News

CAS Arts and International Cooperation 2021

For the third edition of the part-time further education course with a newly revised curriculum, a new co-director has been won in the person of the Syrian cultural manager Rana Yazaji. She will lead the course together with Dagmar Reichert. Within the topic Arts and International Cooperation: Collaborating in Fragile Contexts and in Processes of Peacebuilding, the course focuses especially on the cooperation between people from the Global North and the South, and also on the relationship between the needs of artists and the procedures of organisations that mandate such art projects.

The registration period is running until 31 March. All information on the course can be found here.

Caucasus Analytical Digest

artasfoundation and its project partners commit themselves to broaden their range of experience through the exchange of ideas on art and artistic collaboration and thus enable a diversity of opinions and give new impulses to (civil) society. In the latest edition of the Caucasus Analytical Digest on Arts in Society, edited by our project manager Sandra Frimmel as a special editor, our long term project partners explore the question of how artists as well as newly founded grass root institutions are seeking exchange with the so called international art world by means of field reports and self analysis without completely losing sight of the local traditions and starting conditions. It's worth a read!

PDF

Jour Fixe on 19 May 2021, 17.15 h, Swiss time

artasfoundation invites you to its regular meeting Jour Fixe every 3^rd Wednesday of the month in order to discuss ongoing projects as well as answer questions raised by the work or relevant political developments. Since Covid-19 started, we have been holding the Jour Fixe via Zoom, taking the opportunity to also invite people from further away. Depending on participants the discussion will take place in English or German.

If you wish to be informed about the agenda each month, please sign up on our Jour Fixe e-mail distribution list here.

Circular

Subscribe to the circular

From the current circular

Everything is prepared, the cold season is over and it is time to commence our projects. In the village of Tavush in Armenia, Hermine has prepared her garden. We visited her three weeks ago because we too were preparing. We were meeting partners for a dance project that should have started long ago and for another project, an exchange among art teachers. We asked Hermine how she sees the future, now that the war with Azerbaijan is over. ‘I can‘t think yet,’ she said. ‘My head is in turmoil. And the future? There is still a big emptiness for me.’
In the small town of Berd near the border of Azerbaijan, Armen Melikyan, the director of the local cultural centre, describes how ‘now in the post-war depression’, the interest in art has increased. ‘Parents want something uplifting for their children, we have more requests than usually,’ he says. The invitation to our dance project comes just at the right time. This is also the impression of Shoghakat Mlke Galstyan, with whom we have already worked on several projects, and whose art initiative for refugees from Karabakh we supported when the borders were still closed for us due to Covid-19. Shoghakat shares our desire to deconstruct images of the enemy through art activities. But she reports how difficult this is at the moment: ‘You should see the horror images that are being spread on social media right now. All our young people see them, and then we try to tell them that on the other side of the border there are people like us.’
How easy it is to destroy and how much time and patience it takes to rebuild!
Dear friends of artasfoundation, we are not discouraged by this! Here we are telling you about the steps that we currently take to support such rebuilding.

Thank you for your interest and your contribution!

The artasfoundation team