ANDRIUS ARUTIUNIAN

The Paris iteration of the artist’s performance, entitled Armen (2023), is scheduled to take place at KADIST on 12 October and 23 November. Armen is a study of vernacular diasporic Armenian music. Using a personal collection of cassettes, vinyl records and VHS tapes of popular music from the 1970s to the 1990s, Andrius Arutiunian remixes and reimagines the personal and cultural memory embedded in this music. The piece exists in two forms: a record (shown at KADIST on a turntable on loop) and as a performance.

This performance version of the piece is played out during the 42-minute duration of the cab ride, with the piece released on an audio cassette and experienced through a taxi’s sound system. It draws upon Arutiunian’s childhood memories of Armenia, where the sounds of blaring music from aged Mercedes-Benz taxi speakers greeted arrivals at Zvartnots Airport in Yerevan. Armen’s duration is equal to the combined lengths of the cassette’s A and B sides. The cab ride while listening to the record evokes a passage of a psychogeographic journey, a hypnotic speculation into diasporic memories, historic omissions, and sonic absences.