Armenian Total-Art in a Milanese Event-Space: Minoritarian Performance Temporalities and Spatial Performativity

This paper explores the 1977 Milanese performance Ararat, a total-art event conceived by Armenian artists Herman Vahramian and Ludwig Bazil. Blending music, poetry, and painting in the church of San Maurizio, the artistic project reclaimed diasporic culture amid abjection from the Armenian Genocide. Drawing on performance studies and Dorita Hannah's event-space theory, I examine San Maurizio’s spatial performativity. The venue's architecture, frescoes, and history amplified the intermedial show's ritualistic temporality, which simultaneously recovered past heritage and envisioned futurity for an independent Armenia. Ararat negotiated abjection by challenging avant-garde norms in a minoritarian context. This Milanese Armenian case reveals how diasporic communities use event-spaces to rupture past constraints and foster cultural resilience.