CSN Lab’s publications often travel beyond academic and research circles, becoming accessible through local and international cultural platforms. As the new academic year began, the Lab’s archive moved from the shelves to the heart of the city for Yerevan Book Fest, bringing together years of research in a single pavilion.
During the festival, CSN Lab presented more than 20 bilingual and trilingual publications representing different areas of the Lab’s research. Firdus and Balat. Getar and Kechut. Shushi reconstructed through mental maps. Displaced cultures and interrupted geographies. Books, posters and postcards. Over three days, hundreds of visitors explored our work, browsed the publications and found books that spoke to their interests.
The CSN Lab pavilion also became a space for dialogue with both long-time and new readers. Throughout the three days, members of the Lab’s team and researchers were present at the pavilion, introducing the projects and engaging in conversations with visitors. These conversations often extended far beyond the books themselves. A discussion beginning with one publication could lead somewhere entirely different: from architecture to displacement, from ecology to memory, from Istanbul’s Balat to Yerevan’s Firdus, from a family story to the city’s past and present.
Postcards left with visitors. Posters found new walls. Books found their readers. Creating wider public access to work addressing the complex past and sensitive issues in Armenia and the wider region, and seeing the public interest and engagement around these subjects, made these encounters particularly meaningful.
Our first participation in Yerevan Book Fest also created a new space for dialogue with other publishers, researchers and cultural initiatives. As we conclude our participation in this important literary event, CSN Lab continues its research, producing new knowledge and content that will find its readers at festivals, conferences and, of course, in public libraries.
