Tigran Amiryan is an independent curator and contemporary culture researcher with a Ph.D in Literary Studies. He is our featured artists this week on the HAYP/IN SITU “Virtual Viewing Room” platform, a space for online artworks from June 1 – August 2, 2020. In this interview, we learn a little more about his auto-narrative sketch “Skin Crisis”, and his philosophy on the marriage of science, literature and creative practice. Scroll down to the very bottom for a complete bio.
HAYP/ IN SITU: Tell us about your VVR project “Skin Crisis”, where did the idea come from?
Tigran Amiryan: For many years I have been dealing with memory and recollection. It is of great interest to me how memory is formed and destroyed – whether individual or collective memory- how it transforms, how individual and group memory is formed, how amnesia occurs, and so on. Skin memory and human-reality relationships / boundaries continue to remain my focus.
HI: Could you expand in particular on the idea of a text as an artwork?
TA: The topic of memory does not belong to one discipline or one language. Often this phenomenon, being multifaceted and multi-layered, requires researchers to use different languages and methods. There are two scripts that are familiar to me, the mix of which allows for a more complete expression: literature and scientific language. With “Skin Crisis” I decided to push the boundaries between these two languages, as a means to remove the boundaries between our bodies during the last difficult months [of quarantine].
HI: How does this relate to your research and artistic practice?
TA: I develop my academic and creative practice in parallel. For example, I teach French literature, semiotics, etc., and at the same time, I’ve developed a number of projects in which I combine anthropological and literary approaches, concepts and artistic expression.
HI: Who/what inspires you?
TA: I incorporated different concepts into “Skin Crisis” that refer to various ideas by Didier Anzieu, Julia Kristeva, and Gilles Deleuze. It’s well known that Anzieu was engaged not only in psychoanalysis, but also in literature, through which he tried to understand the basics of self-analysis. Kristeva also works constantly between the two disciplines, creating both fictional and philosophical and psychoanalytical texts. As for Deleuze, he always claims that all philosophies and scientific works carry an important creative engine, without which it is impossible to create a philosophical or meta-language.
HI: What does confinement mean to you? Have you (re)discovered something during this time?
TA: Isolation is a new attempt to perceive space.
HI: When you’re not writing or researching, what do you enjoy the most?
TA: The sea.
HI: If you had a magic wand, and could change one thing about the art scene in Armenia, what would it be?
TA: In Armenia and everywhere, we need to get rid of cultural tribalism. More democratic and transparent art!
HI: What is your dream project that you haven’t had a chance to work on yet?
TA: All my projects start with dreams and seem to come true. I don’t dream much, I have already started working on my next project which involves photography and memory.
About Tigran Amiryan:
Visit Tigran’s Virtual Viewing Room project, “Skin Crisis” here.
Follow him on instagram at @l_oriental
Find him on behance
Tigran Amiryan is a Professor of Contemporary World Literature, co-founder and president of CSN lab. He is a semiologist, literary critic, curator, contemporary culture researcher and multidisciplinary artist. Author of numerous articles on postmodern genres of literature, interdisciplinary analysis, contemporary comparative analytics, sociology of literature, etc. Tigran’s main interest revolves around the issue of narrativization of both individual and collective memory in contemporary culture, artistic (fictional) representation and history of the Self, biographies, urban space and environment that keep the memory of people’s lives despite being constantly subjected to oblivion and destruction. Tigran realized a number of art and research projects across several countries, Armenia, Georgia, France, Turkey, Ukraine, Russia, Morocco etc. Amongst his projects are “Memory square” (Kazakhstan), “Kukia Alphabet” (Georgia), “Firdus: The Memory of a Place” (Armenia), «Cyprus archive. Postcard from the land of care» (Cyprus).
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