic of hospitality; or Mignolo’s planetary conviviality (Strand 2010), transcending the local loyalties, being part of a global community. But, who is this “citizen,” what is their class, ethnicity, gender, race, and so on? How do they engage with the global? What constitutes this “world”? Certain regions, cities, networks? Is it possible “to be a stranger nowhere”? From the perspective of various feminisms, these definitions point more to those excluded and unaccounted for. Could it be, then, that the different images of cosmopolitanism are ideological attempts to conceal the contradictory lived experiences (Koczanowicz in Strand 2010)? Why yes, or why not?
The term cosmopolitanism itself has been critically dissected for some time now (as Western cosmopolitanism vs. Eastern; new cosmopolitanism vs. old; cosmopolitanism from the center vs. from the periphery; from the top vs. from the bottom, and so on). More often than not, however, cosmopolitanism itself as an ideal and practice has been gendered heterosexual and with that, often male, and with that, of particular race, or of particular class, hence hardly inclusive, even when termed rooted, situated, flowing from the local rather than in opposition to it. Often heterosexist itself, and often racist, not recognizing the situated differences of the particularities, and the uneven participation that people have in what is termed cosmopolitan through their lived experiences, it does not render itself as a useful lens for analysis. For the purposes of my paper, in which I deal with counter-hegemonic female voices that challenge the imposed monolithic heteronormativity of the nationalist discourse of the Republic of Armenia, I find it more useful to let these counter-hegemonic female voices unhinge the cosmopolitan.
Although the Criminal Code of the Republic of Armenia has been modified in its treatment of gender minorities, the societal contempt for non-heterosexual people is still daunting. Unlike the concept of male gayness, female non-heterosexuality has been rejected a discursive space within the nationalist heteronormativity of the Armenian society. In this paper I explore the identities that a group of (Armenian) lesbian, bisexual, and straight women artists invoke in different spaces, historicizing queer women’s presence and promoting their advocacy work for queer women on their online blog.
I attempt to understand how and how successfully these artists, art critics, writers, and activists articulate and represent their identities in an LGBT ignorant or condemning Armenian society. I argue that although locally rooted and articulated, the Armenian queer artists, through their use of techno-, media-, and ideoscapes – sharing information on similar struggles and various successful untanglings of these struggles, nevertheless, route towards their imagined global communities of women, artists, LGBT people that sustain their local struggles and advocacy. In so doing, the artists act as democratic agents in the local society through various activist and art projects, more successfully representing their queer identities among many other identities they articulate, at the same time complicating and nuancing what it means to be cosmopolitan.
I address the various layers of my research question through analyzing the material that can be found on the Women Oriented Women (or WOW) collective’s project blog called “Queering Yerevan” along with the articles and other blogs that have been written regarding and in response to this collective, its events, and blog.
The societal attitudes coupled with the homophobic law enforcers hold heterosexuality as the only acceptable form of relationship and frame homosexuality as an illness or a national security threat and complicate the coming out of many homosexual individuals in Armenia. Out of the estimated 4,000 registered NGOs in Armenia, only a few have openly campaigned for and supported the human rights of LGBT people. Homosexuality is a taboo in the Armenian society that people often share with very few family members and friends. Albeit changing, the traditional roles designated for women (those of mother and wife) are still predominant.
The concept of human rights is perceived by many in Armenia as a Western notion, and the closeness with Europe means threatened institution of marriage and ethnocultural identity (ILGA report 35). Mass media contributes to these circulating homophobic discourses of impending loss of cultural identity. So does the Armenian Apostolic Church, promoting and nurturing the already existing homophobia by framing homosexuality as a “grave sin” (34). Although under the Armenian constitution, all Armenian citizens irrespective of sexual orientation and religion among other things, have the same right to legal protection, in actuality LGBT people do not have any guarantee that their rights will be protected by state institutions (such as courts) or law enforcement agencies. Politicians often employ the word “homosexual” in an attempt to denigrate their opponents.
Homosexuality has very limited coverage in the Armenian mass media. If the topic is covered, oftentimes it is tainted with scorn and irony. The Armenian LGBT people have very limited influence on the kind of information that goes out regarding their sexual orientation and gender identity. Most importantly, within this hegemonic heteronormativity the undesirability and unacceptability of “homosexuality” is gendered “male,” depriving women of a discursive site of “non-heterosexuality” (Butler 1991).
As I mentioned earlier in the paper, “Queering Yerevan” is a WOW project aiming at queering the self and the city of Yerevan of 2000s that challenges the established topographies of both the urban space and the body of the individual within that space. This is an attempt of re-imagining the physical space differently from the normatively imposed topographies. The authors re-imagine their map(s) and signal various scales by referencing and blogging on: (1) local (Armenian) and international arts, artistic experimentation, writing, film, and exhibition in general; (2) issues of interest to women and women artists; (3) feminisms; (4) Diaspora Armenian artists and writers; (5) LGBT issues (both local and global; both art related and general); (6) human rights (locally and regionally).
The WOWers’ awareness of the marginalized role of women in general, and the societal lack of knowledge of or interest in queer women, in particular, inform the strategies that they employ in the articulation of their identities. Hence, through their project, they seek to foster a safer environment for queer women in Armenia, where “a) queer women are oppressed by both women and men and; b) queer women’s culture is unknown to or misunderstood by the majority of Armenians (Queering Yerevan, accessed on March 24, 2009),” echoing Rich’s claim that heterosexism is a result of male dominance over both female and male nonheteronormativity (Risman 2004).
The bloggers are physically located in different countries on at least three continents: Egypt in Africa, Armenia in Europe or in Asia depending on your perspective, and the US in North America, to name a few. Sometimes the new places and spaces that they travel to or through, whether within the country they reside in or outside of it, trigger issues relevant to the project of queering the physical space and self, so they blog from these newly queered and queering locations.
The blog is organized in two languages: Armenian and English with occasional posts of exhibition or festival schedule of events in Europe, or an article about the collective in German, Dutch, or French. Most often than not, the posts are in English and Armenian. Sometimes, however, they are only in Armenian or English. So why do the bloggers code-switch and when? Is this a metaphorical switching?
I viewed code switching from a couple of different perspectives; first, the technical mastery of the languages that the bloggers have. Most of the members of the collective are from Armenia. Two of them are from Canada. However, one of the local Armenian artists does not speak English. She always blogs with images and her comments are always in Armenian. The other local Armenian bloggers blog in both English and Armenian. Occasionally Diasporan Armenians living in Armenia or the Diaspora would blog or comment in Armenian and English, but seem to be more comfortable when blogging in English.
Second, I looked at the kinds of posts and the language utilized. The posts on local activist projects on women’s rights or LGBT issues are usually in both Armenian and English (with comments mostly in Armenian, a few in English). This signals the rooted locality as well as routing alignment to a larger scale translocal community.
The posts on the success and activities of Diasporan Armenian authors and artists would be in English. English, in a way, is the medium connecting them to the larger scale communities they imagine themselves as part of: Diasporan Armenian LGBT communities and through them the larger global LGBT community as one route among many.
If a blogger posts her own short stories or parts of her book, those posts are in Armenian. This indexes an identity of a local writer. One of the bloggers, who herself is a writer, translates parts of a Diasporan-Armenian writer’s award winning book into Armenian and posts them. In so doing, the blogger simultaneously projects an identity of a writer, translator, and LGBT activist.
The issue of translation as a hegemonic disciplining tool has had frequent coverage on the blog. The posts on translation and ideology of 2008-2009 were in Armenian, now they are in both Armenian and English. Through these posts the blogger analyzes the danger of the presence of the hegemonic citizen disciplining systems through the translated piece of work, thus articulating her identity of a professional, reflexive translator, an activist contemplating the mechanisms of suppression employed by disciplining institutions in an attempt to make sense of the hegemonic structures within which inequalities take place (Risman 2004). The bloggers’ attempts at subverting translation seem to be coming to fruition through their next activist project of “Queering Translation” scheduled for August of 2010, about which they blog in both Armenian and English, invoking scales larger than local for this enterprise.
To historicize the queer women’s presence in the Armenian reality, the bloggers post poems by a female Armenian poet of early 20th century (that they have located as a result of their archival research) and reinterpret it, identifying themes of lesbian love. Through their archival work of bringing out this poet, the WOW members attempt not only to claim discursive space synchronically but also diachronically.
These posts seem to invoke both local and global scales at the same time trying to keep the collective rooted in the local and connecting it to the global community of queer artists. The opportunity to publish the collective’s two year correspondence exploring “queer identity, language, and culture” (Queering Yerevan, accessed on March 28, 2010) in Armenian and English that has become possible in the large part due to the on-line fundraising efforts of a New York based LGBT Armenian organization is yet another instance of the collective’s successful transnational networks at work.
Throughout their blog, the bloggers often provide a metacommentary on their fragmented identities and the impossibility of having one stable, static identity, thus acknowledging its fluidity, malleability, instability, and undefinability. In their thoughts on identity the bloggers refer to Butler, Beauvoir, Bakhtin, Derrida, and more recently Ingraham. Through involving these scholars, the WOW members transcend their own locality and the actual lived difficulties and engage with a community of scholars in a discursive site that allows them to make sense of the daily as well as attempts to educate those uninformed.
The one post that I would like to dwell on as a site where this collective applies its strategies, is their open letter against intolerance to the ombudsperson of Armenia, posted in both Armenian and English. I argue that the WOW collective, is the base, in de Certeau’s (1984) terms, that makes its members strong. It is the castle, albeit, according to one of the members, based on “dis-identification” and “dissensus” that they can go back to, to regroup and rethink the move that will follow. In their crafting of the open letter to the ombudsperson of Armenia the WOW collective members frame their rights as part of global human rights identified in the UN declaration against discrimination based on sexual orientation that Armenia signed in December of 2008. The WOW collective expresses their key concern about the “resurgence of hostile rhetoric against homosexuals both in official and oppositional media” and supports their claim by pointing out the lack of professionalism and research on the part of the journalists who author those pieces.
The WOW members problematize the societal perception of ascribing maleness to homosexuality, on the one hand, and senior public officials’ view of homosexuality as a threat to national security (or a pathology), on the other. By doing this, they claim a place and presence in the gender identity discourse of Armenia. They point to specific media outlets that publish unresearched homophobic articles misrepresenting and misconstruing homosexuality. The WOW-ers frame the above homophobic views as reinforcing patriarchy in the Armenian society and promoting the dissemination of hatred through inaccurate information.
They challenge the authority of the local public figures when framing the comments of the latter as uninformed. They frame their own response as supported by civic groups and individuals concerned with human rights, urging public officials and individuals to become familiar with the issues Armenian homosexual men and women face.
Thus, in this letter WOW frames the cultural conservatives as homophobic, uninformed, and insular (assigning them a smaller scale) and reminds them of the obligations Armenia as a nation state has undertaken by signing the aforementioned UN declaration (assigning to this a global scale that they see themselves as part of). As I mentioned at the beginning of the paper, the collective condemns any act of human rights violations (in all its manifestations, physical as well as structural) not only locally, but also regionally. At the end of 2009, the collective posted an entry on their solidarity with an LGBT organization in Georgia the members of which had experienced political violence at the hands of the Georgian police.
The WOW collective’s political agenda, then, is put forth through aesthetic projects. The latter allow more room for the performativity of various identities rather than only queer identity. The WOW members situate themselves within the global by the force of the imagination of belongings: belonging to a global community of women (sharing a history of various oppressions); belonging to a global community of women artists and aesthetes; belonging to the global community of queer women. Yet at the same time, as Tsing (2000) points out, by pulling the various global belongings together through locally rooted projects, the WOW collective signals different identities at different times. The WOWers act as democratic agents, whether they perform their identities as women’s rights’ advocates, or queer women’s rights’ advocates, or children’s rights’ advocates when protesting against child abuse, or LGBT people’s rights’ advocates. Through their activist efforts the WOW-ers attempt to curve the existing discursive space of homosexuality, gendered male, by carving a space for queer women.
They seek media participation in the raising of the public’s awareness of the various oppressions that women, in general, and queer women, in particular, face in the Armenian society, partly in an attempt to address the gap between the queers depicted by the local Armenian mass media (weak, sick, promiscuous, dirty) and the identities of intelligent, creative, talented, and strong women they project through the discourse they develop within the walls of their blog that is nourished by experiences elsewhere (the US, Canada, Egypt, the Netherlands, Armenia), evoking their global connectedness through their local projects (Tsing 2000).
Thus, the WOWers are attempting to queer the mainstream society, albeit cautious not to become an instrument for the hegemonic system they are attempting to challenge and disidentify themselves from, in an attempt not to reinforce the normalcy of the patriarchal hegemony.
The historicity of the lack of place in public discourse that the collective is trying to claim, tainted with the homophobic coverage of the Armenian media and the blessing of the Armenian Apostolic Church makes it difficult to come across. There is a significant scalar incongruity between the hegemonic cultural conservative media agenda, and women’s and LGBT human rights’ agendas of the WOW collective, in that the former is predominantly in Armenian aimed at the local Armenian audience and local scale, and the latter is dialogic and evoking larger scale, and often jumping the local Armenian scale. The WOWers attempt to understand where and how the inequalities they experience as queers, as women, as queer Armenian women, take place, to better deconstruct and fight them (Risman 2004).
So then, do the transnational networks that the WOWers nurture and develop (and that sustain them) make them cosmopolitan, or their blog a cosmopolitan multi-author artistic, and often literary production bordering creative non-fiction? I suppose the answer would stem from your perspective on and definition of cosmopolitanism. To account for the potentially cosmopolitan engagements of counter-hegemonic subjects, Pollock et al’s suggestion of cosmopolitanisms giving way to the plurality of modes and histories, much like the diverse discourses and differentiations in feminisms (in the plural) that are “not necessarily shared in degree or in concept regionally, nationally, or internationally” (Pollock et. al 2000: 584) is instructive, so is one of the aspects of Mignolo’s de-colonial cosmopolitanism that acknowledges multiple trajectories and aims at a “trans-modern world based on pluriversality rather than universality” (Strand 2009:106). This cosmofeminism, then, would, perhaps, allow for a space, where various pluriversalities would enter “into a broader debate based on a recognition of their own situatedeness” (Pollock et. al 2000: 584-585).
Appadurai, Arjun
1996 Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Butler, Judith
1991 Imitation and Gender Insubordination. In Social Theory: The Multicultural and Classic Readings. Charles Lemert ed. Pp 637-648. Wesleyan University: Westview Press.
Carroll, A., and Sheila Quinn
2009 Forced Out: LGBT People in Armenia. Report on ILGA-Europe/COC fact-finding mission.
De Certeau, Michel
1984 The Practice of Everyday Life. University of California.
Pollock, S, Homi K. Bhabha, Carol A. Breckenridge, and Dipesh Chakrabarty
2000 Cosmopolitanisms. In Public Culture 12 (3): 577-589.
Ridgeway, Cecilia L., Shelley J. Correll
2004 Unpacking the Gender System: A Theoretical Perspective on Gender Beliefs and Social Relations. In Gender and Society 18(4): 510-531.
Risman, Barbara J.
2004 Gender as a Social Structure: Theory Wrestling with Activism. In Gender and Society 18(4): 429-450.
Strand, Torill
2010 Cosmopolitanism in the Making. In Studies in Philosophy and Education 29:103–109.
Tsing, Anna
2000 The Global Situation. In Cultural Anthropology 15(3): 327-360.
ACLA Annual Meeting
New Orleans, Louisiana
April 3, 2010
“Interrogating the Cosmopolitan: Curving and Carving a Queer Discursive Space within the Armenian Heteronormative Nationalism”
Like many, I am skeptical of the term cosmopolitanism: rather, of the ways in which it is most often defined, theorized, and applied: focused on nurturing “a citizen of the world,” as a habit of mind and way of life; referencing Kant’s ethic of hospitality; or Mignolo’s planetary conviviality (Strand 2010), transcending the local loyalties, being part of a global community. But, who is this “citizen,” what is their class, ethnicity, gender, race, and so on? How do they engage with the global? What constitutes this “world”? Certain regions, cities, networks? Is it possible “to be a stranger nowhere”? From the perspective of various feminisms, these definitions point more to those excluded and unaccounted for. Could it be, then, that the different images of cosmopolitanism are ideological attempts to conceal the contradictory lived experiences (Koczanowicz in Strand 2010)? Why yes, or why not?
The term cosmopolitanism itself has been critically dissected for some time now (as Western cosmopolitanism vs. Eastern; new cosmopolitanism vs. old; cosmopolitanism from the center vs. from the periphery; from the top vs. from the bottom, and so on). More often than not, however, cosmopolitanism itself as an ideal and practice has been gendered heterosexual and with that, often male, and with that, of particular race, or of particular class, hence hardly inclusive, even when termed rooted, situated, flowing from the local rather than in opposition to it. Often heterosexist itself, and often racist, not recognizing the situated differences of the particularities, and the uneven participation that people have in what is termed cosmopolitan through their lived experiences, it does not render itself as a useful lens for analysis. For the purposes of my paper, in which I deal with counter-hegemonic female voices that challenge the imposed monolithic heteronormativity of the nationalist discourse of the Republic of Armenia, I find it more useful to let these counter-hegemonic female voices unhinge the cosmopolitan.
Although the Criminal Code of the Republic of Armenia has been modified in its treatment of gender minorities, the societal contempt for non-heterosexual people is still daunting. Unlike the concept of male gayness, female non-heterosexuality has been rejected a discursive space within the nationalist heteronormativity of the Armenian society. In this paper I explore the identities that a group of (Armenian) lesbian, bisexual, and straight women artists invoke in different spaces, historicizing queer women’s presence and promoting their advocacy work for queer women on their online blog.
I attempt to understand how and how successfully these artists, art critics, writers, and activists articulate and represent their identities in an LGBT ignorant or condemning Armenian society. I argue that although locally rooted and articulated, the Armenian queer artists, through their use of techno-, media-, and ideoscapes – sharing information on similar struggles and various successful untanglings of these struggles, nevertheless, route towards their imagined global communities of women, artists, LGBT people that sustain their local struggles and advocacy. In so doing, the artists act as democratic agents in the local society through various activist and art projects, more successfully representing their queer identities among many other identities they articulate, at the same time complicating and nuancing what it means to be cosmopolitan.
I address the various layers of my research question through analyzing the material that can be found on the Women Oriented Women (or WOW) collective’s project blog called “Queering Yerevan” along with the articles and other blogs that have been written regarding and in response to this collective, its events, and blog.
The societal attitudes coupled with the homophobic law enforcers hold heterosexuality as the only acceptable form of relationship and frame homosexuality as an illness or a national security threat and complicate the coming out of many homosexual individuals in Armenia. Out of the estimated 4,000 registered NGOs in Armenia, only a few have openly campaigned for and supported the human rights of LGBT people. Homosexuality is a taboo in the Armenian society that people often share with very few family members and friends. Albeit changing, the traditional roles designated for women (those of mother and wife) are still predominant.
The concept of human rights is perceived by many in Armenia as a Western notion, and the closeness with Europe means threatened institution of marriage and ethnocultural identity (ILGA report 35). Mass media contributes to these circulating homophobic discourses of impending loss of cultural identity. So does the Armenian Apostolic Church, promoting and nurturing the already existing homophobia by framing homosexuality as a “grave sin” (34). Although under the Armenian constitution, all Armenian citizens irrespective of sexual orientation and religion among other things, have the same right to legal protection, in actuality LGBT people do not have any guarantee that their rights will be protected by state institutions (such as courts) or law enforcement agencies. Politicians often employ the word “homosexual” in an attempt to denigrate their opponents.
Homosexuality has very limited coverage in the Armenian mass media. If the topic is covered, oftentimes it is tainted with scorn and irony. The Armenian LGBT people have very limited influence on the kind of information that goes out regarding their sexual orientation and gender identity. Most importantly, within this hegemonic heteronormativity the undesirability and unacceptability of “homosexuality” is gendered “male,” depriving women of a discursive site of “non-heterosexuality” (Butler 1991).
Data Analysis
As I mentioned earlier in the paper, “Queering Yerevan” is a WOW project aiming at queering the self and the city of Yerevan of 2000s that challenges the established topographies of both the urban space and the body of the individual within that space. This is an attempt of re-imagining the physical space differently from the normatively imposed topographies. The authors re-imagine their map(s) and signal various scales by referencing and blogging on: (1) local (Armenian) and international arts, artistic experimentation, writing, film, and exhibition in general; (2) issues of interest to women and women artists; (3) feminisms; (4) Diaspora Armenian artists and writers; (5) LGBT issues (both local and global; both art related and general); (6) human rights (locally and regionally).
The WOWers’ awareness of the marginalized role of women in general, and the societal lack of knowledge of or interest in queer women, in particular, inform the strategies that they employ in the articulation of their identities. Hence, through their project, they seek to foster a safer environment for queer women in Armenia, where “a) queer women are oppressed by both women and men and; b) queer women’s culture is unknown to or misunderstood by the majority of Armenians (Queering Yerevan, accessed on March 24, 2009),” echoing Rich’s claim that heterosexism is a result of male dominance over both female and male nonheteronormativity (Risman 2004).
The bloggers are physically located in different countries on at least three continents: Egypt in Africa, Armenia in Europe or in Asia depending on your perspective, and the US in North America, to name a few. Sometimes the new places and spaces that they travel to or through, whether within the country they reside in or outside of it, trigger issues relevant to the project of queering the physical space and self, so they blog from these newly queered and queering locations.
The blog is organized in two languages: Armenian and English with occasional posts of exhibition or festival schedule of events in Europe, or an article about the collective in German, Dutch, or French. Most often than not, the posts are in English and Armenian. Sometimes, however, they are only in Armenian or English. So why do the bloggers code-switch and when? Is this a metaphorical switching?
I viewed code switching from a couple of different perspectives; first, the technical mastery of the languages that the bloggers have. Most of the members of the collective are from Armenia. Two of them are from Canada. However, one of the local Armenian artists does not speak English. She always blogs with images and her comments are always in Armenian. The other local Armenian bloggers blog in both English and Armenian. Occasionally Diasporan Armenians living in Armenia or the Diaspora would blog or comment in Armenian and English, but seem to be more comfortable when blogging in English.
Second, I looked at the kinds of posts and the language utilized. The posts on local activist projects on women’s rights or LGBT issues are usually in both Armenian and English (with comments mostly in Armenian, a few in English). This signals the rooted locality as well as routing alignment to a larger scale translocal community.
The posts on the success and activities of Diasporan Armenian authors and artists would be in English. English, in a way, is the medium connecting them to the larger scale communities they imagine themselves as part of: Diasporan Armenian LGBT communities and through them the larger global LGBT community as one route among many.
If a blogger posts her own short stories or parts of her book, those posts are in Armenian. This indexes an identity of a local writer. One of the bloggers, who herself is a writer, translates parts of a Diasporan-Armenian writer’s award winning book into Armenian and posts them. In so doing, the blogger simultaneously projects an identity of a writer, translator, and LGBT activist.
The issue of translation as a hegemonic disciplining tool has had frequent coverage on the blog. The posts on translation and ideology of 2008-2009 were in Armenian, now they are in both Armenian and English. Through these posts the blogger analyzes the danger of the presence of the hegemonic citizen disciplining systems through the translated piece of work, thus articulating her identity of a professional, reflexive translator, an activist contemplating the mechanisms of suppression employed by disciplining institutions in an attempt to make sense of the hegemonic structures within which inequalities take place (Risman 2004). The bloggers’ attempts at subverting translation seem to be coming to fruition through their next activist project of “Queering Translation” scheduled for August of 2010, about which they blog in both Armenian and English, invoking scales larger than local for this enterprise.
To historicize the queer women’s presence in the Armenian reality, the bloggers post poems by a female Armenian poet of early 20th century (that they have located as a result of their archival research) and reinterpret it, identifying themes of lesbian love. Through their archival work of bringing out this poet, the WOW members attempt not only to claim discursive space synchronically but also diachronically.
These posts seem to invoke both local and global scales at the same time trying to keep the collective rooted in the local and connecting it to the global community of queer artists. The opportunity to publish the collective’s two year correspondence exploring “queer identity, language, and culture” (Queering Yerevan, accessed on March 28, 2010) in Armenian and English that has become possible in the large part due to the on-line fundraising efforts of a New York based LGBT Armenian organization is yet another instance of the collective’s successful transnational networks at work.
Throughout their blog, the bloggers often provide a metacommentary on their fragmented identities and the impossibility of having one stable, static identity, thus acknowledging its fluidity, malleability, instability, and undefinability. In their thoughts on identity the bloggers refer to Butler, Beauvoir, Bakhtin, Derrida, and more recently Ingraham. Through involving these scholars, the WOW members transcend their own locality and the actual lived difficulties and engage with a community of scholars in a discursive site that allows them to make sense of the daily as well as attempts to educate those uninformed.
The one post that I would like to dwell on as a site where this collective applies its strategies, is their open letter against intolerance to the ombudsperson of Armenia, posted in both Armenian and English. I argue that the WOW collective, is the base, in de Certeau’s (1984) terms, that makes its members strong. It is the castle, albeit, according to one of the members, based on “dis-identification” and “dissensus” that they can go back to, to regroup and rethink the move that will follow. In their crafting of the open letter to the ombudsperson of Armenia the WOW collective members frame their rights as part of global human rights identified in the UN declaration against discrimination based on sexual orientation that Armenia signed in December of 2008. The WOW collective expresses their key concern about the “resurgence of hostile rhetoric against homosexuals both in official and oppositional media” and supports their claim by pointing out the lack of professionalism and research on the part of the journalists who author those pieces.
The WOW members problematize the societal perception of ascribing maleness to homosexuality, on the one hand, and senior public officials’ view of homosexuality as a threat to national security (or a pathology), on the other. By doing this, they claim a place and presence in the gender identity discourse of Armenia. They point to specific media outlets that publish unresearched homophobic articles misrepresenting and misconstruing homosexuality. The WOW-ers frame the above homophobic views as reinforcing patriarchy in the Armenian society and promoting the dissemination of hatred through inaccurate information.
They challenge the authority of the local public figures when framing the comments of the latter as uninformed. They frame their own response as supported by civic groups and individuals concerned with human rights, urging public officials and individuals to become familiar with the issues Armenian homosexual men and women face.
Thus, in this letter WOW frames the cultural conservatives as homophobic, uninformed, and insular (assigning them a smaller scale) and reminds them of the obligations Armenia as a nation state has undertaken by signing the aforementioned UN declaration (assigning to this a global scale that they see themselves as part of). As I mentioned at the beginning of the paper, the collective condemns any act of human rights violations (in all its manifestations, physical as well as structural) not only locally, but also regionally. At the end of 2009, the collective posted an entry on their solidarity with an LGBT organization in Georgia the members of which had experienced political violence at the hands of the Georgian police.
Conclusions
The WOW collective’s political agenda, then, is put forth through aesthetic projects. The latter allow more room for the performativity of various identities rather than only queer identity. The WOW members situate themselves within the global by the force of the imagination of belongings: belonging to a global community of women (sharing a history of various oppressions); belonging to a global community of women artists and aesthetes; belonging to the global community of queer women. Yet at the same time, as Tsing (2000) points out, by pulling the various global belongings together through locally rooted projects, the WOW collective signals different identities at different times. The WOWers act as democratic agents, whether they perform their identities as women’s rights’ advocates, or queer women’s rights’ advocates, or children’s rights’ advocates when protesting against child abuse, or LGBT people’s rights’ advocates. Through their activist efforts the WOW-ers attempt to curve the existing discursive space of homosexuality, gendered male, by carving a space for queer women.
They seek media participation in the raising of the public’s awareness of the various oppressions that women, in general, and queer women, in particular, face in the Armenian society, partly in an attempt to address the gap between the queers depicted by the local Armenian mass media (weak, sick, promiscuous, dirty) and the identities of intelligent, creative, talented, and strong women they project through the discourse they develop within the walls of their blog that is nourished by experiences elsewhere (the US, Canada, Egypt, the Netherlands, Armenia), evoking their global connectedness through their local projects (Tsing 2000).
Thus, the WOWers are attempting to queer the mainstream society, albeit cautious not to become an instrument for the hegemonic system they are attempting to challenge and disidentify themselves from, in an attempt not to reinforce the normalcy of the patriarchal hegemony.
The historicity of the lack of place in public discourse that the collective is trying to claim, tainted with the homophobic coverage of the Armenian media and the blessing of the Armenian Apostolic Church makes it difficult to come across. There is a significant scalar incongruity between the hegemonic cultural conservative media agenda, and women’s and LGBT human rights’ agendas of the WOW collective, in that the former is predominantly in Armenian aimed at the local Armenian audience and local scale, and the latter is dialogic and evoking larger scale, and often jumping the local Armenian scale. The WOWers attempt to understand where and how the inequalities they experience as queers, as women, as queer Armenian women, take place, to better deconstruct and fight them (Risman 2004).
So then, do the transnational networks that the WOWers nurture and develop (and that sustain them) make them cosmopolitan, or their blog a cosmopolitan multi-author artistic, and often literary production bordering creative non-fiction? I suppose the answer would stem from your perspective on and definition of cosmopolitanism. To account for the potentially cosmopolitan engagements of counter-hegemonic subjects, Pollock et al’s suggestion of cosmopolitanisms giving way to the plurality of modes and histories, much like the diverse discourses and differentiations in feminisms (in the plural) that are “not necessarily shared in degree or in concept regionally, nationally, or internationally” (Pollock et. al 2000: 584) is instructive, so is one of the aspects of Mignolo’s de-colonial cosmopolitanism that acknowledges multiple trajectories and aims at a “trans-modern world based on pluriversality rather than universality” (Strand 2009:106). This cosmofeminism, then, would, perhaps, allow for a space, where various pluriversalities would enter “into a broader debate based on a recognition of their own situatedeness” (Pollock et. al 2000: 584-585).
Works Cited
Appadurai, Arjun
1996 Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Butler, Judith
1991 Imitation and Gender Insubordination. In Social Theory: The Multicultural and Classic Readings. Charles Lemert ed. Pp 637-648. Wesleyan University: Westview Press.
Carroll, A., and Sheila Quinn
2009 Forced Out: LGBT People in Armenia. Report on ILGA-Europe/COC fact-finding mission.
De Certeau, Michel
1984 The Practice of Everyday Life. University of California.
Pollock, S, Homi K. Bhabha, Carol A. Breckenridge, and Dipesh Chakrabarty
2000 Cosmopolitanisms. In Public Culture 12 (3): 577-589.
Ridgeway, Cecilia L., Shelley J. Correll
2004 Unpacking the Gender System: A Theoretical Perspective on Gender Beliefs and Social Relations. In Gender and Society 18(4): 510-531.
Risman, Barbara J.
2004 Gender as a Social Structure: Theory Wrestling with Activism. In Gender and Society 18(4): 429-450.
Strand, Torill
2010 Cosmopolitanism in the Making. In Studies in Philosophy and Education 29:103–109.
Tsing, Anna
2000 The Global Situation. In Cultural Anthropology 15(3): 327-360.
June 14, 2010
Chère L
j’embrasserai ce ventre endolori. j’effacerai avec mes lèvres toutes les cicatrices.
je ferai un bandage de mes cheveux et soulagerai tes entrailles déchiquetées.
je murmurerai une douce berceuse, blottie entre tes seins pour embaumer ton corps d’un bonheur insolite.
et j’attendrai patiemment ton retour.
Dans le jardin, cinq femmes parlent de leur vie. le chagrin est incontournable. j’irai les rejoindre sans faire de bruit.
Le bruissement des feuilles marmonne la vérité, celle de 5 femmes qui ne sauront jamais que sous l’arbre, je touche du pieds les empreintes dissipées d’un temps qui un jour disparaîtra à jamais.
je ferme mes yeux et j'hume avec jouissance l'odeur de tes cheveux.
B.
June 13, 2010
Dear B.
Every single word you wrote I would fold it gently under my skirt and bury it near the mulberry tree outside my house.
But I am in pain.
L.
I keep telling myself this should be the last one. Continuing this correspondence is driving me insane but I can’t do without it. Writing to you keeps me alive in this morbid city.
This month I had my 4th miscarriage. The pain was immense. I gently let it slip between my legs down on the bathroom floor. A mix of blood and mucus lying there for hours while I sat near the toilet bowl thinking what I did wrong. Maybe it was all my feelings for you that couldn’t hold an unborn fetus.
Maybe it was the food or the coffee cup curse.
My womb is full of false impulses and bare illusions.
I touch gently the obsession still dripping down through the backs of my knees. I clean the remains with the back of my hand.
The stain stays eternally embedded in the folds of my belly. And I am granted with a durable pain.
He will never know since he will never understand. And I want to see him happy,
I know you don’t care
L.
June 11, 2010
Chère L
ce qu’il te faut c’est une révolution clitoridienne. une façon de parler incongrue qui mènera à ta perte. C’est incontournable!
je passerai des nuits entières à rétrécir la mémoire, pour en effacer les parcelles qui obstruent. il faut naitre sans père ni mère, pour bien comprendre la gravité de la vie choisie.
je n’accepterai point les excuses ridicules présentées dans ta dernière lettre. le romantisme te ronge le cœur jusqu’au fin fond de tes entrailles. il faut sans cesse relire Madame Bovary pour comprendre son état maniaco-dépressive la rendant «incapable de comprendre ce qu'elle n'éprouvait pas, comme de croire à tout ce qui ne se manifestait pas par des formes convenues».
ma Bovary à moi! je te lâche uniquement pour un instant et cet instant se perd doucement dans la sottise de tes émotions incroyablement effarées.
tasse de café et sarma, mais quelles foutaises!
tout ce que tu as ressenti à ce moment, tu l’as entièrement désiré. il faut arrêter enfin de tout dissimuler à soi-même.
la culpabilité te ronge, je n’y peux rien.
il faut se libérer.
doucement.
sereinement.
mais impossible de le faire sans briser une partie de soi.
je ramasserai les débris. religieusement.
les garderai dans les paumes de ma main. je les serrai fort jusqu'à saigner et là je me reposerai avec un sourire, comblée.
ton visage éternellement gravé sur mon ventre paumé.
j'embrasse tes cheveux,
B.
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