Speaker: Elise E. Schlecht, MARS-REEERS, Doctoral Candidate, and ARISC Member
Date & Time: Monday, July 6, at 7pm Yerevan, 11am US EDT
Zoom: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/w9J9lm_pSJio3SWEZcrWVA
(Registration required)
How does a city come to terms with its near total destruction? How does the image of the city’s destruction affect subsequent creative production, and to what end? These questions form the basis of the present discussion of creative responses to the trauma of the 1988 Spitak earthquake in Soviet Armenia. Examining Armenian citizens’ post-earthquake creative production, especially creations that take the image of the destroyed city of Gyumri as their focus, the researcher explores the role of images of architectural destruction in the city’s mourning process. Schlecht begins with contemporary amateur photography in the form of a private album of pictures of ruined public housing developments accompanied by an explanatory poem, invoking Ulrich Baer’s notion of photography as a medium through which to process traumatic experiences by witnessing. Subsequently, the researcher alights in present-day Vardanants Square at the Holy Savior’s Church, considering the reconstructed church and the ruins of its former cupola as a form of before-and-after imagery revealing the violence of seismic destruction in the manner of Eyal and Ines Weizman. Schlecht concludes by comparing these creative efforts to witness the trauma to Frid Soghoyan and Razmik Manukyan’s earthquake memorial on the same square, emphasizing their differing memorial functions in the collective process of mourning.
Elise E. Schlecht is a doctoral candidate in Art History at Emory University specializing in modern architecture with a focus on Armenia and the former Soviet Union. She holds a BA in Russian Regional Studies from Barnard College, a MARS in Russian, Eastern European, and Eurasian Studies from Columbia University’s Harriman Institute, and an MA in Medieval Architectural History from Emory University. Her dissertation, Armenian Familiar: Architecture and Adaptation in Armenian Soviet Mass Housing, 1964–1991 concerns local adaptations of standard mass housing designs in Soviet Armenia’s three largest cities.
This event is sponsored by the American Research Institute of the South Caucasus (ARISC). The lectures are free and open to the public. Learn more at www.arisc.org