Friday Night 12.20.02 -- David Kareyan -- Video/Presentation

Contents:
1. About this Monday
2. About David Kareyan
3. text by David Kareyan

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1. About this Monday

Friday December 20 2002

When: 7pm
Where: 16 Beaver Street, 5th Floor
Who: Open to All

Yerevan based artist David Kareyan will be presenting
some of his videos and discussing his work this Friday.

After the presentation a reception will follow. As this
is our last event of 2002, we hope you will join us. Wine,
cheese, and (prospective) friends.

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2. About D.K.

David Kareyan, a performance, video and installation
artist from Armenia was in residence at SUNY New Paltz.

Kareyan was in a five-week stay at SUNY New Paltz as part of the ArtsLink*
international exchange program, which brings Eastern European artists to
American non-profit institutions.

Kareyan creates atmospheric, video-based installations
investigating political structures and their impact on the human spirit.
His work, which juxtaposes news footage, nature films and a variety of
soundtrack
material, was shown at the 2001 Venice Biennale and the East/West Festival
in Die, France. Through his ArtsLink residency, Kareyan hopes to observe
the American political landscape up close and, specifically, to examine how
the ideas of philosophers Eric Fromm and John Locke have been realized in
the contemporary United States.

He is also studying the differences between American
and European art. "I think that multi-culturalism is not a mere thought,"
Kareyan says. "I would like to know how it is realized."

*ArtsLink is administered by CEC International
Partners in New York, a group seeking to use the arts as a means of
improving understanding among citizens of the United States and the former
Soviet Union, Central and Eastern Europe. The ArtsLink Residencies place
artists from these countries into American schools and other non-profit
organizations, and cover the cost of their stay. Since 1992, 313 foreign
Fellows have traveled to 165 American organizations in 30 states.

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3. text by David Kareyan

http://www.utopiana.am/utopiana/artists/d_kareian.htm

Are there visible things impossible to show?

Moral values are the main distinctions differing man from the man-animal. There is no natural morality; morality can merely be treated in cultural sense. What is proper in one culture can be a perversion in another. The belief that all cultures are the same in their roots and that for the unity we need to be free from all kind of deviations is the cause of political and religious calamities in nowadays too.

Contemporary art, as well as my main works are trying to fill the cultural gaps resulted by the conflicts between the body and mind, artificial and natural, individual and society.

I start from the conviction that there is no return to the original purity, and that the unity and harmony are in diversity, tolerance and free choice of an individual.

I was born and grown up in the village Darpas in Lori district of Armenia. The experience of those and of following years greatly influenced my creative outlook. Darpas was called a village, but it rather reminds an industrial center where many of highly poisonous factories of Soviet Union were constructed and the factory yards of some of which are pastures now.

This contradiction of nature and industry became more evident in post-soviet period and that of earthquake of 1988 when both economy and settlements were collapsed because of an ideology despising the reality.

An aspiration to avoid social and natural catastrophes became more certain for me during the years of my study. When I organized the “Act Group” in 1994, my friends and I, inspired by liberal ideas, were trying to change Soviet formalistic ideas concerning the relationship of art and reality. In such exhibitions and performances of 1994 and 1996 as “Art Demonstration” and “Beautiful Progress”, etc, we were insisting that freedom and independence are directly connected with ability of thinking,

Thinking is prohibited in all totalitarian regimes, and an intellectual is considered to be a dangerous person there. This fact is wholly acknowledged by the people who want to keep the power in their hands by all means, and who do everything to prevent free speech and equality. The defeat of the ideas of progress and peace in 1998 led to a complete disappointment and depression in Armenia. It was the demonstration of protest to overcome an existential loneliness and crisis of individuality when we organized the exhibition “Crisis” in 1999 (which synchronized with the bloody events of October 27 in The Armenian Parliament) and an exhibition “Civic Commotion”.

Till then the main aim of those exhibitions as well as of my own, was to show the controversy between mind and body, and to insist that it is possible to overcome the sufferings caused by this conflict. These sufferings in no case are the ways leading to perfection and holiness but, in contrary are the aspiration of committing a suicide. It is impossible to be in harmony with yourself, with other people, with nature and industry if one does not take into account the reality, and if one does not refuse the romantic illusions.