Island of Memory-TLS.Pdf

14 COMMENTARY 15 Swiss parliament recognizing the genocide of the Armenians as such – when the executive is able to censor that recognition and override the Island of memory democratic process? How can the UN and other societies for global peace defend us from futurecalamities,iftheydarenotevenmention the name of a genocide committed a hundred The art of the Armenian diaspora at Biennale 2015 years ago? Are we surprised to see the UN, tasked with preventing atrocities in Syria and elsewhere, so helpless? After seeing “Res- he Golden Lion for Best National VICKEN CHETERIAN a deep similarity. Both are fragile: the smallest piro” in the Turkish pavilion, the censorship of Participation at Venice Biennale of the post-Soviet republics, Armenia has been art by politicians looks even more ridiculous. 2015, whose slogan is “All the vast project of mass deportation and murder. under siege by two of its neighbours since it The members of the Les Réverbères asso- TWorld’s Futures”, has been awarded What we do not have is an end date. Compare gained independence in 1991; bordered by ciation were becoming anxious. “Armenity” to the Republic of Armenia, “for forming a this to the Holocaust, which is remembered on hostile states, it is itself like a Venetian island had never been popular – and nor were the pavilion based on a people in diaspora . [in] the day the Red Army liberated Auschwitz, in the mountains of the Caucasus. Both have descendants of genocide survivors. Since the a year that witnesses a significant milestone putting an end to the atrocity. For Armenians, had a global influence incompatible with their Treaty of Lausanne of 1923 that created the for the Armenian people”. The winning pavil- the end never came, since Turkey continues size: Armenia through its diaspora, San Laz- foundations of modern Turkey, their quest for ion bears the title “Armenity/Haiyutioun: to deny the crime. Much of the debate has zaro through the Mekhitarist Congregation. justice has never been a cause célèbre. The Contemporary artists from the Armenian Dia- focused on whether what happened is techni- “We have a pavilion which has existed for 300 great powers of Turkey mattered; Armenians spora”; and “milestone” is a polite euphemism cally a “genocide” or not – but that is silly. years”, von Fürstenberg says. did not. Now, a century later, the rejection of for the centenary of the genocide of Armenians What matters is that Turkey is not ready to For Biennale 2015, the walls of the San Streetlamps was reopening old wounds. by Ottoman Turks. The pavilion houses recognize its responsibility. This fact has con- Lazzaro monastery have been transformed The artwork did what diasporas have always the work of sixteen artists who live and work sequences: survivors cannot bury their dead, into showrooms, its ancient manuscripts raw done: it found a new home, and became the outside Armenia – in Aleppo, Istanbul, New refugees have never been allowed to return to material for art. Just like the Mekhitarist Con- very story it was representing. Yet this success York, Buenos Aires and elsewhere – but have their land, and Turkey still imposes a severe gregation, the sixteen artists have gathered remains fragile. Not only did the name of the one thing in common: they are descendants of blockade on land-locked Armenia. remnants of an Armenian past in order to give “Les Réverbères de la Mémoire” (Streetlights of Memory), 2010–15, by Melik Ohanian sculpture have to be qualified for the Biennale genocide survivors, part of a network that is Armenians were, of course, a people of them new life. References to this traumatic by the addition of the phrase “A Stand by transparent, yet tangible. What could make a diaspora even before the genocide of 1915. past are omnipresent: Nigol Bezjian in his by Memorial 2010/2015”, by the French- headquarters of the United Nations) and the and genocides, and to protect civilian popula- Memorial 2010/2015”, but the sculpture itself diaspora, marked by a century of genocide and FollowingthenomadicinvasionsfromCentral installation “Witnessed.ed” introduces the Armenian Melik Ohanian. It is placed at the offices of the International Committee of the tions. The UN officials in Geneva made no changed its appearance: instead of proud, erect its denial, the best representative of our future? Asia in the eleventh century, which destroyed tragic poet Daniel Varoujan, symbol of the entrance to the island, outside the walls of the Red Cross (ICRC). Surely no better spot could public statement to distance themselves from lamps, their base deep in the soil, it became a We have a starting date for the Armenian the Bagratid Kingdom, Armenians lived for Armenian intelligentsia, who was arrested on Mekhitarists, and away from the rest of the be chosen to commemorate the victims of war the manoeuvres of the Swiss foreign minister. heap of broken pieces, eighty-seven in total, genocide: April 24, 1915, when the Turkish many centuries without a proper state. They “Respiro”, 2015, by Sarkis Zabunian April 24, 1915 and murdered in deportation. exhibit. One’s first impression on disembark- and crimes against humanity. A new deadline These interventions by the Swiss minister piled on the ground. Where these pieces will police arrested hundreds of Armenian intellec- survived by preserving their distinct identity, Through old newspaper texts and contempo- ing is that the work is simply a heap of metal, was given: 2013. But in October of that year, raise a number of questions: what is the value go when the Biennale ends in November tuals in Istanbul, marking the beginning of a thanks, in part, to the Armenian Apostolic were migrants par excellence”, explains Ade- rary video installation, the artist gives life to or outsized parts of pipes or trumpets; in fact, the Turkish foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu of democratic decisions – in this case, the remains to be seen. Church (the national Church of the Armeni- lina Cüberyan von Fürstenberg, the curator of the poet. “Treasures”, Silvina Der-Meguerdi- “Streetlights of Memory” (“Les Réverbères de visited his Swiss counterpart, Didier Burkhal- ans), and to the distinctive features of their cul- “Armenity/Haiyutioun”. “They show how it is tchian’s installation, is inspired by a text about la Mémoire”) is a work which was supposed to ter, in Bern, and the two sides agreed on a “stra- ture, which crystallized around the Armenian possible to live within the culture and laws of folk medicine written by her grandmother in have been erected long ago and has never been tegic partnership”. One of the prices paid by the alphabet and language. Diaspora communities the country while preserving their proper cul- Turkish in the Armenian alphabet; the intro- completed. It was intended as a gift by the Swiss side was to oppose the construction of sprang up and blossomed in distant merchant ture.” The title she gave to the pavilion derives duction of additional texts and various objects Armenian community to the city of Geneva, an the memorial for the Armenian victims. The colonies, from Isfahan to Dacca, Cairo to War- from the French arménité (loosely, “the art of makes for a meaningful exploration of identity expression of gratitude for the refuge provided Turkish authorities were also exercising heavy saw. This dispersed nation, globalized before being Armenian”), and the pavilion itself is and longing. In the photographs of Aram Jibil- by that city to the orphans of the genocide, and pressure on the United Nations to prevent the its time, could always count on new recruits located neither in the Giardini nor the Arsenale ian, subjects wear masks based on characters for the humanitarian aid Geneva supplied to project’s completion. Although the Turkish from its historic heartland where a significant (the two traditional exhibit spaces of the Bien- in the paintings of the Armenian-American survivors. It followed Geneva’s recognition in argumentswerenevermadepublic,theirdiplo- number of Armenians remained, divided nale) but on San Lazzaro degli Armeni, a Arshile Gorky. 2005 that the mass killings of 1915 were mats succeeded in blocking the artwork, win- between the “East Armenians” living in the twenty-minute journey by vaporetto from San By reviving fragments of the past, the artists indeed a genocide, following earlier acknowl- ning over politicians already willing to listen. Persian and later Tsarist Empire, and “West Zaccaria. of “Armenity” overcome both the pain of anni- edgements by the Canton of Geneva in 1998, The necessary permits were delayed. Armenians” under Ottoman domination. There could be no better place to represent hilation and the borders of modern nation- and the Swiss Federal Assembly in 2003. Although the construction plans did not face The deportations and massacres during the arménité than the tiny island that bears the states. This is well illustrated by the work of Given these precedents, the city authorities any administrative obstacles, cantonal author- First World War brought a fundamental shift name of the patron saint of lepers. In 1717, the Sarkis Zabunian, who exhibits “My memory is did not imagine that they would be triggering ities opposed the project, concerned that not only in the ethnic composition of the Mid- Venetian Republic gave San Lazzaro to the my homeland” on San Lazzaro, and, as the sole controversy in 2008 when they announced an “Streetlights” might cause difficulties for the Adjust yyoourur dle East, as its major Christian populations Armenian monk Mekhitar to found a monas- exhibit of the Turkish pavilion in the Arsenale, international art competition for the construc- leadership of Geneva’s UN offices. The asso- (Armenians, Greeks and Assyrians) were tery. Mekhitar was born in Sebastia (Sivas, in his new magnum opus “Respiro”. For this, a tion of a memorial.

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