Abstract

The “Moscow Cinema” was a prominent feature of the Soviet cityscape. Most every self-respecting city in the Soviet Union and throughout the East Bloc had one, though many have since fallen prey to the wrecker’s ball.

On 25 February 2010, Yerevan City Council announced that the Moscow Cinema was to yield, the land of its open-air hall to the Holy Seat of Ejmiatsin, which was authorized to tear down the outdoor amphitheatre in order to reconstruct a 17^th century church.The announcement elicited an outpouring of public indignation.

Cinema was the pre-eminent mass experience of the twentieth century, but architecture in a broader sense, according to Walter Benjamin, is also a mass experience, and a far older one. The cinema was designed to be received in a state of distraction.

“Architecture has always represented the prototype of a work of art the reception of which is consumed by a collectivity in a state of distraction.”

On the one hand a cinema is a mass attention-focusing device – as is a church.

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Folder: MOSCOW CINEMA YEREVAN Abstract	Abstract The “Moscow Cinema” was a prominent feature of the Soviet cityscape. Most every self-respecting city in the Soviet Union and throughout the East Bloc had one, though many have since fallen prey to the wrecker’s ball. On 25 February 2010, Yerevan City Council announced that the Moscow Cinema was to yield, the land of its open-air hall to the Holy Seat of Ejmiatsin, which was authorized to tear down the outdoor amphitheatre in order to reconstruct a 17^th century church.The announcement elicited an outpouring of public indignation. Cinema was the pre-eminent mass experience of the twentieth century, but architecture in a broader sense, according to Walter Benjamin, is also a mass experience, and a far older one. The cinema was designed to be received in a state of distraction. “Architecture has always represented the prototype of a work of art the reception of which is consumed by a collectivity in a state of distraction.” On the one hand a cinema is a mass attention-focusing device – as is a church.