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LOT 18
Silvina Der Meguerditchian
Archiving Dilijan, 2020
Archival photograph, circuit boards and Tele-phonic units, from the impuls factory in Dilijan, Armenia
40 x 50 cm
Signed
Estimate:
$1,500 - $2,000
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Payment: overseas bank transfer (USD).
About This Artwork
Archiving Dilijan (from the series lmpuls). "How can one weave a herstory a new based on obscured, scattered remnants and of the past? For Silvina Der-Meguerditchian, an artist participating in the Dilijan Arts Observatory, archival photographs documenting the life of the Impuls factory and disused elements of complex electronic equipment produced here became transducers of fragile, collective memories. As voltage-output devices to convert energy from one form to another, transducers are sensitive to electromagnetic interference. The electrical resistance of the connecting cable can cause errors if the cable is long. Both reproductions of photographs borrowed from former factory employees and from the municipal library, as well as fragments of wires and unidentified electronic devices contain encoded, fragile knowledge about the past forms of complex industrial production and rich social life related to work at Impuls. The collage of photographs feature certain familiar motives like women and men at work, social and leisure activities and gatherings of the workers’ collective, machines and devices from Impuls. These findings are assembled by the artist in constellations in an abstract structure resembling a traditional Armenian carpet. The temporary artistic, archival work taking place currently at Impuls is an attempt to convert threads of life and energy connecting past and present. To create this connection one has to confront the bewildering interplay of distance and intimacy." - By Joanna Sokołowska This work was inspired and realized during the Dilijan Arts Observatory in September 2016, curated by Clémentine Deliss. The Dilijan Arts Observatory was a think tank where artists, designers, cultural historians and environmental scientists convened for three weeks in and around the ancient spa town of Dilijan, once a favorite for Russian and Armenian artists and intellectuals. Out of this residency the artist developed the Impuls series. Cultural historians and environmental scientists convened for three weeks in and around the ancient spa town of Dilijan, once a favorite for Russian and Armenian artists and intellectuals.
About Silvina Der Meguerditchian
Granddaughter of Armenian immigrants to Argentina, Silvina Der Meguerditchian lives and works in Berlin since 1988. Her artistic work deals with issues related to the burden of national identity, the role of minorities in society and the potential of a space "in between". Der-Meguerditchian is interested in the impact of migration in the urban texture and its consequences. Reconstruction of the past and the building of archives are a red thread in her artistic research. Her work is multidisciplinary and uses different media. Since 2010 she is the artistic director of Houshamadyan, a project to reconstruct Ottoman Armenian town and village life. In 2014/15 she was awarded with a fellowship at the Kulturakademie Tarabya, a residency program of the German Foreign Ministry and the Goethe Institute in Istanbul. Der Megurditchian further participated in "Armenity", the Pavilion awarded with the Golden Lion at the 56th Venice Biennial for the best national participation. Her work has been shown in many exhibitions around the world, including, Germany, Argentina, USA and Turkey. Her last initiated and coordinated collective project "Grandchildren, new geographies of belonging" (DEPO Cultural Center- Istanbul) was supported by the Goethe Institut and the German Foreign Ministry in 2015. In 2018 she participated at Hello World. Revising a Collection, a critical inquiry into the collection of the Nationalgalerie and its predominantly Western focus at the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin. Since 2014 she works with “Women mobilizing memory“ a group of artists, writers, theater practitioners, museologists, legal scholars, social activists, and scholars of memory and memorialization, who focus on the political stakes and consequences of witnessing and testimony as responses to socially imposed vulnerability and historical trauma. It probes how individual and collective testimony and performance can establish new forms of cultural memory and facilitate social repair.
