"Actual in Kyrgyzstan"

  Overview of post-revolutionary period (2005-2008)

  Period boundaries:
  – March 24, 2005 – the «White House» seizure, fleeing of the President, anarchy and the night of marauding. The beginning of the revolutionary period.
  – Spring of 2008 – formation of pro-presidential majority in the parliament, collapse of the opposition and strengthening of presidential power. The end of the revolutionary period.
  Peculiarities of the reviewed period – permissiveness and freedom: economic constraints and the strengthening of informal culture.

  Problems under consideration:
  1. Revision of the Soviet heritage
  2. Revolution and «internal context»
  3. Unified culture and new aestheticism
  4. New ideas at the time of political action

  Ernst Abdrazakov, «I am all by myself», action.
The morning after the revolution and the night of marauding Ernst Abdrazakov creates his action: mocking the text – We are with the people, – which frightened tradesmen arranged in the shop-windows of their shops. Contemporary art of the Republic has passed this test. But the essence is still deeper. This is the manifesto of a loner, non-conformist for whom an independence from politics and local problems is more important. This is an exact expression of the frame of mind of a bystander. There, he is on a different territory, which means emigration into external cultural space, essentially pro-Western.

   March 24, 2005 events could not but influence the culture of the Republic. In the post-revolutionary period, three directions of contemporary art in Kyrgyzstan have emerged.
  1. Festival art
  2. Aestheticism,
  3. Social provincialism
  To understand the logic of these categories, it is necessary to take into account the fact that Kyrgyzstan is a post-Soviet country in the process of reconsideration of its Soviet heritage.

  Soviet Heritage Reconsidered

  Valery Ruppel, «Green Fence», installation sketch, 2007. A study of Soviet-time design of fences, abstraction of nostalgia
   Konstantin Shkrupela, «Instruments of the Soviet Way of Life», a series of objects, 2005. Form and meaning of Soviet non-conformism. Old things have been turned into musical instruments and supplied by the slogans of Soviet ideology. Ideas are omitted, but the sound, the music of forms and the beauty of Soviet modernism remain.

  Soviet mentality very often resurfaces exactly where nobody expects it. While having different names, new phenomena however, «suffer» from the chronic manifestation of the Soviet heritage both in practice and interpretation. The influence of the Soviet modernist form remains strong in contemporary art of Kyrgyzstan.

  Ideological censorship had been strong but the major achievements of the Soviet culture pertained to achievements to all-mankind nature. Often, subconsciously, we find ourselves under the strong influence of the collapsed civilization (Edward Radzinsky asserts that the USSR was a civilization). We can briefly develop a chain of transformations of concepts and see a continuation of those trends, which in some cases as appear as hindrance and in others as peculiarities, which it would be a mistake to discard.

   Transformation №1. Culture of national periphery of the USSR – nomadism – festival art
The process of the europeanization of culture was called «mastering of all the best things created by the humanity» with the goal of taking this intellectual wealth into the future, into communism. This formula allowed studying and creatively adopting global achievements without any scruples. Today, nomadism (plasticity, ability to assimilate to changing circumstances) has grown into omnivorous state of art for export.

   Transformation №2. Discreditation of social principles by the practices of the USSR – aesthetic rebellion of non-conformism – aestheticism of informal art of the New Period. Non-conformism of Soviet art came in the form of aesthetic rebellion. Now, aesthetic rebellion is impossible (no censorship, which used to be its support), social rebellion is rejected: what is the urgency of the method?  Without such a powerful moral basis as social orientation, contemporary art becomes clandestine colonial art. Intellectuals, as a rule, are socialists, consciously or unconsciously, and the question to be answered is: should we refuse our Soviet heritage, which influences our entire culture in such a beneficial way?

   Transformation №3. Conflict-free art – post-modern infantilism.
This theoretical side has an impact on the interpretation of events. Both post-modern narrative and post-modern discourse are rather a protest against the imposed Soviet reality. The process of reconsideration initiated in a search of identity became activated after the unexpected change of power on March 24, 2005.

  Revolution and «internal context»

   Ernst Abdrazakov, Dilya Khalmursina, «I Love Sausage», Photo
  It has to be mentioned that our stores sell Muslim sausage (pork-free). Overall, there is the notion of pious food, and this is the topic of artificial split of the society. There is no cosmopolitism of common problems understandable to people all over the world. But this activity is important and apart from international festivals, we still need national shows. However, there is none and none are expected: curators tend to invite artists from the entire region (and even the world) to exhibitions, as long as the works are good, without paying attention to local problems.

  After the revolution, the concept of «internal context» has been extensively discussed in the cultural space of Kyrgyzstan. This concept is linked with such concepts as identity, ideology and national idea. There has even been announced up a competition for philosophic concepts. This term signifies cultural events of national significance: they are created here, they are requested by the local public here; they are evaluated here and probably internally consumed only here. This is not the search for full value civilization: here, the role of provincial culture becomes activated. The external aspect exists but in contrast with the art for export it does not prevail as the main and the only goal.

   There are neither opportunities nor adequate number of works to organize activities of national scope (in contemporary art, painting and cinema). It is a bit early to integrate completely into the regional context. It may be that this problem is a «brand» problem of Kyrgyzstan. The problem may only seem to be internal, because quite a logical question arises: «What to export (to be more specific – what to integrate with) in case there are no internal context developments?»

  Festival art. To explain the topic, I will give the following example. Joël Chapron from the selection committee of the Cannes Festival characterized the problem when he visited Kyrgyzstan to take part in the auteur cinema festival «Kinonstan».  When he got asked, “What kind of films should we produce?” he gave a laconic answer: “No need to produce films for us.” This answer shows that the festival nature of our art (including contemporary art) is striking.

  Actively engaged in the festival activity currently are: the association «Art East» of Gulnara Kasmalieva and Murat Dzhumaliev; and the City of Artists of the Union of Artists headed by Shaarbek Amankul. Previously, very prominent events of international level were Ulan Dzhaparov’s “First of April” exhibitions. At this point, there is mostly the desire to work exclusively for export and to hold group festivals whose topics are general and rather vague. It is important to translate own achievements and to introduce overseas artists to our viewers but this most often expresses pessimism with regard to the local artistic community.

   This is an important activity but with contemporary level of information awareness, they have lost their original «educational» meaning.

  Bishkek international exhibition of cotemporary art organized by the «Art East» association. Exhibitions are held in basement premises (underground bunkers of the USSR party bureaucrats), which is under the «Independence» (Erkindik) square. But neither the names themselves (the Second Exhibit was called «In the Shadow of the Heroes» and the third «The Zone of Risk»), nor their «popular» venue guaranteed the urgency of the event. The hopes to promote regional communication do not fulfill themselves either: the borders of the region are blurryy as well and the countries of the region are in centrifugal state.

   Maxim Neroda and Lätitia Norkeit’s «Post for Kyrgyzstan» has been one of the most prominent global exhibitions of the beginning of 2008. These packages included works of artists from different countries of the world (Germany, France, Italy, Switzerland and Russia). Artists of Kyrgyzstan have also participated in these exhibitions. The festival goals are quite clear: communication with the aim to extend borders. The idea is a noble one but artistic message is not there. And the display has produced an impression of being ill-sorted and superficial.

   Festival art is a general trend of our culture: both cinema and painting acquire the nature of exclusive export commodity. This is due both to the desire of the officials to promote our culture abroad and to the small capacity of internal market consumers.

   Unified Art and New Aestheticism

    Ideologically selective assimilation of European culture together with the Soviet closed borders led to fetishization of Western culture; it is mystified rather than analyzed. Contexts are understood as a form, they are not studied and not understood. This naturally leads to total compilation, which is often promoted as post-modern citing method. It may be called post-modern infantilism, which has been characteristic for contemporary art of Kyrgyzstan for quite a time.

  Aestheticism. The projects of the «MUSEUM» studio of Ulan Dzhaparov and the works of the older generation representatives - Valery Ruppel, Konstantin Shkurpel - are in the basis of this direction.

   The work with form helps to develop specific features and they have their own nuances.

   First, the involvement into the international context forms unified external features.

   Meder Akhmetov, «Scotch Tape», installation, 2008
  The talented work overcomes the effect of globalization. The work is not of a hi-tech style, ordinary Chinese scotch tape is used, stretched between columns in the museum building; it has become the object of communication and opinion exchange. The energy of the talented work has generated real interaction.

   There are wonderful examples of the presence of estranged allegorical philosophic social aspect but such initiatives are still «single cases». Ulan Dzhaparov (an artist, publisher and a curator) calls the entire non-formal art of the Republic «guerilla work». It is not in amateurishness; the entire contemporary art of the Republic is amateur but the absence of a system.

   Ulan Dzhaprov, «Reaper», performance, 2005
Our contemporary mows the grass with an old-style scythe on a deserted construction site. Human desire to refine everything seems to be meaningless evil force. The problem is not expressed specifically, directly and the formal signs – green grass, orange T-shirt and grey concrete are beautiful in themselves.

  Secondly. Representatives of modernist painting fill-up the ranks of contemporary art. The pertinence requirement is in the consciousness, while the Soviet sub-consciousness requires aesthetics and sometimes beautiful form hinders perceiving the problem.

  Yevgeny Boikov, «Quartering the World Bestseller», installation, 2006. The book of Robert Kiosaki about the art of being rich is sawed and turned into a beautiful advertisement and modernist painting. But the action reflects disillusionment in the values of the capitalist world.

  Yevgeny Boikov, «Not Him», installation, 2007. Canonical portrait of the first President of the country in neon colors turns out into a fashionable object.

   And thirdly. The form «generates» new ideas. Genetically abhorring any mention of the «answer to the most urgent questions of our contemporaneity», part of the artists persistently form new trends.

   Shailo Dzhekshenbaiev. «Adobe Suite», photo, 2005
  Paradoxical is the fact that the most significant work within the project – exhibition «Koltso (Ring)» of Ankul Shaarbek dealing with the problem of  unauthorized land development in the outskirts of the capital is the picture of Shailo  Dzhekshenbaiev «Adobe Suite». In a way this is a successful conveyance of the local problem. But the social component disappears, while the beautiful play of forms and style understandable to all remains.

   Talgat Asranulov, Georgy Kolotov «A Cupboard for Two», performance, 2008
  This is already not a Soviet formalism but a post-modern narrative. The authors hide from outer world influence in the cupboard of their ideas; and it is the aesthetics of the work that attracts attention by its quality and contributes to building the capacity to influence the present day environment from inside.

  New Ideas Intersecting With Political Action

   Social provincialism. This phenomenon revealed itself exactly following the revolution and made it possible to highlight general trends. These are the actions of the youth wing of the Socialist party «I don’t Believe…» and Maxim Kuleshov. The vacant niche of the socialist direction has been filled by the newcomers, young politicians and human rights advocates.

   Peculiarities of this phenomenon:
  Work issues – local political problems – had to be mastered anew.
  This is a spontaneous manifestation of informal culture.

   «I don’t believe…», «Eating Mantas », action.
  The movement «I don’t believe…» emerged after the parliamentary elections and the title reflects   mistrust of a new power.

   On March 24, 2005 the current President missed the capstone of the seizure of the «bunker» of the first President of Kyrgyzstan Askar Akaiev who had been in power for fifteen years, by his own admission he was eating mantas (national meal) at that time. Youth movement organizes the manta eating action on the day of the People’s Revolution (now official holiday in the Republic). The message is quite transparent. But it is not clear how to treat this activity. Both politicians and different critics consider it to be insignificant. But the audience coverage and impact efficacy are enviable. In this case provincialism is a necessary feature and to do this job you need to live in Kyrgyzstan.

   After the action develops into political requirements, the militia puts the participants to jail. Action participants congratulate militiamen with the «Militia Day» and present them a cake with the inscription made out of crème: «I do not believe…». Militiamen thank them but say that they will put them under arrest in any way. The situation of absurdity undermines the reputation of power, but there is no extremism. The phenomenon is in demand with mass media and popular among common viewers.

   Maxim Kuleshov, human rights advocate and artist, has organized a huge number of actions.
Maxim Kuleshov, «Let’s Uphold Dictatorship», a series of actions, 2007-2008

   This series of actions included collecting money to purchase barbed wire, with which the human rights activist intended to encircle the «White House». Thus, the leadership of the country would have been protected «from the attacks of democracy».

   Maxim Kuleshov, «Help the President to Resign» with an «Oar», a series of actions, 2007-2008 
  Delivery of a symbolic «oar» and 38 requests of people to the President’s Administration took place at the White Hose to voluntarily abdicate responsibilities given numerous violations of the rights of citizens.

   Maxim Kuleshov, «Myth-gossip-absorber», a series of actions, 2007-2008
  «Myth-gossip-absorber» with the instruction sheet: to fix it behind the boot of the President’s car so that its noise frightens away hearsay.

   In the beginning of spring of 2008, President Kurmanbek Bakiev was enjoying his vacation in Germany and suddenly disappeared. Mass media could not understand: what was the matter with him? Officials’ caution and the wish to play safe led to numerous gossips: some said that the President’s son s shot him while aiming at his uncle after a quarrel with distributing petrol stations.
These works turned out to be the most discussed (and scolded) events during the last period. In the struggle for attention of a viewer, the benefits of a system approach became obvious as repetitive activities took place within the same «ideological» direction.

   Ideal development scenario, trend, tendency, which we would like to see in contemporary art of Kyrgyzstan: aestheticism collapse – search for support – new social art.

Gamal Bokonbaev, Kyrgyzstan

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