Foreignness of Sound publication by Arts Territory

Arts Territory 1

Foreignness of sound

Foreignness of sound Arts Territory

Foreignness of Sound addresses the relationship between sound, language, human communication, and the concept of national identity within the context of the multiplicity of languages and cultures in the Caucasus. This publication follows the first UK installment of the Transkaukazja programme that featured a series of performances, talks, screenings and workshops that centre on Caucasian languages and voices. Located on the peripheries of Europe and Asia, the mountain range of the Caucasus forms a narrow land bridge between the Black and Caspian seas. For centuries, the area’s complex and multifaceted cultural heritage and linguistic variety has been renowned. Dubbed ‘the mountain of tongues’ by tenth-century Arab geographers, this small territory that has been divided, united and re-divided repeatedly throughout history boasts one of the highest concentrations of indigenous tongues in the world. There are 40–50 Caucasian languages spoken among 8 million people, in communities ranging in size from only a few hundred people to large national groups of millions. These languages fall into three main groups, but none has been decisively linked to any other language on earth. Often characterized by an enormous number of consonants but a minimal vowel system, each tongue is unique, possessing its own composition, form and dynamic. Foreignness of Sound celebrates this diversity, bringing together alternative forms of art and innovative collaborations (e.g. between visual artist and a choir) that are inspired by the ethno-linguistic mosaic of the Caucasus. The project provides local and international artists, musicians and academics with a platform for exploring the creative agency of sound and the poetics of voice as the fundamental basis of our experience of language and communication, and by extension, our identity. With an emphasis on speech and sound, the resulting works invite audiences to consider the nature of communication, cultural miscommunication and the role that language plays in our formation of cultural and national identity. Katarzyna Sobucka

Alicja Rogalska Marianna Hovhannisyan

The history of the world is also a narrative of collapses—that of empires and unions, finances and infrastructures, nations and identities, imaginaries and expectations. The Caucasus is not an exception as it has mainly been viewed as a geography of conflicts, ruptured political regimes, and tensions between ‘ethnic’ and religious intentions. Tsypylma Darieva, reviewing one of the books (Grant et al.) rich in research and published specifically on the Caucasus, begins with a challenge that “for centuries, the region has held a reputation of a wild space of violence, resistance and closure” (843). She refers to the generalized perception where the Caucasus is attached to the terms of “obscurity and “unknowability”” (Darieva 843). The other commonly-known formulations shape the image of the “Caucasus” as a geopolitical space of strategic importance (Cornell 459), or a transit zone between philosophies and politics of the European and non-European paradigms. This text is collaboratively-written by Marianna Hovhannisyan and Alicja Rogalska and it aims to perform a possible alternative reading of how the notions of communication, national identity and foreignness associated with the Caucasus can be approached differently and linked with broader conditions. The development of the text is based on applying an idea of the collapse as a methodological and conceptual framework. The collapse is viewed throughout the text as a performance of an event when the world is always “composed […] of patterns or infinite series of events” (Livesey 5-13). It is also seen as an altering process which delegitimizes mainstream narratives and assertions about citizenship, identity and subjectivity, and at the same time affirming the need to rethink and transform them. The text cursorily presents two case studies that manifest the moments of infrastructural collapses in the South Caucasus, affecting mainly Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, and beyond. The case studies are unfolded as orientations to open up discussions of what remains and what resonates in the South Caucasus (as an exemplary model) that might evince the sense of the contemporariness and criticality in regards to what is usually meant by the Caucasus as described above. The first case study is historical and is provided by Marianna Hovhannisyan, a

curator from Armenia currently based in Istanbul. It refers to the second largest city of the Republic of Armenia, Gyumri, near the border with Turkey, originally named Kumayri, Leninakan during the Soviet times and Alexandrapol during the Russian Empire. Gyumri has always been “an apple of discord” in every action and discussion about the South Caucasus or Transcaucasia, specifically due to its historical and geopolitical location and the processes of militarization in the region. Instead of working with the multi-layered political history of Gyumri as such, Hovhannisyan proposes a focus on the architectural program implemented in Gyumri during the Soviet Union, that dramatically collapsed during the devastating Spitak earthquake on the 7th of December, 1988, in Soviet Armenia (Spitak 1988 Earthquake). The text uses the catastrophe site, currently in Gyumri, as a case study for an impact and a subsequent collapsing space, that opens a new space emerging from, and revealing histories of, the underlying former Soviet dimensions, in particular that of the 1960s Khrushchev era “Thaw.” What the Spitak earthquake has also revealed is that the collapse of the architectural program in 1988 - specifically that of the “111” regionalized Soviet panel buildings in Soviet Armenia - has a very direct connection to the identity project of the independent Armenia in contemporary times. This link becomes evident in the text by focusing on the geopolitical location of Gyumri and on the 2013 visit to Armenia of the Russian President Vladimir Putin, who bypassed the capital of the country and arrived in the earthquake-scarred city. The second case study is contemporary, developed by Alicja Rogalska, a Polish visual artist currently based in London. She attempts to bring to light ‘the tangible realities’ associated with the Internet through an alternative, personal narrative about an event, which simultaneously collapsed the post-Internet and pre-Internet condition of the world through the body of a vulnerable old woman. The case study presents an excerpt from correspondence between Alicja and a Georgian researcher she employed to find Hayastan Shakarian, a Georgian woman of Armenian origin. In 2011, looking for scrap metal to sell (an informal form of labour very well known in the region after the collapse of the Soviet Union) Shakarian “accidentally sliced through an underground cable and cut off internet services to all of neighboring Armenia” (Parfitt), as well as some major regions of Georgia (Bergen). The cable, owned by the Georgian Railway Telecom Company, provided the Internet for Eastern Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan (Musayelyan). The news went viral in March 2011, with Shakarian becoming the centre of worldwide media attention and an icon for Internet hackers. It also lead to passionate ethical and legal discussions about whether the retired woman should be charged with damaging private property. Rogalska positions herself as a mediator to examine the relationship between an individual, the local economic situation, the international media and the Internet; the story is thus not only about the collapse of the infrastructure of the post-technological era, but it aims to reveal the wider issues of poverty and power structures often overlooked in analysis of the networked society.

ok so

he did say Imedi made a TV segment about her so I might call in some favors to get it pulled out of the archive

here is how it went I take a cab from Tbilisi to mtskheta. I found the place relatively easy,. It’s like 5-6 blocks of 5 floors. Looks a bit postapocalyptic. I took a recorder with me. I find the Sergo guiy

but I need to ask first anyway I try to be nice try to explain how wrong the media has been in portraying her that they even got the name of the village wrong

I say hi im with this polish researcher

and they said yeah they didn report anyuthing right

we are interested in the story with yourmother

and we are so sick cuz people were coming here from england italy france local televisions reporting

we want to know her side of the story

Alicja Rogalska

and how it all happened

I asked

and then they react so negatively saying

if we can have their side of the story they said they dont want to talk about it

we are so tired and fed up of all this

anyway to cut long story short ifound out a. it happened in armazi b. she was collecting woods c. she cant hear, so even if we talk to her shes not going to udnerstand and his son reports it she will start to cry as she feels guilty about it cuz police came and accused her

we are sick about this we dont want to talk about it its not her fault she’s 75 she doens’t know better she was collecting wood not scrap metal the family is lower middle class

but sergo was more or les snice

I didn’t get to see hayastan as she lives with her daughter now in Gori

I left them my phone number and told them in case they want to tell their story

apparently The son was not willing to talk he said we dont want to comment on this anymore cuz we are so tired

i think its because of rtaarded media miscommunicating with them making this old lady a villain Sergo said all she knows is woods and home she cant read or write or talk properly and of course knows nothing about internet but they did have interbnet at home even tho they are from probably barely above the poverty line they had an ok apartment

and even thio its not always not very very bad its scandal oriented I hate it when irrelevant people become relevent cuz they say â&#x20AC;&#x153;scandalous enoughâ&#x20AC;? shit its painful or do u think ure done with the case? do u need the cable 4?

but in ARmazi Alicja Rogalska

they didnt even offer me to sit which in georgia is not common people at least offer u to sit if not cofee and tea till the end sergo got friendlier as i tried to explain to him that we are not accussing hayastan of anytihng on the contrary we are looking at the bigger picture we want tehir story and then he said everyone said the same i know i work at media

Revisiting the Spitak earthquake after 25 years

Marianna Hovhannisyan

In 2014 I developed research on the 1988 Spitak earthquake and its devastating effect on the city of Gyumri, the second largest city of Armenia. I was motivated by the question of how to articulate the interconnection between the site of a catastrophe and the event of a disaster through architecture, and furthermore, why contemporary political intentions land exactly upon the ruins of this collapsed space. The key focus has been on architectural structures in Gyumri that remain in various states of disrepair, standing as evidence of aftershocks, the sudden forces at work through shifting tectonic plates. They also register different historical tremors, still active underneath, that reflect a sense of thresholds comprising the identity of the Armenia-Turkey closed-border town of Gyumri, and the identity project of Independent Armenia, in general. The Spitak earthquake struck on December 7th, 1988 with a 9.0 magnitude, resulting in 55,000 deaths, 130,000 injuries (Harutyunyan et al. 6-14). The unexpected degree of damages was mainly caused by the total collapse of the “111”, which was the paradigmatic Armenian version of the Soviet Khrushchyovka panel buildings (Spitak 1988 Earthquake). Spitak, the city at the earthquake epicentre, was almost completely destroyed. Nearby Gyumri was one of the disaster sites damaged greatly by the earthquake, due to the predominance of the “111” buildings (Kovalev et al.). The collapse of the “111” serial number buildings unveils the earthquake not only as a geological but a historical event; it arrives just before the informal fall of the Soviet Union marking the transformation from “an epoch” into “multiple events”. An example of that process is the re-definition of the national identity in the formation of Independent Armenia (Simley) and in the context of the Artsakh Liberation War of the NagornoKarabakh enclave. The immense destruction left by the earthquake also renewed focus on the two historical identity issues that have emerged during the Khrushchev “Thaw”. The mass panel housing had come to represent the production of identity and dwelling together as one unit and solution for housing for all in the Soviet Union. In the early 1960s N. Khrushchev intended to solve two structural problems—the residential housing and the official individual registration for Soviet citizens. The oftpromised residence for the proletariat was answered by a mass construction plan all over the former Soviet Republics of serial panel buildings known as Khrushchyovka (Bergdoll et al. 100). Those buildings were made of low-quality, pre-stressed and pre-fabricated concrete, quickly built to satisfy demands and intended only as temporary dwellings (for 30/35 years) to overcome the lack caused by the post-World War II condition (Limba). They were usually trucked to the site as needed; each building style type had a specific serial number and a typical final look of an apartment with fixed dimensions (Soviet Empire of Khrushchyovki). Philosophically and socially, Khrushchyovka marked an important transition for the Soviet citizen from communal residence (cellars, communal flats, etc.) to individual space (Microrayon Factbook). Depending on the geographical location of the country, the Khrushchyovki could also

Marianna Hovhannisyan

be “nationalized” and “regionalized” (Palyan), which usually led to the corruption of the infrastructures and that of the Soviet typology (Ghelphand). The “111” building was the Soviet Armenia one, whose “nationalization” stood in transgression to the regime, first by the changing of three or five floors to nine, and secondly by the official authorization of the Soviet Armenian architects that the “111” version was able to resist earthquakes up to 7-9 in magnitude (Palyan). Twenty-five years later, on December 2nd, 2013, Vladimir Putin would bypass Yerevan (Panorama), the capital of Armenia to arrive directly in Gyumri, the now partially-rebuilt site of the catastrophe. This rebuff of Yerevan (the official political host) for Gyumri was geopolitically motivated by the attempts of Putin politics related to forming a Eurasian Customs Union, a new alliance comprised of former Soviet Republics, which would collaborate politically and economically within and only in this newly shaped framework. As he stated during his visit, “We are going to enhance our influence in the South Caucasus” (Gevorgyan). Gyumri, as a town situated on a closed border with Turkey, has always been a political hotspot for the Caucasus region. Putin’s decision to arrive directly to Gyumri reanimates an older empire discourse from Russian and Ottoman histories, and from observing both influences in Armenia’s history. Conceptually, it lands exactly in the empty space opened by the rupture of the 1988 earthquake, which combines in its layers the Soviet, Diasporic and Earthquake identities of Armenia as an independent state. His arrival served to introduce a further expansion of the pre-existing102nd Military Base of the Group of Russian Forces in Transcaucasia (Sahakyan). Thus it symbolizes in the still-rebuilding site of Gyumri, a substitution of a past Soviet ideological architecture (Kruschev’s “111” residential) with a current Russian version (Putin’s military “102”). After the Spitak earthquake, what remains of the “111” building program and of the society formerly inhabiting the buildings, are fractured walls and ruins. This offers an insight into the interplay between what kinds of “mobility” and “stability” have been attached to this type of architecture associated with programmatic identity and politics. As the text has attempted to demonstrate, the collapse of the “111” stands for both a concrete evidence for the past and as a current actor that provokes new openings stemming from that past. This shapes a transformed perspective on the identity project as a networked event and opens up a new speculative space expressing the contingent character of a finishedness presumed as the essence of the identity project both in Soviet and Independent Armenia in the so-called South Caucasus. The new space needs to be seen now through these political tremors – the arrival of Vladimir Putin at the earthquake site in 2013, in the context of other displacements already occurring in the contemporary landscape of Armenia, both politically (from Soviet to Russian) and geographically (from the region to the city). These tremors perhaps foreshadow a potential ‘catastrophe’ ahead.

References: Bergdoll, Barry and Christensen, Peter. Ron Broadhurst. Ed. Home delivery: fabricating the modern dwelling. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2008. Print. Bergen, Jennifer. “75-year-old woman cuts off Internet to Georgia and Armenia.” GeekCetera. 7 April , 2011. Web. 22 March 2015. Cornell, Svante E. “Conflicting identities in the Caucasus.” Peace Review: A Journal of Social Justice 9 (4) Dec. (1997): 453-459. ProQuest Sociology. Web. 19 March 2015. Darieva, Tsypylma. “Caucasus Paradigms: Anthropologies, Histories and the Making of a World Area.” Anthropological Quarterly 3 Nov. 2009: 843-847.Print. Gabrielyan, Hrachya. Leninakan. Yerevan. 1984. Print. Gevorgyan, Siranuysh. (2013) “Putin Protest: Russian president arrives in Gyumri as protesters rally in Yerevan.” Armenia Now. 02 December 2013. Web. 10 March 2015.

Marianna Hovhannisyan

Ghelphand Leonard. “To Protecting Building from Collapses by Earthquakes, Accidents and Terrorist’s Acts (Mainly in the former USSR and today’s Russia).” NOOSPHERE. 2010. Web. 10 March 2015. Grant, Bruce and Yalçin-Heckmann, Lale. Eds. Caucasus Paradigms: Anthropologies, Histories and the Making of a World Area. Münster: Lit: Halle Studies in the Anthropology of Eurasia. 2008. Print. Harutyunyan, Avag, Mirzoyan, Sonya and Martirosyan, Marine. Spitak Earthquake:The catastrophe zone yesterday and today: A retrospective glance after 20 years. Yerevan: Armenian National Archive. 2008. Print. Iskandaryan, Alexander. Ed. Identities, Ideologies and Institutions. A Decade of Insight into the Caucasus: 2001-2011. Yerevan: CI. 2011. Web. 19 March 2015. Kovalev, M and Azhermachev, S. “Destruction of structures under the seismic impacts”, U. D. C./ The Universal Decimal Classification 624 (21), 2001. Print. Limba Library. Architecture from Stalin to Khrushchev. N.d. Web.20 February 2015. Livesey, Graham. “Deleuze, Whitehead, the Event, and the Contemporary City.” Whitehead Research project 2007: 1-18. Web. 02 April 2014. Microrayon Factbook. K-7 (khrushchovka). N.d. Web. 20 February 2015.

Musayelyan, Suren. “Hayastan cut Hayastan’s web?: “Shovel-wielding” cyber granny in Georgia identified as Armenian.” Armenia Now. 8 April 2011. Web. 22 March 2015. Spitak Seism. 24 December 2011. Web. 10 March 2015. Panorama. Vladimir Putin arrives in Gyumri. 02 December 2013. Web. 20 February 2015. Parfitt, Tom. “Georgian woman cuts off web access to whole of Armenia.” The Guardian. 6 April 2011. Web. 22 March 2015. Sahakyan, Armen. “Armenia’s Emerging New Foreign Policy.” Armenian Weekly News. 31 March 2014. Web. 22 March 2015. Simley, Xan. “Kremlin refuses to bow to Armenians.” The Daily Telegraph. 22 March 1988. Print Soviet Empire of Khrushchyovki. Dir. Elizaveta Listova and Alekseh Kondulukov. Telechannel Russia, 2003-2009. Film. “Spitak 1988 Earthquake.” Armenian National Survey for Seismic Protection, n.d. Web. 10 March 2015. Fig. 1 The Spitak Earthquake (Photograph from “Spitak Earthquake: 25 –year old documents.” In Architecture and Construction. By Iosif Palyan. Yerevan. Vol. 12, 2013, 30-49). Fig. 2 “Crazy Old Lady Kills Internet with Shovel”, YouTube video, 1:47, footage from SkyNews, posted by “whitehorse1959” April 11, 20011, http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=cDVBtuWkMS8.

Marianna Hovhannisyan

Palyan, Iosif. Lessons of Spitak earthquake and reconstruction tasks of the disaster zone.

”There are new questions to be answered. There are experiences yet to be served.” ”Alberto, do you want to live like an eagle or like a chicken?” Alberto Villoldo Mending the Past and Healing the Future with Soul Retrival

Multiculturalism and a search for new art contexts Iliko Zautashvili

Iliko Zautashvili

In the Vedas the sound combination AUM is made to determine an original vibration, a programmed impulse of the expansion of the universe. This is also the original rhythm that structures space and differentiates time. Our life, behavioral and psychological archetypes were born and formed in the rhythm of creation, development and destruction. Experience in the development of territories, imitation of the natural environment and the development of speech, formed the basis of individual and collective human development. The adaptation to climatic and geographic conditions, the desire to share information, promoted the formation of the major segments of civilization such as language, symbol and ritual â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the phenomena that determined ethnic and cultural diversity. The significance that is attached to national identity encourages us to study not only the distinctive features among cultures, but the communicative forms of self expression that bring together those differences. If each identity is generated by another identity, there is no phenomenon separated or detached. Everything is causally interdependent, as are social, cultural and subjective differences. As we all are the cause of each other, the level of involvement is increasing. It connects us with a number of layers of the past and the present. Today there are approximately 6,500 different languages in the world, on which written and oral samples of cultural heritage and modernity are set out. Of course, we use existing translations, but there are many more untranslated texts. The diversity of language systems, their groups and subgroups leave no choice but to learn a particular language and its writing. Quite contrary music, dance, performance art, visual art, and even poetry stand out as on the verbal level the essence of them can be detected through the wide range of declamatory possibilities, intonation, rhythm, sound and their modifications. However, are we as successful in understanding the essential musical, plastic, poetic forms of expression associated with different culture and worldview? For example, Georgian polyphonic music, Sufi or Zen Buddhist poetry, or the philosophy of the Bhagavad Gita. On the question of understanding alien phenomena the process of engaging in a multicultural environment plays a decisive role. Wherein, the empirical knowledge and intuitive understanding complement each other.

Iliko Zautashvili

Children from different ethnic groups can communicate well in improvised games. Spontaneity - the same faith - provides them with full involvement in the process. In this context, their cognitive and communication medium is a game, not the language. Thus, the empowerment of forms of expression - gesture, facial expression, posture, body movement, exclamation, drawn sign - are aimed at achieving a greater versatility of information. History has preserved many examples where the multi-ethnic and multicultural intersections contribute to a more open, pluralistic society. In the Caucasus, Tbilisi is one of those phenomena. In the descriptions of travelers at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, Tiflis appeared as a multiethnic, multicultural and religiously tolerant city. Fire worshipping Persians, Kurds, Aissors, Armenians of the Gregorian Church, Orthodox Georgians, Polish and Georgian Catholics, Greeks and Russians, Muslims, Shiites, Sunnis, German Protestants, Jews, Azerbaijanis and Turks, the Molokans and Doukhobors (who fled from Russia), all lived side by side within the city. Eclectic styles, trends and preferences diversified even more the variety of national and multinational festivals and processions. Set against a background of orthodox churches, mosques, synagogues, Catholic and Protestant Kostels, caravanserais and trading squares, one would see vagrant dervishes and ashugs, mystic troubadours playing the Daira and Duduk, poets, carpet dealers, goldsmiths, artists from Iran, Armenia and Azerbaijan. Sayat-Nova, founder of the Ashug Poetry School in Tbilisi, who wrote verses in Armenian, Azerbaijani and Georgian. Azira (Abram Abramishvili), a poet who composed music and performed with Daira and Kamancheh, the Persian bow string instrument, established the forms and images for 19th century urban poetry. Skandar-Nova, a poet of the Armenian origin, wrote in Georgian. Yetim Gurdji, the Georgian urban poet, also wrote in Armenian and Azeri. In 1905 at a communists’ protest rally in Baku he appeared with a flag, which he made himself, with the phrase written on it: “I am happy, but I don’t trust you!”

In the beginning of the 20th century archaic legends, rhymes, iconography, and popular forms of self-expression were actively used for the creation of modernist poetry, literature and painting. Traditional forms of recitation and rituals were well inscribed in Tbilisian Dadaist performative readings and actions, while the ancient method of writing “Boustrophedon” was especially popular.

Iliko Zautashvili

Many aspects of narrative and folk art traditions of the Caucasus found their reflection in the works of Niko Pirosmani*. From the moment of his appearance in the “fantastic” city, his simple and clear paintings rendered a huge influence on Tbilisian Modernist circles and beyond. Malevich, Larionov and Goncharova, and Picasso closely followed his work. Picasso even dedicated one of his graphic works to Pirosmani. His paintings embodied the themes of travel, commerce, wars, city life, animals, leisure and legends. His Easter still-lives and commercial signboards were accompanied by various texts in the Georgian, Armenian and Russian language. The cultural context of his works reflects Caucasian discourse like a mirror. In 1998, in the Kakhetian village of Mirzaani – birth place of Pirosmani – at the British-Irish-Georgian artists workshop, aimed at researching the multicultural characters, in the format of performance I suggested the question “Am I You?” to all participants, including myself. This provocative question was aimed at the detection of errors in human relations. In the performance “Am I You?” four participants in two pairs try to understand each other through action. Behavioral patterns and contexts serve as barriers. In one case the eye mask interrupts communication, in the other, different languages are the obstacle. In such ways a hermetic setting of restricted communication is created. While the first pair attempts to know each other on a sensual level via touch, the second pair focuses on texts via the simultaneous reading of words. The artist shows the impossibility of communication when trapped within one’s own language or culture. However the other can still be perceived through non-verbal means, such as touch. Encounter with foreignness is a very important constituent of today’s life. There are many kinds of philosophical, social and psychological theories to describe the ways of our relationship to the other or unfamiliar. “The other can never be understood as presence, but only with concepts like traces and exteriority. He has completely broken with the phenomenological metaphysics of presence—the other can never be understood in a theoretical act, but only by means of ethical responsibility: I take responsibility for the other.” /Jacques Derrida./ The uneasiness of this kind of responsibility gives rise to the question “Am I You?”. It triggers the moments of cultural misunderstandings, religious, territorial or personal conflicts.

The same theme is reflected in the performance “No Wall”, in which two blindfolded dancers (from the American ballet troupe Core Performance Company) touch each other. After they mutually help to get rid of blindfolds and write the phrase: “While observing a wall, I realize there is no wall” on each other’s body. In contemporary art, the usage of everything around us, including linguistic and phonetic material is a common means to create a new conceptual context. If science studies the logical connection of things and phenomena, art as a symbolic language, for the same purpose uses irrational, intuitive methods as a means for the expansion of cognitive capabilities.

Mamuka Japharidze uses an image of repeated words in the work “From Tartarus Experience”, a wall painting presented in Georgian Pavilion of the 48th Venice Biennale in 1999. In continuous recitation of ART (ARTARTART…) completely different sound of TARTAR arises. In his video “Navi-Niavi” in Georgian word Navi, which means a boat, he integrates a morpheme i, thus changing the word Navi into a Georgian word Niavi, which means breeze. For its part, those two words describe the story seen in the footage of a small paper boat floating in the water. In his land art work “Eyeyeyeye circle - walked in the sand as the tide came in” Mamuka continually draws the English letter I, interpreting a graphic expression of an eye.

Iliko Zautashvili

Georgian artist Mamuka Japharidze constructs some of his conceptual contexts employing modifications of the abstract units of language that correspond to speech sounds. To get a new conceptual meaning and/or sound, by changing the order of phonemes or replacing one phoneme to another, he associates the words and sounds taken from different cultures that are similar in sound, but different in essence. Having become universal, such sound combinations no longer need to be translated and can be perceived as on visual so on verbal levels, portraying the game of phonemes on all clear Latin transcription.

British artist Bruce Allan uses the Celtic numbers ‘ain, tain, tethera, methera, mimp..... ghet’ (one, two three, four, five..... twenty) found at the Cheltenham Museum and Art Gallery in a section on shepherds and their sheep. His work “Counting Sheep (in Wiltshire)”, a print on Somerset paper, is a part of his multimedia installation “Dreaming in Different Languages”, shown at the Kingsgate Gallery, London, in 1996. According to the artist “The numbers refer to the practice of counting in sheep and specifically to “Counting Sheep in Wiltshire”. Counting sheep may also anticipate falling asleep and dreaming.” The print remains essentially a piece of paper, reliant on lightfall to animate its surface. No ink is used. The words and paper do not change. Light changes and with it the visibility of pressed paper. The numbers one to twenty are repeated five times ending with one and leaving the notion of counting further open to imagination.

In one of his interviews Slavoj Zizek recollects a conversation with Marina Abramović in New York. Her idea about merging the communist utopia with Buddhism caused a complete outrage in the philosopher. For her part, Marina Abramović was well aware that the problem is not the unification of communism and Buddhism, but some kind of controversy, as the starting point in the creative process. It is absurd or hardly comparable that categories are the material of selfexpression of an artist. Through certain actions an artist tries to detect and interpret the empty, novel territory occurring between the opposites. For me personally, such an approach is the example of nonstandard thinking. The expression of ideas, emotions and sensuality projected in the work is the aim of an artist. An artist’s idea is his/her concept of human feelings. Feelings in art, in their part, are represented not so much for pleasure as for understanding. The story of the Tower of Babel explains the appearance of different languages after the Flood. The 11th chapter of the Bible, the book of “Genesis” describes mankind, speaking the same language in the process of questionable attempts of building the “Tower to the Heavens”, centered on the idea of boundless pride and domination. As a result they lost a single language for all and for that the ability of communication. Thus God “blocked” the utopian project with no prospects and radically changed the road map of humanity. Nowadays, the interaction of ethnic groups, languages and cultures creates a variety of possibilities and new cultural discourse, the disclosure and investigation of phenomenology as shown in the extremely successful result of the experiment called “Tower of Babel”.

JANUARY 2015

SOUNDS OF THE CAUCASUS

In Daghestan, as they say, everyone sings and everyone dances by Robert Chenciner and Magomedkhan Magomedkhanov

Professor Sir Harold Bailey of Queens’ College Cambridge, who was familiar with some 70 languages once made the following observation: “If there is a word for an object or idea in a language, it means that it existed where the language was understood.” In the Caucasus language is one of the most important aspects of ethnic identity, which was not erased during the Soviet period in spite of repressions, transportations and war. During the 1980s I had exceptional access to the Caspian region thanks to the USSR National Commission for UNESCO that followed from my earlier interest in “dragon” carpets, competitively claimed to be woven by Armenians, Azeris and Kurds. I met Bailey indirectly through a then late mutual friend Dr Robert Williams who had 35 languages and had translated the Jain texts and was interested in comparative religions, which years later encouraged my research below. Bailey encouraged me to confirm the survival of north-east Caucasian languages and to introduce him to speakers who were my guests in UK, as an addition to his familiarity with Georgian, Azeri and Armenian languages. By legend, the 31 languages of Daghestan had fallen out of God’s bag as it ripped on the peaks of the Great Caucasian Mountains. Study of these distinct autochthonous languages represented an addition to his linguistic repertoire. As a former schoolboy classicist I benefited from his prodigious love of learning and aggressive attitude towards syntax. Recordings from the mid 1980s and early 1990s form the sound archive listed below, which complements a more comprehensive image archive. At that time photographs were not considered to be serious academic evidence supposedly because they were biased, which equally applies to textual evidence. It is up to the researcher to decide. As example, in this essay text and sounds are accompanied by related images. With regard to recording technology, friends in the BBC attempted to teach me to use a Maranz professional recorder. For example, background noise needed to be recorded as fillers for later editing, because every location has its particular sound. In steep mountain villages over 2000 metres altitude, recordings indeed have a unique sound, perhaps created by the thinner air or the mist or extreme cold; with a unique sound mixture of background noise both inside and outdoors. Similarly, recordings in the Caspian coastal cities of Makhachkala and Derbent in Daghestan and Baku in Azerbaijan have a Caspian sound. Perhaps the peculiar feel is caused by the summer heat up to 40 degrees or near unbearable humidity or the unexpected coastal winds and vacuums caused by tides and storms. I experienced this in 1997 in the company of Tim Whewell and Andy Denton of the BBC while they recorded ‘The Windy Sea – Caviar and Kalashnikovs’. The Sounds of the Caucasus conference was largely concerned with instrumental music and songs which form a significant part of the archive below. In addition I recorded

Robert Chenciner

the sounds of language, folklore, ritual, weddings, traditional dances, domestic life and even animals. Decades later, they evoke their special time, during the ending of the USSR. I took for granted many unique sounds of the north and east Caucasus and North Ossetia which, but for these recordings, would have been forgotten. As described below, the recordings were gathered over several ethnographic expeditions. There were the silent sounds of the ancient local cultures in contrast to the audible sounds of mountain nature or the Caspian Sea. These primal sources were fused into an oral-musical tradition, transmitted by local talented folklorists, singers, musicians and dancers. They inherited, or borrowed from Russia or Iran, their small local range of instruments to produce their particular sound. Many of these recordings were gathered on expeditions with my co-author Dr Magomedkhan Magomedkhanov (MMM), now Head of Ethnography at the Institute of History, Language and Literature, part of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Daghestan Scientific Centre. Other expeditions were made with the late Dr Ramazan Khappoulaev who was director of museums and libraries in Daghestan. MMM also introduced me to Dr Hasan Dzutsev in North Ossetia who in 1991 made possible the first and apparently only recordings of the rituals, chants and prayers of the pagan festival of St George called Wastyrdjy. (20. NOTES ON THE PAGAN FEAST OF ST. GEORGE IN NORTH OSSETIA, November 19-26, 1991, Robert Chenciner, www.batsav.com) A perhaps unexpected aspect of ‘sounds’ are the silent languages of apotropaic symbols found in tattoos, textiles, tombstones, carved wood, and architecture. The ancient messages are frequently transmitted through the portrayal of fantastic animals such as dragons, eagles, horses and tur mountain goats. Recognition of such a rich heritage amplifies the context of the recordings. In poetic homage to the ancient pagan religion of nature-worship, the sound of the ever-present power of nature is remarkable in the mountains. It cloaks the listener with the closeness of thunder and wind, the echoing of surrounding rock masses, the rushing of ice-water and deadly stones down the ravines, and even the absence of insects at dusk. In contrast, the muffling of sounds with dust occurs in both mountains and plains. About the 1990s, I described ‘the oral tradition’ in Daghestan. While that was partly true, it was exaggerated to unwittingly comply with the obman narodnii (or ‘national deceit’ - a pejorative insult) that literacy had been brought to the east Caucasus by the Russian conquerors during the 19th century. In post-Soviet years, scholarship has been revised to confirm the long multilingual literary traditions in Daghestan by MMM, who translated several texts in local languages written in Arabic/ Persian script; and Drs Amri Sheiksaidov and Leonid Lavrov, who published many inscriptions in local languages. Nevertheless, the oral tradition coexisted and has its rightful place in folklore and epics.

Robert Chenciner

With regard to making music, Caucasian villagers tended to be specialists in various masterly skills, which included story-telling, dancing, singing and playing music. Performances were charged at a professional fee. Village musicians usually were engaged in daily work as well, so they were different from state-employed ‘national’ troupes in the cities, many of whom toured Russia and the USSR. My colleague in Sounds of the Caucasus Stefan Williamson-Fa was easily able to distinguish between my domestic recordings, recordings at festivals, and studio recordings. The domestic and some festival recordings are more exciting because they have an intensity which resounds to an ancient tradition. The performers demonstrate an enthusiastic flair built on natural often inherited gifts polished by continual rehearsal. Moreover, it seems that a much larger proportion of people in the north Caucasus compared to contemporary Europe, played or sang as an essential part of their lives. Stefan Williamson-Da had found some confusion with the identification of the following instruments which are unfamiliar in Europe. Thanks to Gamzat Izudinov’s photograph Fig 2 of the Avar music festival (Дни аварского языка) in Makhachkala on 22 to 23 February 2015, it is now possible to identify the range of villagers’ instruments. The apricot wood zurna a double-reed pipe or conical oboe – a sort of trumpet-shaped flute, and balaban/ mey/ ney/ duduk (in flute with their reeds, Fig 3 were both presents from a leading ashiq traditional musician of Azerbaijan, arranged by the then minister of culture and singer Polad Bulbuloglu (who once sang with the Beatles in the 1960s). There were no Daghestani pandurs (5-fret 2-stringed longnecked lutes) in UK, so MMM approached the renowned Mammadibir Abdurakhmanov, born in Maali village of Gergebil rayon, who since 1970 lives in Shamkhal village, Kumtorkalinski rayon. He is known as a folk musician and master of Daghestan traditional stringed instruments (pandur, chagana, kumuz) which he learned from his father, who was similarly a great master of pandur and a master woodworker. In Fig 1 Mammadibir displays the two pandurs which arrived in UK 11 days later. His instruments are also exhibited in Glinka Museum in Moscow, in Sheremetevsky Palace Music Museum in St. Petersburg and in Azerbaijan State Museum of Musical Culture in Baku. He belongs to a musical family, one of five brothers, four of whom are singers. The Avar Theatre poster on the wall is for their family concert in the largest theatre in Makhachkala. Mammadibir won several competitions for the best pandur player and he is also the author of verses in his native Avar language. His art will carry on, through his elder son Taimaz who is learning the secrets of pandur instrumentmaking. In the photo of the 2015 Avar Festival there are more local instruments played. The two kumuz – eight-fret four-stringed lutes - played by, on the left, Abusufyan Alikaraev - Honoured art worker of the Republic of Daghestan, and on the right,

Robert Chenciner

Abdula Magomedmirzayev - National artist of Daghestan, employee of the Avar theatre. Stefan Williamson-Da observed that the kumuz with its eight frets and four strings appears to be a Russianized version of the pandur with its five frets and two strings, which was suited to the ancient local pentatonic music. The chagana a four-stringed bowed instrument with a circular drum-like body covered with hide (similar to a kemenche) is played by Mutay Khadulaev â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Honoured artist of Russia. The baraban drummer Shamil Nazhmudinov is also employed by the Avar theatre. They accompany National artist of Russia, singer Sidrat Medjidova in traditional Avar costume, with large discs on the temples of her headdress. The following is a draft catalogue of the material which indicates subjects, locations and recording times. There are more details with exact times on most of the cassette case cards. Hopefully, it will be available to any researchers or students who need primary material and a compilation is in production. Unless indicated, the following are original recordings i.e. primary sources; some as indicated are compilations from the primary sources. As Stefan Williamson-Fa noted, the most authentic songs are entirely unaccompanied, these are often repetitive chants which appear to be narrative; next are songs accompanied by traditional local instruments â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the pandur, the chagana, the zurna, and baraban drum. Drumming is often with fingers on the pandur or any objects to hand on the table. The garmon accordion was introduced by the Russians during the mid-19th century. The north Caucasus variant komuz, is a piano diatonic accordion, based on the Vyatka garmon. Songs with komuz accompaniment appear to have been restructured to fit into a Russianized vocabulary of songs, or simply copied, as Russian songs with local lyrics.

The following is a list of original recordings both audio cassettes and video VHS and compilations from the original recordings.

1. and 2. Compilation Cassette (2 copies): Dagestan songs and music edited cassette with 30 songs and dances mainly recorded at the Avar festival in Khunzakh, July 1989, including Muktar the Avar bard. 3. Cassette, 120 mins: Bezhta, Ginok, Didoi languages, followed by Bezhta wedding, 17 July 1989.

Robert Chenciner

4.Cassette, 120 mins: Bezhta, Ginok, Didoi languages – counting and telling a story in the language and Russian 0-278/355, followed by Bezhta wedding, c17 July 1989. 5. Cassettes 2, 240mins: Vladikazkaz North Ossetia St Giorgi Wasturgi festival 20 November 1991- Pagan shrine of St Giorgi, Priest’s address; prayers; blessing with hearth-chain; 4th feast including 2 songs/ hymns ??6. Cassette 90: Laki language/ ???Ohrid Sumet P.t Bazar music, Macedonia ?~1987 Professor Victor Friedman, University of Chicago (sent email to VVF on 27 January 2015 requesting details) October 1989. 8. Cassette 90: Prof Sir HWBailey, Ramazan Khappoullaev Laki; Bagauddin Akhmedov Lezghi, 22 January 1989. 1½ of 2 tapes filled. 9. Cassette 90: Prof Sir HWBailey, Anna Butler, Abkhaz, 21 October 1989 1 1/3 of 2 tapes used. 10. Cassette C-60: Andi language including zikr and other chants 1990, recorded by Professor Mamaikhan Aglarov, ethnographer Daghestan (sent email to MA on 27 January 2015 requesting further details) 11. Cassette 60: Koubachi wedding Daghestan August 1990; Ingush language March 91; small part of next tape Ingush. 12. Cassette: Ak Nauk Makhachkala Dagestani Folktales. ?Abdurakhman/ Abduhakim¸ nd ~1989 13. Cassette: Gagatl Daghestan Avar felt rolling songs, winter 1989. 14. Cassette 90: Dag 1 Moscow-M kala train trip

15. Cassette 90: Dag 1 Khiorukh Korkmaskala ‘Yilbasi’ Kumyk New Year I and II, 25 March 1990 16. Cassette 90: Dag 2 Buinaksk mosque -Untsukul Kumyk? pandur music/ ironing music . Gotsatl - Kubachi language, Derbent 17. Cassette 90: Dag 2 Tindi language, Aguali dialect, Karata language, Akwakh language. 18A. Cassette 90: Dag 3 Ukharakh, Derbent castle and great mosque, V. Nabojko, Mountain-Jew vice mayor of Derbent, Khuchni Djuli wedding Tabassaran 14-17 August 18B. Cassette 90: Dag 3 Archib language, Kumukh (Laki) music ~wonky battery low? 19. Cassette 90: Dag 4 Rutul language, Buinaksk fighting dog, Khuchni, Avar ejectives, drive to Baku 17-19 August ??? 1989

Mkala,

20. A. Cassette 90: Dag 5 Kumyk songs ??1986

21. Video E-30 cassette: Food, 24-26 August 1986 Making pasta/ khinkal and walnuts sauce (with garlic) meal Daghestan with Uncle Hasan; meal in south Chechnya mountain village Desni MokIk/ city of the dead. 22A Compilation. Video KCA-60k: 1986, edited version 16mins? Taster for Daghestan documentary 22B. Compilation Video KCA-60k: 1986, rough-cut for 22A mins? Taster for Daghestan documentary 22C. Compilation Cassette : 16.33mins Taster for Daghestan documentary 3 copies 23A.Compilation Cassette ‘Karl Marx 5km’ Program A 23B. Compilation Cassette ‘Karl Marx 5km’ Program B 23C. Compilation Cassette: ‘Karl Marx 5km’ Program C 24. Cassette 60: Languages Muni, Andi, A- Reklami Botlikh, songs Mukhdar Khunzakh 2; Lullaby Botlikh; women’s song Muni; 4 and 23 July 1989 25. Cassette 90: Wagimat at Rasul Gamzatov’s apartment in Moscow, Kumyk songs, 8 May 1989.

Robert Chenciner

20. B. Cassette 90: Dag 5 Baku- Grozny by train, Chechen-Ingushetia met by Anatoly Mitrophanos dep min culture who gave me a tower! Trip on to Orzhonikidze now Vladikavkaz in N Ossetia Dargavs city of the dead, August 2427 1986

26. Video EH 60 cassette: Yazidis in Armenia, given to author by David Shukman BBC following his visit, ND c1992-4. 27. Video: Daghestan 2 traditional dance music 28. Video: Daghestan Children’s Ensemble (Detski ensembl) traditional dance music 6 dances 15 mins – this music is usually on records in Daghestan 29. Video: 4 Chechnya/ Ingushetia and N Ossetia 24-27 August 1986. 30. Video: Daghestan 3 ?contents

Robert Chenciner

Digital technology has encouraged increased recordings such as the following: 1. Цамаури. Конкурс исполнителей на пандуре и чагане “Играй, душа!” Tsamauri Competition of pandur and chagana “Play, soul”, GTRK Dagestan, 26 August 2013 on 90th anniversary of Rasul Gamzatov. 30minutes 16seconds. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyD3Lf8iRsw Much pandur playing; and at minute 20 a chagana. 2. DVD awaited Avar music festival Дни аварского языка ‘Days of Avar tongues’, 22-23 February 2015 3. Патимат Нажмудинова Patimat Nakhmudinova, 9 January 2015 Гьале доб унго-унгояб маг!арул кеч!ги бакъанги – Avar song with three women in Alice-in-Wonderland Red Queen headdresses. 4. Şahabettin Özden, Dagestani Avar poet, Diaspora Dagestani village near Yalova Turkey, Picnic, 27 May 2013. DAĞISTAN KÖYÜ PİKNİĞİ GİRİŞ 1. Several 5-10 minute youtube videos with some music. With MMM and many Dagestani notables, I attended their conference lectures in Avar, Russian and Turkish in Yalova. Music poetry is very important to the Diaspora.

Robert Chenciner

B I O G R A PH IES

Alicja Rogalska is an artist based in London and Warsaw. Her practice is interdisciplinary and encompasses both research and production with a focus on social structures and the political subtext of the everyday. She mostly works in context and often collaborates with others. She graduated with an MFA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths College (2011) and an MA in Cultural Studies from the University of Warsaw (2006).

Marianna Hovhannisyan holds a BA degree in Art Knowledge from the Department of Fine Arts at the Armenian Open University (2003-2007), where she developed a long-term practice after her graduation. In 2013-2014, she completed an MA degree in Global Arts at the Visual Cultures Department, Goldsmiths, University of London. For several years Hovhannisyan was involved in the International Summer School for Art Curators (AICA Armenia, 2006-2009). In 2008 she attended a six-month professional curatorial course (Institute of Contemporary Art, Armenia). She also participated in the l’École du Magasin independent curatorial training programme (France, 2008-2009). Hovhannisyan’s interests are in contemporary, research-based curatorial practice connected with the role of creative methodologies. Her perspective is influenced by both post-Soviet and Western experiences with the enquiries directed towards art and education, archive-practice relation and gendered spaces. Her curatorial work includes the exhibition “2012-” (Gyumri International Biennale); the research-based “Archive-Practice” project (2008-ongoing); and the collaborative exhibition project “Soviet AgitArt. Restoration”. Currently, Hovhannisyan is a research fellow at the SALT Galata within the scope of the TurkeyArmenia Fellowship Scheme of the Hrant Dink Foundation. The fellowship aims to study the archives of American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Mission as well as the archives of SALT Research as a reference to explore the city life in the early 19th and 20th centuries in several Anatolian cities which had a significant Armenian population. The fellowship will also combine and interpret the visual and textual sources about relations with state, economic development, social life, city building and formation of identity. Her research will serve as a contribution to the SALT exhibition planned to be held in 2015. Iliko Zautashvili is an artist, founder of many creative groups and institutional initiatives, author of numerous critical essays, invited professor of the Tbilisi State cademy of rts, lives and works in Tbilisi, Georgia. From 2005 until now implements the project in interdisciplinary art studies in the Tbilisi State cademy of rts. He has exhibited in many countries from New York to Seoul.

Robert Chenciner is an independent writer based in London. Co-author of ‘Tattooed Mountain Women and Spoonboxes of Daghestan: Magic medicine symbols in silk, stone, wood and flesh’ (2006), his other books include: ‘Embroidered Flowers from Thrace to Tartary’, 1981 (with C. Marko); ‘Architecture of Baku’, 1985 (with E. Salmanov); ‘Daghestan Today’, 1989; ‘Kaitag Textile Art of Daghestan’, 1993; ‘Daghestan: Tradition and Survival’, 1997; ‘Madder Red: A History of Luxury and Trade’, 2000; and ‘Kaitag: Daghestani Silk Embroidery, An Italian Collection’, 2007 (with folklorist David Hunt). Mr Chenciner has been a Senior Associate Member of St Antony’s College, Oxford since 1987 and Hon Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Daghestan Scientific Centre since 1990.

Zorka Wollny is a Polish visual artist whose work combines theatre and visual arts. She holds a PhD in Visual Arts from the Faculty of Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow and is Junior Lecturer at the Academy of Arts in Szczecin. She has exhibited at The Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Łódź Museum of Art, Wyspa Institute of Art, Wroclaw Contemporary Museum, Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw and the Ujazdowski Castle. Wollny’s awards include the Eugeniusz Geppert Award for her achievements in painting, and 2010 Artist of the Year by Arteon art magazine. Her projects have been presented in 14 countries including Canada, India, and the United Kingdom. Mamuka Japharidze a Georgian artist, lives and works in Tbilisi, occasionally spending time in the UK. He works across a broad range of art media, using sound and language to construct work which he presents as physical performances as well as exhibitions/installations. He represented Georgia at the 48th Venice Biennale.

Taus Makhacheva was born in 1983 in Moscow and lives and works in Makhachkala and Moscow. She holds a BA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths College, London and an MA from the Royal College of Art, London. Selected solo exhibitions include: ‘A Walk, A Dance, A Ritual’, Museum of Contemporary Art, Leipzig, Germany (2014) and ‘Story Demands to be Continued’, Republic of Dagestan Union of Artists, Makhachkala, Russia (2013). Selected group exhibitions include: ‘Love me, Love me not’, Collateral exhibition, 55th Venice Biennale (2013); ‘Re: emerge – Towards a New Cultural Cartography’, Sharjah Biennial 11 (2013); ‘City States – Makhachkala, Topography of Masculinity’, 7th Liverpool Biennial, (2012), ‘Rewriting Worlds’, ArtPlay Сentre, The Fourth Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, (2011); ‘Greater Caucasus’, PERMM Museum of Contemporary Art, Perm (2011); ‘Affirmative Action (Mimesis)’, Laura Bulian Gallery, Milan (2011); ‘Practice for Everyday Life’, Calvert 22, London (2011); and ‘History of Russian Video Art’, Volume 3, Moscow Museum of Modern Art (2010). In 2014 Taus Makhacheva won the Future of Europe prize at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Leipzig, and in 2012 she received the Innovation Prize, the Russian state award for contemporary art in Moscow, the ‘New Generation’ category, for her project The Fast and The Furious.

Slavs and Tatars is an art collective devoted to an area east of the former Berlin Wall and west of the Great Wall of China. Their work spans several media, disciplines and a broad spectrum of cultural registers, focusing on a sphere of influence between Slavs, Caucasians and Central Asians. They have exhibited at MoMA, New York; Secession, Vienna; REDCAT, Los Angeles; Centre Pompidou and Palais de Tokyo, Paris; the third Mercosul Biennial (2001); ninth Gwangju Biennale (2012); and eighth Berlin Biennale (2014); with upcoming solo exhibitions at Kunsthalle Zürich, Dallas Museum of Art, and Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst Leipzig.

Arts Territory is a London-based independent curatorial organisation exploring issues related to transnationalism, cultural identity and heritage in a contemporary art context. Initiated in 2012 as a vehicle to develop and sustain creative links between Polish and UK-based artists and cultural producers, Arts Territory’s programmes are currently dedicated to wider cross-border collaborations. Arts Territory fulfils its mission in a variety of ways, including the staging of exhibitions and festivals and other events, through commissions, publications and long term research projects, all focused on challenging art and facilitating dialogue between artists across borders.

Foreignness Of Sound Editors: Katarzyna Sobucka, Joanna Petkiewicz Design: Kristina Flolo Published by Arts Territory, London Artsterritory.org This publication has been funded with support from the European Commission and Arts Council England. Part of Transkaukazja Programme

Acknowledgments Transkaukazja is an international festival that presents works from or inspired by contemporary Caucasus. Initiated in 2004 by the Polish organisation Other Space Foundation, it aims to foster cultural exchange between the Caucasus region and the rest of the Europe. Arts Territory is one of nine co-organizers of Transkaukazja 2014 and was responsible for producing the UK programme. Copyright @ Arts Territory, London, 2015. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced, stored in retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission od the Publisher.