The Cafesjian Center for the Arts Announces Call for Paper for a Conference

April 09, 2018 The Cafesjian Center for the Arts organizes a conference on the theme Dialogue as Action: the Quest of the «3-rd Floor» and its Actuality 30 Years Later, which will take place on June 2-3, 2018.

The 3-rd Floor movement was one of the most important manifestations of Armenian art and culture in the 1980s-1990s. The movement, with a diversity of styles, techniques, and materials, a variety of contemporary and modern art traditions, as well as artistic areas, a huge number of participants, and, finally, the dimension and resonance of exhibitions, turned the existence of innovative art in Armenia into indisputable public evidence, which resulted in its corresponding consequences. The ideal of freedom inspiring the movement, born within the decaying USSR system, yet making attempts at self-improvement, was simultaneously directed against the system itself.

The 3-rd Floor was the result of the Gorbachev Perestroika movement, but its artistic agenda and production raised forces and strategies with the potential to destroy the system from within. This conference aims at showing the origins and consequences, the developments and limits of these forces and strategies. We invite researchers and those interested in that era to participate in the conference and propose the following framework of questions:

• What was the 3-rd Floor from the organizational and structural point of view?
• What were the aesthetic and cultural-political principles within the framework of the 3-rd Floor?
• How did the 3-rd Floor reflect its own time and predict possible future?
• What role did the 3-rd Floor play in the formation of contemporary Armenian art?
• What were the messages that have been shaped and transmitted in the frames of the movement?
• How are they being perceived today?

The deadline for paper submission: April 30, 2018

The proposals should include the title of the paper, the abstract in Armenian (up to1000 words), English summary (up to 300 words), 10 key words in Armenian and English, personal details (name, title, contact information).

Conference language: Armenian 

Proposals should be sent at: conference@cmf.am


Conference venue:
Cafesjian Center for the Arts, 10 Tamanyan, Yerevan

For more information or related questions please contact:
Cafesjian Center for the Arts, Astghik Marabyan at (+374 10) 54 19 32/34 or (+374 91) 65 09 55.

Conference partner: Belline Armenia