Ban / Բան / Бан

პატარა p’at’ara 09/09 15:00 — 41.7523902, 44.8534743. FREE/DONATION While the physical existence of BAN as a venue has come to an end, its essence continues to journey through various spaces and landscapes. On September 9th, the club is set to reemerge in a location closer to the water. They say that spending just 20 minutes near a body of water can have a positive impact on the mind and aid the body in recovering from trauma. With this in mind, the question arises: how much time must be spent by the water to rediscover our humanity? We will try to find this out empirically on September 9th The event is co-hosted by BAN team, »роса« label/promo group and Yerevan/Saint P/Tbilisi event organizer and dj elrux. A nearly 24-hour event is scheduled to commence at the Tbilisi reservoir at 15:00. Featuring 5 live performances and an array of DJ sets, its diverse range of styles and formats aims to present a retrospective view of the club’s programming. The event will host a bar with drinks and refreshments provided by Shithead Bar and 1tab bar. The kitchen will be run by the BAN team, with teabooth by Kira Markman. 14:00 dislessnessful 15:00 Jenya Bolgov 16:00 Atoraye b2b Psytelligence  b2b Astral Victim 17:00 nomet 18:00 Koyil (live) 19:00 Tindrum 20:00 J. Stealth 21:00 Txeo 22:00 moonboy (live) 22:50 funkshn (hybrid set) 23:40 ICY FLAME (live)  00:30 nystagmus 01:30 _ 02:30 Doctor Notchy  03:30 Kakha Gelashvili 04:30 helldash b2b elrux 05:30 lust customer (live)  06:30 DJ ТРАХОДРОН 07:30 dj kruglosutochno 08:30 solow 09:30 Lizonski 10:30 dolphin hospital (live) 11:30 rita medzhovich 12:30 Likhoy This is a part of the series of fundraising events by BAN, aimed to fulfill our obligations to colleagues, covering the rent, and settle accounts with the contractors after the club was raided and robbed. There will be a donation box and posters with info on how you can help us financially. The entry is free, so your help and support are your choice and responsibility, not an obligation. poster by Оксэйк

06.08 18:00 Esthetic Joy Embassy CLOSED BAN WEEKEND, DAY 2 Entrance: FREE On Sunday you’ll have the opportunity to witness the recreation of BAN's fav activities besides gigs. As the club existed, we tried different ways to give people space to express and process themselves. Practices we loved were jam sessions with unconventional setups and movie screenings. Both of these things share a common trait, namely the art of mindful selection and the transformation of personal experiences into collective ones. The evening will start at 19:00 in the garden with the dj-set of the majestic duo of Matvey Vysochkin and Jenya Bolgov. After that, we'll start a closed jam session with picked participants — mostly residents and friends of the club. But it's not about any privileges; it's just about curating a process to find an interesting sound. Those who are invited: tindrum, tihkhon garmash, disslessnessfull, Tigran Aleksanyan, c0ff. The jam will be split into thirty-minute sessions and hopefully will give birth to something beautiful. While knowing nothing about what's ahead, we had a movie screening program “Cinema of Resistance” built for a whole year. So we decided to show you one of the films of the program. The film of choice is “Riddles of the Sphinx” (1977) by Laura Mulvey and her husband Peter Wallen, British film theorists and experimental filmmakers. In this slow cinematic essay, they put into practice the ideas of Laura Mulvey's famous article “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” rethink motherhood from the perspective of feminist psychoanalysis, and search for a way to show the female experience in the film without exploiting the image of women. For the calm finale after the movie, there will be two dj-sets — one from the curator of the program ceph, and the other from a good friend of ours who helped us a lot through these hard times — dashes. The sets will help us reflect on it. Because reflection is an important tool and the best possible approach to almost any experience.

05.08 18:00 CLOSED BAN WEEKEND, DAY 1 Esthetic Joy Embassy Entrance: FREE This Saturday kicks off BAN's takeover at Esthetic Joy Embassy, featuring instrumental live performances and captivating dj-sets. It all begins outdoors with Les Magnifiques trio's improvisational session. Then, Sergei Komarov, a sound art curator, delivers experimental live sets that blend analogue techniques with digital FM synthesis. The collaboration with the lo-fi multi-instrumentalist Sergei Dmitriev, пурпурный дядя, promises innovative sounds. Alexander Serechenko, the creative force behind Solo Operator, pushes saxophone boundaries through extended techniques and programmed sound changes, joined by atmospheric doom trumpeter dislessnessful. furrr and n y s t a g m u s intuitively blend acoustic and electronic instruments for atmospheric and rhythmic performances, transitioning from deep drones to experimental bangers. Nikola Chen, versatile performer and multi-instrumentalist, fuses avant-garde electronic narratives with analog modular synthesizers, piano, and clarinet, exploring broken rhythms and genre fusion. rita mdzhvch & nikita kozyr form a fierce alliance, combining dark idm and groundbreaking jungle, with strong bass lines, grim harmonies, quirky noises, and high-speed gems. Pupylike takes you on a dynamic dance music journey, transitioning from classic rave anthems to niche hardtek tracks with exceptional versatility. Stay up late to Meet solow, aka Nikita Sologub, a Tbilisi-based DJ and avid digger. Starting with techno in Moscow, his unique style blends kick-driven beats with eclectic genres and global sounds, featuring tracks from diverse independent labels.

This weekend, on August 5th and 6th, BAN takes over the Esthetic Joy Embassy! A two-day program featuring instrumental live performances, intriguing dj-sets, and a film screening showcasing a comprehensive retrospective of BAN’s collective endeavors! — Dashes — ceph — Les Magnifiques (live) — Matvey Vysochkin b2b Jenya Bolgov — Nikola Chen (live) — nystagmus + furr (live) — pupylike — rita mdzhvch b2b nikita kozyr — Sergei Dmitriev & Sergei Komarov (live) — Solo.operator + dislessnessful (live) — solow full line-up with more timings will be available at ban’s telegram channel 5-6 August Entrance Free

Thanks you for the soul-stirring amount of support and solidarity — your compassion, involvement, and help mean the world to us! It's been a fucked-up year of highs and lows, military aggression, police brutality, and artistic segregation, yet despite all the letdowns and obstacles we've managed to create a cultural hub, build a community, and light up a creative spark that spanned across both local and migrant scenes (well, at least we hope so). At the moment, the club is still closed, and we have no idea if we can reopen it. Nail in the coffin: we also found out that while the club was sealed, we were totally robbed. All the equipment was stolen, resulting in an increase in the club's debts diminution in its prospects. Yet, we're still committed to doing our thing and have decided to operate as a promo group, buskers, or a pop-up meta club of sorts. We no longer feel entitled to just raise money and ask for your financial support. So, for now we've decided to organize events at different venues in order to pay off our debts and to be able to reopen (or most possibly close) the club. We launch an ongoing fundraising campaign for those willing to help. With a reminder that there are far more important causes to support: Ukraine is still under attack, Artsakh is still blocked. Here're just a few initiatives: Armenian Food Bank Helping to Leave Ethos UA Yerevan Sasha Manakina Dopomoga Viva Fund At the moment, we’re short some 3 million AMD — to fulfill our obligations to colleagues, cover the rent, settle accounts with the contractors, and most importantly — live up to the community. Oh, and there are also fines to the government. However, despite all this, we intend to reflect, overcome this together and move on. We will keep you in notice of our plans and news. At this point, we are actively engaged in supporting and defending the rights of all those affected by the raid. We will do what we can to try to prevent illegal raids and police violence for the benefit of all Armenians and visitors. REQUISITES

Most of you may already know: it was a police raid on the BAN club around 4am 24.06.2023. Our staff and, unfortunately, all visitors too (38 people in total), were held inside of a club from 1 to 3 hours before all the people were transported to one of the RA police centers. Most of the people were handcuffed and have served pressure, humiliations, some of them faced physical violence from the policemen: there are cases of injuries documented by medical commissions. Most of the people were released from police offices around 4-5pm 24.06.23, all their mobile phones were confiscated. Three persons were held in the police center for much longer. Two of them have been released by now, one of them is still in the pre-trial detention center. *All funds raised by your support will cover expenses on lawyers conducting the cases. The volumes which we have already received and are above the initially targeted goal (634,223 AMD) will cover other additional consultations, expertises and activities. As much as we can. We are deeply touched by the immediate response of our community, we know that there are several events and activities planned to raise more funds to help us. THANK YOU SO MUCH! All additional funds will be allocated to protect the human rights of every single person who has been inside of this situation. Since we have seen several reports in various media with information about the case that is not true, we kindly ask you to be careful with data you receive. We appreciate your attention, we will open up more details as we receive it officially from the lawyers.

Thanks to your prompt and comprehensive support we have already received initially targeted amounts of money and we have already covered the first part of lawyers’ work. Today we finally had our first consultation with the lawyer regarding what can be told to lay public about the incident. But before that we are eager to add some comments from our side. First of all, we want to apologize to our visitors who were put at risk on that fatal night. We will do our best to support all of them to solve any kind of issues that occurred after that event. Also, we would like to address those of you who have been concerned by the lack of information from BAN as an organization. We understand your concern and will try to update you in this communication. Giving any kind of information was possible after consultation with a lawyer only. We have faced these kinds of issues for the first time and couldn’t make any other mistakes on top of everything that has already happened. We want to be as transparent as we can – taking into account that litigations are in progress right now.

Dear friends! We are stopping the fundraising for now. Thanks to your support and solidarity, we were able to raise the necessary amount of money. We could never have done it without you. You are incredible! We will finish counting the funds and publish a report and text within a day. Thank you!

Dear friends, We have calculated the amount of funds we have managed to collect by your support for the last few days. By now we collected  2,876,023 ֏ / 6,728 €* We thank everyone who took part in raising money to help. We thank everyone who are helping us right now. It would be impossible without you. The process has just begun, and we still need to collect the full amount to pay for the lawyers’ work. We hope that with your help we can do it. Our target 3,540,000 ֏ /  8,404 € We still need to collect 663,977 ֏ / 1,576 € We are going to update and publish information on received funds ASAP to make this process more transparent. — *Since the payment will be made in drams, we can only give an approximate amount in euros.

WE NEED YOUR HELP requisites via the link http://surl.li/imcbg