Archi.ru:
Andrey, stories about cities for architects, as a rule, are about monuments, sights, individual objects, or about town-planning history. And I would like, first of all, to understand why you chose the psychogeographic approach for the story about the city?
Andrey Ivanov:
- I learned about this approach after I started writing a book, but as I didn’t know it then, I still don’t know this psychogeographic approach. Moreover, the situationists have a very complicated set of things. But I read it, and it became curious how this unintentional coincidence happened … Most likely, it is explained by our common attitude towards the city. And yet I defined my approach to the city as a poetic comprehension - one of the chapters is called that.
It is known that the Situationists, led by Guy Debord, in their drifts around the city could follow, for example, smells. Your book contains many photographs and, at the same time, quotes from various books. What drove you around Yerevan?
- Most likely, visual impressions were the guide. I walk with a camera all the time - I can't live without it! And the older I get, more and more I shoot not trivial subjects, but I look for something that corresponds to my vision of the city - through details, surfaces, fragments - a tactile level close to a person's scale. It's also good when people get into the frame - but it's difficult and not always successful. Therefore, I shoot what does not disappear before your eyes, what you can look at and get used to a new space for you. And, in addition, architects are well aware of professional urban planning stories that cultivated the myth of Yerevan as a Soviet city. But this city is much more complicated. And I want to understand what is being promoted behind this familiar period from the textbook. The key figure for Yerevan was Alexander Tamanyan - a large and important - with many meanings - architect. They say about him “the creator of our city, the father of Yerevan”, but I kept thinking how this could be if Tamanyan worked in the 1920s and 1930s, and Yerevan will soon be 2,800 years old. I wanted to understand whether the great Tamanyan created the city anew, or whether it had its own Dotamanyan story, and what happened to it later. I wanted to find living pieces of this past and study.
Have you really retreated from the position of psychogeography to the archive?
- It is not difficult to find what interests you in Yerevan. For example, you go with one of the locals, and they say to you: “And this is Kond here. We don’t go there - there are only slums”. And you look - it's interesting! Five minutes from the center, you start wandering around and find, for example, a former Persian mosque. Today it is a courtyard lined with 5-6 apartments, and all this is under brick domes overgrown with grass, in the middle of the courtyard there is a fountain, and plastic windows are inserted into the pointed openings … I go there, they have already noticed him, more and more often they take pictures of old houses, windows and gates there. Special people also live there. And they are going to demolish this area for a long time, since the time of Tamanyan. The author of the general plan of Yerevan drew a regular circular circle in place of Kondataka, broken, like an orange, into slices, and said that we would have a museum town here. Indeed, the landscape of Konda is a round hill, but the planning structure is different: complex, winding. Three or four main streets, and between them - alleys, stairs of some kind, drops, nooks and crannies - everything is intertwined with each other. Well, you can't imagine a correct circle and lined radii!
You said "special people" - what are they?
- These are people who have lived there for generations, they have their own microcosm. Developers, both ten and five years ago, intended to build on this site, near the center, a huge amount of expensive real estate, speculating on the situation that people live poorly. Indeed, it is bad, but they do not want to leave there. They live in historical, rebuilt, augmented houses, piled on top of each other, and, quite possibly, not fully legalized as property - under conditions of a ban on its renovation. Kond, like some other vernacular districts of Yerevan, falls under the so-called system of action of state needs: here the alienation of inexpensive property can be quite simple. It's like building a highway through the forest. It turns out that people live in limbo, and this undoubtedly causes depression … Although in Konda recently I have met already renovated housing, which means that wealthy people have appeared here.
There are situations when we suddenly "felt deeply". Does Yerevan allow emotional openness?
- I can definitely say: this is a warm city - in all literal and figurative senses. It's not easy about openness, but warm and friendly - for sure! Sometimes the company at the table speaks Armenian in front of you, but this should not be perceived as impolite, for them it is a natural transition, it is easier for them. But you will have to change the role of a participant to the role of an observer and answer this challenge for yourself: will you be able to understand and break through? As a mono-national city, Yerevan is not entirely transparent.
But how do you define the parameters of his friendliness?
- This is the atmosphere of the city. It is 100 percent safe: I have never heard any criminal messages (except news of the demolition of monuments - but that's another matter). Despite not knowing the language, you feel comfortable - this is not Brazil, where favelas are very unsettling! Here people sit quietly in a cafe, walk until two in the morning, make appointments … Such a degree of mutual trust is rare. Here you take a photograph of someone's house, they greet you, offer to come in, show you a basement with ancient vaults, then bring a kilogram branch of grapes to a treat, invite you to drink coffee - and this cannot be refused so as not to offend the owners. This may be followed by a tasting of homemade vodka or wine, and then a neighbor will come and say that he also has something to photograph. And this is all very pleasant, the only fear is that there will be a lot of meetings at once, they will start passing you from hand to hand. This is unlikely to happen in new areas, but there are still gaps in traditional life in the old ones.
How did you get to Yerevan for the first time?
- It was in 1984, in the summer. I worked at TsNIIP Urban Planning, was sent on a business trip to Hrazdan. The topic of the research was "improving the architectural and artistic appearance of new cities." And we were based in the capital. I heard that the concept of the “Golden Age” of Yerevan is associated with the 60-80s of the last century - the capital of Armenia, against the background of many cities of the USSR, successfully developed and flourished. Then even a book was written about this time: "Yerevan Civilization". And then, on my first visit, I felt that the city is unusual, there is a concentrated creative environment here. Even the first official museum of contemporary art in the Union was already opened in Yerevan then … I wanted to return. And when I succeeded in 2011, I began to travel to Yerevan often. The first essay "Northern Avenue Leads to Kond" was published on Archi.ru. The following publications were in the "Yerevan" magazine, but then I did not think about the book.
So, the literary quotes that open each chapter in your book are already evidence of a passion for this city and Armenia?
- Yes, I began to compose the book later, when new plots and impressions appeared.
– There are several stories in the book. Are these the keys to the space of the city?
- In fact, there is one story - my comprehension of the city - the one that I consider my personal Yerevan.
Therefore - Yerevan? Really from your last name?
- Of course not. I give the answer to the title at the very beginning of the book. External analogies do not fit here. There is, for example, the website iyerevan.am - it invites the townspeople and the municipality to dialogue - to improve the life of the capital. But I don't strive to improve my real city. This "and", rather, from otherness, variability, disappearance, hieroglyphicity, ingenuity, intertextuality, Jerusalem, the city about which I am writing. With my book, you can also make a planned drift - read from any part, from any plot.
How did you imagine your reader?
- First of all, this is a resident of Yerevan. With him, I share what I managed to discover in this city. And I talked with many who are happy with such a reboot of their perception of the city, which has become familiar. And it's hard for me to judge who will be the reader in other cities.
You have strong "baits": Parajanov, Saryan, cognac, Zvartnots …
- If it lures, it's good.
– Perhaps it was in vain that we remembered Guy Debord here. Moreover, he was not in Yerevan.
- Moreover, no one has ever been to Yerevan. Come on in!
Ivanov A. Ierevan. Etudes on the Spirit of Place: Collection of Essays. Yerevan: Mediapolis Creative Projects Bureau, 2014.152 p.
The book is on sale in Moscow at the Armenia store on Pushkinskaya Square. (Tverskaya st., 17) and in Yerevan in the "Bureaucrat" store on st. Saryan, 19.
