Yerevan Children's Railway is a narrow gauge railroad loop passing through the Hrazdan gorge in Yerevan, Armenia. It was opened on June 9, 1937, and designed by the architect Mikael Mazmanyan. The road worked with the participation of children, aiming to form their interest in railroading, but under the supervision of adults, including the locomotive driver who was an adult. Today, the road is semi-abandoned, attracting artists to the dialogue with the past.

</odra> found out about the punk-project of Russian artists on this railroad. Arnold Weber, Artyom Go, Daria Hoffman, Roma Karman, Maresii Ivaschenko, Egor Kirillov, Herman Orekhov and Igor Samolet took an unofficial walk through a tunnel. Anyone could join the walk. Only keeping in mind that it is not a pleasant summer stroll, but a journey into the horrible past. The starting point for the journey were two dates: 1937 and 1956.

Artists invited participants to walk through the tunnel that was built along the route of the Children's Railroad in Yerevan in the Hrazdan Gorge. Looking at the dates of the construction of the railroad (1937) and the tunnel (1956), they could see the broader context. 1937 was the year of the beginning of the Big Terror, when thousands of people were arrested and executed without any trial. In 1956, when the tunnel was built, there was de-Stalinization, which gave hope for freedom and long-awaited change. But the tunnel in which the exhibition took place was a sham: it was built on a flat site and has only a demonstration and entertainment function.

Thus, the semi-abandoned Stalinist recreational project becomes a starting point for retrospective correlation and naturally plunges the thoughtful viewer into a narrative frame that fixes us in different contexts: war, emigration, the experience of being out of home, vulnerability, projections of the future, resistance. The tunnel tears through the fabric of time and transports us back and forth.

Roma Karman talked about his experience of participating in the exhibition:

"We found the place for the exhibition quickly. We were walking with Artyom and Igor around the Children's Railroad Park, and came across this tunnel. We put out a call, gathered about a dozen artists and prepared everything in a couple of weeks, and it turned out a very pleasant experience. Society in Armenia had formed more friendly and open. Perhaps because of common problems and difficulties.

The works were very different, but almost all of them were directly or indirectly about forced emigration and the political situation in general. In my opinion, it turned out to be very solid and atmospheric, a lot of successful works and relevant statements. A lot of ideas came from the location of the exhibition. Igor Samolet and I used rails as part of the work.

Personally I created two works: the first was an audio collage using train sounds, Soviet synthesizers, distorted popular Soviet songs. The second was an installation on the rails of my military ID card crushed by the train and photos from my "past life" with friends, ex-spouse, etc. After the tour, everyone sat down to play Samolet's "Privilege game" on the rails. The audience was mostly Russian emigrants, but I managed met there a man from France. After the exhibition artists and spectators went to have dinner together."

Most of the projects, sure, were focused on the processes and experiences of adapting to a new place, breaking the familiar flow of everyday life through no fault of their own. And one of the big questions is, why is this happening over and over again?

Arnold Weber:

"My work is called limbo, it is my humble observation of myself and my relationship to the contexts that surround me, in recent years I feel disconnected from the world, like a pattern that does not coincide with the patterns around me, but those patterns make changes in mine, so I am a super object. I'm here but I'm somewhere else, I can't get out of my imagination. I don't allow myself to make any statements about my feelings, but the chamber format of the exhibition allowed me to relax and do something easy.

Since I've been living here for a year and a half now, this place has acquired its own connotations for me, I go jogging in the morning, and often my route includes this railroad, I think I'm interested not in the railroad itself, but in what happens near it, what stories this place collects. The Children's Railroad attracts a pretty diverse audience, at night there can be questionable company, often, for many, it is a place for dating, for some a spot for solitude, for me it has become a place where I have exhibited my humble work. I guess it's a base that backs up urban stories, an empty space."

Artyom Go presented fragment of the video installation was made especially for the Yerevan Children's Railroad:

"Looking at the dates of its construction (1937) and the tunnel (1956) in which the video was shown, we can notice a broader context. 1937 was the year of the beginning of the great terror, when thousands of people were arrested and executed without any trial. In 1956, when the tunnel was built, the debunking of Stalin's personality cult took place, giving hope for freedom and long-awaited change. But the tunnel in which the exhibition will take place is a sham: it is built on a flat site and has only a demonstration and entertainment function."

At the site-specific exhibition, all the objects were deformed: torn, cut, broken. The road as a mode had walked over them, leaving a scar on each one. The railroad is always a witness to time. Powerful, ingrown sleepers keep secrets of the past that are easy to stumble over. Photographer Denis Zeziukin has already shared his family that suffered from the terror with </odra>. His research, which began with the railroad, we published earlier.