Living Room

In January 2025, For This Dance I Will Take the Lead brought together audiences at the Living Room in Yerevan for an intimate and transformative dance performance. Six participants – each with the shared experience of always being “led” by others – stepped into leadership, guiding the audience through unique choreographies they created themselves.

This performance was the culmination of an open-call project led by artist Tellervo Kalleinen and choreographer Tsolak Mlke-Galstyan. Over weeks of rehearsals, participants – many with no prior dance experience – crafted personal and expressive dances, reclaiming ownership through movement. The project provided a safe and collaborative space for self-expression, allowing each participant to share their story in a powerful and immersive way.

The event supported by the Finnish Cultural Foundation, was a testament to the power of dance in fostering connection, empowerment, and personal transformation.

For its first international activity in the Living Room, artasfoundation invited artists, art educators, researchers, and cultural practitioners to join a seven-day laboratory on art and social transformation. The laboratory was designed as a learning and experimenting space for 10 – 12 participants to create artistic practices engaging with communities, encouraging them to take control of their lives and deal with past, present and future struggles through creative methods.

We wish for a supportive community of practice to grow to empower artists in their interaction with the uncertainty in today’s world, re-examining of the role of contemporary art in peaceful social transformation.

Participating artists and cultural workers have used the laboratory as a space to collectively develop their project ideas. As a result, three projects will be realised in the Living Room:

Where is your Safe Space #7, a performance art project led by Tereza Davtyan, curator, Petros Ghazanchyan, dancer and Inna Ghazaryan, dancer. The project is an evolving performance art series that explores the multifaceted concept of safe spaces in our increasingly complex world.

Transparent – Narratives from Artsakh, a project led by Stella Loretsyan, writer and Lusine Mlke-Galstyan, musician. The project will support ten Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians in sharing their personal stories transforming them to art works showcasing through two events and intensive involvement of local and international media to reach a wider audience.

Home is where your Heart is, an art therapy project led by Ani Galstyan, visual artist, Eliza Baghdiyan, musician and visual artist, Timofey Bichkov, art historian and visual artist, and Anna Tenenbaum, visual artist. The project aims to support forcibly displaced people to deal with experienced traumas. 

Besides the activities organised by artasfoundation, the Living Room will also host other projects that simply need a space to work. The physical space is accessible for artists, organisations and communities involved in social transformation and looking for a space to practice, rehearse, gather, exchange, perform or simply meet.