A major photo exhibition about Armenia has opened in Denmark

31.07.2024

A major photo exhibition about Armenia has opened in Denmark

Danish photographer and photojournalist Martin Thaulow and the founder and director of the Cultural and Social Narratives Laboratory (CSN Lab), researcher Tigran Amiryan, have recently implemented the project “Armenia: Landscapes of Memories.” Through people's stories, it explores Armenian society, forced displacements, the search for new homes, fragmented family memories, severed social ties, and the challenges the country has faced in recent decades. Tigran Amiryan talked to the Regional Post about the project and the exhibition currently taking place in Denmark.

Interview: Anzhela Alekian 
Photo: Martin Thaulow and Vilas Oluf Thaulow


 

The village of Kechut is located in the south of Armenia, downstream from the Arpa River, where the reservoir of the same name is situated. At the bottom of the reservoir lies Old Kechut. The village was completely submerged, not due to a natural disaster but as a result of Soviet planning.

The Soviet leadership decided to build a water reservoir here although people had lived in the village for centuries. The main livelihoods of the residents of Old Kechut were cattle breeding and agriculture, but after the flooding, they were resettled in typical urban housing built nearby.

The village’s past, hidden beneath the water, is a complex story of ordinary people intertwined with the Soviet regime’s historically widespread practice of flooding and resettling lands suitable for the hydroelectric industry. Similar projects were common throughout the former Soviet Union. Forced resettlement is not the only thing the people of Kechut have had to face. Some families returned to the new Kechut after repressions and years spent in the Gulag. In the early 1990s, many, who had no skills other than cattle breeding and agriculture, were forced to leave for Artsakh: the new settlement's structure complicated access to traditional rural activities, while more fertile lands were available in Nagorno-Karabakh, in the Lachin region. In 2020, after the war, they were forced to flee again. The Azerbaijani military invasion of Jermuk in September 2022 has once again made the residents of Kechut fear the possible loss of their homes.

 

 

**Ed:** Kechut, one of those spaces where the experience of multiple displacements has shaped the memory of the community. , became the object of research by the CSN Lab, conducted within the framework of the project “Kechut: Memory Under the Water.” Initially a multimedia project visualizing and analyzing the experience and memory of the community of the flooded village, it was implemented in cooperation with the Danish Cultural Institute (DCI) within the New Democracy Fund (NDF) program. Thanks to the Fund, the project and its creators became acquainted with Danish photographer Martin Thaulow, who works in regions affected by wars and conflicts.
Martin wrote to us and proposed to add new photos of people who live in Kechut today to the archival materials and illustrations we used for the multimedia project. This is how our collaboration began. Today, "Kechut: Memory Under the Water" is not only a multimedia project but also a new book by our Lab. Together with Martin, the Kechut project has expanded beyond the history of one village and gradually became a documentary project about Armenia as a whole. We held one presentation of "Kechut" here in Armenia, and the most impressive array of materials is now on display in Denmark as part of our large exhibition "Armenia: Landscapes of Memories." It is dedicated to the multi-layered and complex structure of Armenian society.

 

 

At the beginning of the summer, the People’s Summit (Folkemødet) took place on the Danish island of Bornholm in the Baltic Sea. It is an annual event attended by activists, politicians, and public figures from all over the world. Our exhibition became part of the summit, drawing attention to the social and cultural transformations of Armenian society.

The exhibition includes portraits and biographies of the residents of Kechut and documents the life of the country, its society, and its diversity. Each exhibited photograph was taken after hours of interviews and shows the everyday lives and experiences of the heroes as accurately as possible.

 

 

We chose Kechut because we have been doing projects about memory for many years using various methods to analyze our Soviet and post-Soviet past. This was the case in the projects about the recently demolished Firdus quarter of Yerevan, the Getar River, which was once part of the urban landscape and is now enclosed in a collector, and now Kechut. We applied anthropological research methods and visualized the materials. We also considered the ecological aspect from a social point of view, in the context of social memory. Kechut is a representative point, focusing on the Soviet practice of creating reservoirs with the parallel resettlement of residents. The entire past of the village residents remained at the bottom of the reservoir. The history of the village is, first of all, a history of cruelty and repressive Soviet methods of resettlement.

In this case, the Soviet authorities – as it may seem – did a good deed, for which it is difficult and almost impossible to blame them for colonization. After all, they developed water resources. But this could have been done without harming historical sites and human memory. Even after receiving new houses, the villagers still cannot deal with the loss. The new architecture only harmed them, destroying communal life.

We started working on the Kechut project in 2020, and in 2022, the military invasion of Jermuk took place. People could not help but compare this new situation with the Soviet past: just like many years ago, they were evicted and forced to leave their homes. Although it is not entirely correct to compare these two events, with the first case being the result of the peaceful architectural project, and the second one being a consequence of war, forced displacement is always difficult.  Martin Thaulow expanded his journey, exploring the topic of resettlement in Vayots Dzor, Tavush, Lori, and also Syunik in connection with the escalation of the conflict with Azerbaijan and the forced displacement of the Armenians from Artsakh in 2023.

 

 

Having collected the material, we thought about how to systematize it in the best way. We realized that telling the story of an entire state in one exhibition is an unachievable and overwhelming task. Therefore, of all the topics raised by Martin, we focused on one - the topic of memory. Today, we all find ourselves in a situation where we need to reflect, look back, and ask difficult and uncomfortable questions about the past - both personal and historical. This is what forms the landscape of memory. That is how we named our exhibition - "Landscapes of Memories."

The word landscape doesn’t only represent our interest in Armenia and its history but also reflects the role that the European Union plays in the country, in particular, the presence of EU observers in Syunik, who have been monitoring the border with Azerbaijan for 2 years, bringing people a sense of security. In this regard, within the framework of the project, we tried to show not only people affected by displacement but also active actors: representatives of civil society, activists, and politicians. "Landscapes of Memories" is a mosaic of our society. This project aims to show different layers, not only personal destinies but also professional work on the development of a democratic society in Armenia. In the exhibition, you can see and read biographies of those actively involved in establishing the EU-Armenia dialogue for many years. The exhibition itself, telling the thousands of visitors of the festival on the island of Bornholm, became an important event on the way to a new stage of cultural dialogue between both Armenia and Denmark, as well as Armenia and the European Union.
 

 

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