InternationalArmen Martirosyan, Antares Holding
Published: Friday December 04, 2009
Armen Martirosyan opened Antares Holding in 1992; today the company performs such diverse services as advertising, design and business consulting. Antares Holding's publishing house prints titles in Armenian, Russian, Georgian and many other languages and in addition to printing the works of Shakespeare in Armenian and publishing Armenian-Turkish, Armenian-English and other dictionaries, Antares carries a large array of eBooks for children and adults.
Friday was Martirosyan's first time travelling with Artbridge to Armenian villages but he has been on similar excursions with other organizations and is now starting a venture in Tbilisi bringing Georgians some of the many Georgian and Russian titles that Antares prints. The company donated over 100 books to each of the three schools visited by Artbridge on Friday.
Martirosyan believes that Armenians have lost interest in reading and in books. "But it's not just about reading; it's about information," says Martirosyan. "We are working in the field of information. I tell the people I meet around Armenia ‘I'm helping you so that your community gets stronger, so that your tie with your school is strengthened, and so that inside of you you'll feel your enterprise breathe.' The lack of information is large; in these villages they communicate in Armenian but in the field of information they are cut off from our norms, from our lives, even though they are actually in the same state territory as us. Making this connection is very important, that you bring them information. And we must act such that in these places the people feel they are always with us; they're not alone or cut off. Because they must stay there; that's the most important thing for Armenia's strategy, that border dwellers from Armenia's villages don't leave; that's the destruction of the state."
