One of the favorite songs during my Soviet childhood was: »My address is not my house and not my street, my address is the Soviet Union....« It was an enthusiastic song about travel and the chance of building new cities, roads and so on. Now I feel as if I myself were the hero of this song, but my address is the »Third Asia«. What is that? You may well ask. It seems to me that right now there are two kinds of perception of Asia, especially of Central Asia: Firstly, the Asia of fairytales and tenderness: the mysterious one, with blue cupolas, slow camels, ornamental carpets and other wonderful things. Secondly, the Asia of wild, brutal terrorists and repressed women dressed in parandja, living against a background of yellow desert without any of the commodities of civilization.

My Asia is different. It looks like a sort of polygon for different experiments; we had a lot of such polygons in the former Soviet Union. These polygons had strange names containing numbers. You were not allowed to go there without special papers. Usually they were so-called »strategic objects«. Denizens of these polygon-cities worked in special factories where different kinds of weapons, space technology, and airplanes were developed. I see Central Asia as being like a polygon for future creativity, like an experimental space for the development of a multicultural community, a cradle for a new generation of voyagers, wanderers, nomads. This is the other perception of Asia - my own »Third Asia«.

[b]Almaty (Voyager)[/b]

Here in Almaty there are a lot of active and powerful women. You meet them in many different professional fields, including my main field, that of contemporary art. Look - here is the director of my favorite gallery »Voyager«, Irina Yuferova. She is great! In Russian, we have a special phrase for this kind of women; we say: »A general in a skirt«. She can manage any complex problem. When she gives an order within her domain of responsibility, no one would want to contradict her. Her »Voyager« is a place of communication, a place where a large number of projects by different artists and institutions have been carried out. And if you don't have a space for an exhibition or a creative event, or if you just need to think about an idea or a problem: go to the »Voyager!« Irina Petrovna always tries to connect things that can't be connected. As, for example, in the exhibition »The Past is Over here«. It was an exhibition put on by artists who usually do contemporary art, but also draw or paint from time to time. You could see pictures and sculptures there, but the main object was a table holding food from our Soviet youth: cheap alcohol, fish preserved in tomato sauce, special sweets... The artists and the visitors were told to come dressed in the clothes of their youth. We played the favorite games of our childhood, sat around the table, enjoyed the food we had eaten in our youth, showed each other old photos, told funny stories, and so on. I also enjoyed the catalogue of this exhibition, a hand-made, xeroxed book with texts by the artists. There is only one thing that can make me leave this pleasant place near Nikolski Bazaar: Irina Petrovna hates computers, the new media, and the new generation of cyborg-like young people. So I have to go somewhere else if I want to communicate with my lovely »cyborgs«: I go northwest from Almaty, to the city of coal mines - Karaganda.

[b]Karaganda (»Just Cy«)[/b]

I have come here for ten days to carry out a small, somewhat adventurous project in the new »Desht-e-Art« Centre, together with my favorite photographer, Sasha Malgazhdarov. I had to prepare a workshop for 20 young artists on a topic something like this: »How to do things in contemporary art!« There was also to be a small exhibition resulting from this »little« project. We called the exhibition »Just Cy«. All the artists used »technological« means (photography, video, etc.) to tell something about themselves in a simple and clear fashion. I liked the names of the projects: »Autherportret« by Lali Modebadze, »Laziness« by Valeri Kaliev, »Socks« by Kamilla Aubakirova & Roma Zhidkih, »Repair« by Iliya Kazakov, »Natural Soya« by Zhenya Sushkova, »I Open...« by Unkas, »I Can Not Do« by Mark Urnyavichyus, »Prilipaly« by Natasha Sorokina and others. Natasha Kim (»Rezinka«) did a project »I like Naomi, Naomi likes fruits,« and another, »sweety-morning-dream in the toilet«, a video showing herself sitting on the toilet, dressed in pink pajamas. Yuri Dvinyaninov (»Gnom«) put hoax notices in the local newspapers announcing that he had been awarded an Oscar, the Nobel Prize, the Golden Palm of Cannes and other prizes.

Alexander Popov (»PopoShusha«) and Maxim Glebov (»Meex«) did another funny project called »I love Tamagochi«: it is a love story about two guys and a harem of colorful Tamagochis. These two young architects were very helpful while we were constructing the exhibition. The 18 projects looked like a game, so we decided to exhibit all the pieces in old furniture from a kindergarten. We put all the tables, shelves, a piano, boxes, loudspeakers and TV monitors and computers in the middle of a little kindergarten hall.
Karaganda used to be the location of Stalinist camps, where the most intelligent of the creative people in the Soviet Union were kept prisoners from the thirties to the fifties. In the fifties and sixties, people with academic degrees taught children at school in Karaganda.

There are many huge areas in the region full of tall poplars. Every tree is a symbol of one prisoner's life, as everyone in the camps helped to plant them. Some of the trees have the name of the person who planted it carved into them. These days, you can visit the main location of these camps, Dolinka Village. All the buildings in the camp are starting to fall apart, but the local government is not interested in saving this heritage. Only a few enthusiastic people are trying to preserve these memories. Larisa Pletnikova and Dana Sapharova, co-organizers of the »Desht-e-Art« Centre, have been collecting unique documents from this epoch, and are now in the process of publishing a catalogue of all the artists confined in Karaganda.

[b]Astana (Museum)[/b]

Nobody knows exactly why our president, Nasarbajev Astana, decided to make Astana the capital of Kazakhstan. In comparison with beautiful Almaty, Astana seems rustic - and it is. Astana used to be called Celinograd, which was the center of Celina - a newly claimed land for agriculture and wheat-growing out in the wide steppe. In the sixties, a lot of people from all parts of the Soviet Union came here to help carry out this gigantic experiment. Now, crowds of governmental employees come here, making for a strange mixture of peasant and bureaucratic mentality. In the main shop, »Millennium«, you can find absurd natural »installations« such as mannequins in uniforms. The State Museum of Contemporary Art is situated in Astana, the only one of its type in Kazakhstan! It is a very ambitious project, a collection of the most »art-official« Kazakhstani painters and sculptors. I asked the director of the museum - Nelli Shivrina - why they didn't exhibit really new art, and she said this was the biggest problem at the moment: the aggressive interference of »art-official« artists, mostly from Almaty, in the Astana art scene. The team working at the museum tries to solve the problem of balance by changing exhibitions all the time. We decided we had to begin establishing a new relationship between the museum and contemporary artists, and, above all, organizing lectures about contemporary art.

[b]Almaty (Sergei Kalmykov)[/b]

My favorite district in Almaty is an old part of the city which we call »Kompot« (compote). It looks like a big Cossack village with small, old houses and little green streets bearing such names as »Grushovaya« (Street of the Pear Tree), »Vishnevaya« (Street of the Cherry), or »Yablochnaya« (Street of the Apple Tree). Not far from Kompot is the center of every oriental city - the bazaar. We call the biggest one »Zelenyi Bazar« (Green Bazaar) because you can find lots of vegetables, fruits and herbs there all year round. One of the strangest citizens of Almaty was the artist Sergei Kalmykov. He dressed in very strange clothes, which were hand-made and hand-decorated. When the »gray« people of the Soviet epoch asked him why he was so strange, he answered that if aliens from space were to come to the Earth, how could they choose the human civilization here otherwise? He was unique, untouchable for the KGB, an artist of miracles. He left us a fine heritage - paintings, drawings, memories of his »actions« and »performances«, which were, in fact, just his life. It was also the life of our parents, their youth, the happy period of black-and-white photos and movies with live music; the time when Almaty was Alma-Ata, and Bishkek was Frunze, and the Kirghiz and Kazakh people were citizens of one country. Thank God, now we can go to our neighbors in Bishkek without needing a visa.

[b]Bishkek (»Zamana«)[/b]

Going from Almaty to Bishkek by bus takes about four hours. It is a meditative place. Importantly, too, the prices for printing or plane tickets are much cheaper than in Almaty. Artists from Bishkek participate in all interesting cultural events in Almaty, as there are many more of them. The most active person in Bishkek is the architect Ulan Djaparov. He is the curator of the »Museum« studio. I participated in a very interesting exhibition, »Plus-Minus«, which he organized in the State Museum of Visual Arts. It was an exhibition about an »inner Odyssey«, about travelling through personal mentality. The idea was to mix professional and non-professional or naive artists. Djaparov managed to put together a small catalogue for this exhibition; it is really a puzzle to me how he can get money for all these activities. He has also published an elegant almanac of artist's essays, »Urbi et Orbi.« Ulan participated in a few exhibitions in Almaty together with another interesting group, »Zamana.« The two main members of this group are Gulnara Kasmalieva & Murat Djumaliev. They are both excellent graphic artists and sculptors, they can do video installations, write texts, and take pictures and retouch them in a special way. Ira Dekker, Sasha U and Roma Moskalev, in their turn, have created a kind of new nostalgic style. They make movies with old cinema cameras on old cinema film, and then process the film in the bathroom themselves. The quality of these movies is fantastic. They are the most stylish things I have seen in the last few years.

[b]Almaty (Silk Route)[/b]

Tashkentskaya Street, which you use to return from Bishkek, is the most active commercial area in Almaty. All transports of goods from China, India and Turkey go via Tashkentskaya Street. It is a modern-day Silk Road. I remember one performance by my favorite artist, Almagul Menlibaeva. She put on a bridal gown and walked alone in Zelenyi Bazaar. When people asked her where her bridegroom was, she said that she was a bride of the Universe, and that her bridegroom was everywhere in the world and that she was on the way to him. But the people in Almaty thought that was alright, and they started to congratulate her and give her flowers. Now she is somewhere in Holland, or maybe in some other place, I don't know exactly; but if you meet her, say »hello« from me, please.

 

Translated by Tim Jones

 

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