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  • ArmeniaNow: Swiss-sponsored festival challenges Armenian traditions

    Swiss-sponsored festival challenges Armenian traditions
    By Vahan Ishkhanyan
    ArmeniaNow reporter

    http://www.armenianow.com/?action=viewArticle&AID=1084&lng=eng&I ID= 1043

    Can an Armenian woman be anointed priest?

    If she is a bisexual feminist poet performing in a Yerevan night club,
    yes. Agabianıs viewpoint doesnıt wash with Armenian tradition.

    At The Club, American-Armenian Nancy Agabian acted out her poetry
    Wednesday night in themes that challenge Armenian traditions and push
    limits of toleration in a conservative society.

    The performance art was part of the ³One Step² program of feminist
    events sponsored by the Swiss Utopiana Organization (www.utopiana.am).

    Standing on a blue yoga mat, a basin, washcloth and teacup (with
    broken handle) in front of it on the floor, Agabian sings an excerpt
    from church liturgy while doing a swimming exercise. Parallel to it is
    a recital: ³A good friend has asked me to be the godmother to her
    baby. It was a surprise; I never thought in my life I would ever be a
    godmother. Suddenly, Iım supposed to safeguard a childıs moral and
    spiritual upbringing. I donıt exactly know how Iım going to do
    this. You see, I donıt go to church.²

    Agabian anoints herself priest in her ³Water and Wine² performance
    ³baptizing² herself as godmother with a new morality. It is a faith
    where the Armenian identity and sexual orientation - inadmissible for
    the Armenian community - the fate of the family and a womanıs
    liberation from Eveıs sin are combined.

    About 30 people filled the trendy art café for the performance, which
    was interpreted by ³Bnagir² Internet literary journal editor and poet
    Violet Grigoryan.

    Agabian prepares slippers from American newspapers, then a priest
    hood, and the text tells the story of her familyıs women - of her
    grandmother, who was rescued and cared for by Arabs during the
    massacres; and of family disputes, where her mother was always under
    her fatherıs dictatorship.

    It is a story in which the Church is a symbol of a womanıs slavery in
    the Armenian community, because of its conservative ways.

    ³I never wanted to go to church when I was a child, to be tortured by
    boredom with the indecipherable Classical Armenian, incessant,
    depressing music and suffocation by incense, the most horrifying part
    was standing in front of the bearded Der Hayr who towered and glowered
    above me in his glittering brocade outfit as he pressed a
    wine-drenched piece of the wafer onto my tongue. I stopped going to
    church once I became an adult. Every time I returned with my family, I
    seethed at the spectacle, the way women did not participate in the
    service except to sing in the choir and the way that women had to wear
    lace doilies on their heads since they are inherently sinful like
    Eve.²

    The poet, who lives in New York, tells about a day, in 2002, when she
    brings her lesbian girl-friend of Armenian decent to an Armenian
    church where ³all I wanted to do was kiss her, to swish my lips and
    tongue around hers.² The urge to kiss in the church, she says, was a
    desire to have an impossible wedding ceremony, an aspiration to bypass
    the church law and establish a new law.

    (New law or old, it is a rare thing that a woman speaks publicly in
    Armenia about her "alternative" sexuality.)

    Agabian, 37, has published one collection of poems entitled ³Princess
    Freak². The text of ³Water and Wine² is from her yet unpublished book
    ³Me As Her again².

    Last year ³Bnagir² (www.banagir.am) published in its ninth issue
    translations of Agabianıs poetry, due to which she was invited to
    participate in Utopianaıs festival.

    "I knew Nancy through her poems and I did not imagine her to be like
    this. It was a surprise for me to see her so small and seemingly
    defenseless,² said Grigoryan. ³A desire to protect her rises inside
    you. But after her performance I suddenly felt that this tender
    creature herself was defending us, Hayastantsis.²

    There was a time when Agabian distanced herself from the Armenian
    community, which did not accept her sexual orientation. However, after
    she was 30, she against started to communicate with Armenians in New
    York learning about an organization of Armenian homosexuals. She
    believed that the Armenian community needed modernizing: ³To be a
    woman and an Armenian is the same to me, because I got my Armenian
    identity from Armenian women. Now I know that I myself have a lot to
    give to the Armenian community and receive a lot from it.²

    In New York Agabian organized ³Gartal² club, where writers with
    different views connected to each other through being Armenians,
    gather.

    The organizer of the festival, Stephan Kristensen, says that one of
    their goals is to over come fears prevailing in society, such as for
    example womenıs fear to remain unmarried, the fear of being feminist,
    the fear of creating homosexual communities and many other fears that
    are typical of both women and men.
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