FESTIVAL: “WILD CHILDREN”. 30TH ANNUAL FESTIVAL OF ALTERNATIVE ART

OPENING: 10/04/2026, 19.00

“The 2008 crisis has not yet come to an end. During the great recession, it became clear that the neoliberal model does not work well anywhere in the world. For each of us, the link between economic problems and neoliberal policy became clearer given that the crisis was already to do with capitalism. “Democracy” – which had started to be built after independence – was experiencing a crisis. It was formed in full and at the same time, it failed with the 1998 coup. In Armenia, the dilemma was quite obvious: either real democratization or overt authoritarianism. Instead of radical change, we acquired a pointless Mashtots park.

The problem is that the events of that time fostered the formation of activist movements and were able to play a decisive role in the events that followed. Certain leftist ideas became relevant in the beginning of the 2010’s. The generation born after the Soviet Union was trying to think about post-independence discrepancies in a language that gave their parents goosebumps. Those were encouraging, yet weak attempts. Abstract criticism allowed for the accommodation of even opposing political imaginaries. In the same frame, it was possible to encounter street artists and start-ups, counter-cultural figures, artists and art workers, meritocrats, technocrats and anthroposophists, vegetarians, computer programmers who had suddenly gotten rich, drug dealers, proponents of institutional relationships and progressive fascists, LGBT activists, founding presidents, founders of various schools of translation, boys and girls who betrayed their class, expressionists yearning for the title of national artist, people doing research with a critical historical lens, former political prisoners and people selling paintings, those who prefer moment glue over R&B, members of the Karabakh committee, documentary makers, social artists, non-conformists and opportunists, reactionaries, socialists and individualists, creative politicians, Dashnak poets, those who complained about a deficit in craftsmanship, descendants of survivors, providers in families, freedom fighters, pacifists, paranoiacs, members of political parties and diligent taxpayers, ordinary petty bourgeois, why not even hipsters, those suffering from unrequited love, victims of non-statutory relations, importers of new strategies for struggle, pioneers of marijuana legalization, believers in the liberatory power of the internet, proponents of cultural revolutions, those who see the connection between economic problems and neoliberal policies, those who reinterpret Soviet modernism, pensioners, spoiled brats and future bureaucrats.

The border-line passed between democratic demands and what was inherited in the 90’s, which was overloaded with Soviet legacy. Everything went as planned: velvet revolution, pandemic, wars, snap elections. The political field emptied at the end of the 2010’s. The problem is not even that the criticism of the government’s social policy is now being conjoined with a fascination of that same government, but rather that numerous “leftists” would successfully appear in those same platforms. Moderate solutions are truly pointless at this point. One can attach oneself to any of the long discredited political parties in order to provide opposition services to the population. Widespread depoliticization – from opportunism to theoretical abstractions – is one of the consequences of this emptiness. The intermediate moment has dragged on. Nevertheless, society is generally oppressed not so much through repression but through depression, which emerges as a result of devaluation. Ultimately, the problems of leftists are the problems of society as a whole: weakened solidarity, fragile connections, lack of experience.

We see the results of the 2008 “Great recession” today and it can continue to wreak havoc, causing chaos and destruction on a global scale. The wish to turn the clock back toward a golden age of global dominance would be illusory in the next years. And it is impermissible to create a new world order in the near future. And evertheless, in a paradoxical way, with the backdrop of moral and political capital, we are today more visible and capable of developing autonomous initiatives on all levels.

The 30th Annual “Wild Children” Alternative Festival is not merely a platform for exhibition, but a place of ideas, of course if those are present – whether in the sense of the aesthetic or the political.

We don’t have a future as far as leftists are associated with the past. It has nothing to do with calculation: two steps forward, one step back, and one plus one does not equal two, because we are capable of counting until three. And if we are taught to continue counting, we will end up in the infinity of numbers. Feminists have long spit on Hegel and Mickey Mouse flies to Mars and his laughter pierces a hole in iron. We want to live in a dirty city, where children smell of sweat and gunpowder.

Would you, in fact, like to participate in this exhibition if you know that it could have a bad effect on your career? Art is not a place to satisfy one’s neuroses, to overcome the tormenting resonance of the Armenian language/ especially Sevakian/ powerlessness is a tool and the limits of possibility are an experiment, the absence of a common language is a fight, boredom is potential, the formation of an ideological language is important, disgusting pathos is pathetic, beauty according to your imagined taste has no place here, art must be naïve and beautiful, I will understand what is art sooner than you can explain art to me, to be a fool – be brave, art is the only way to not be alone, the phone ringing is the interruption and your alibi is shopping․”

The festival is initiative by artists Grigor Simonyan and Tigran Khachatryan․

Further unformation here.