The Soros Center for Contemporary Art —Almaty

Kazakhstan, Almaty, 480021, Tulebaev st. 171

Tel: 7 (3272) 69-66-25; fax: 7 (3272) 69-66-50

e-mail: scca@scca. samal. kz

http://www.samal.kz/~scca

9am-6pm, daily except Saturday and Sunday

 

 

The Soros Center for Contemporary Art (SCCA) is a member and co-founder of ICAN (International Contemporary Arts Network Association) that was registered in Amsterdam in 1999. The ICAN system is designed to stimulate development of the newest movements in arts, to advance integration processes in international artistic community. The SCCA is searching for ways to solve to achieve these purposes while developing five directions in its mainstream activities:

1. Access to information: library, video-library, Internet and email for visitors, the Center’s archive (comprehensive information on Kazakhstan artists), and information desk. The SCCA’s website (www. samal. kz /~scca) contains information on the latest in the world culture, information on and critical reviews of the art life in Kazakhstan and Central Asia.
2. Educational programs of the SCCA, organization of seminars, conferences, master-classes and round table discussions on theoretical and practical aspects of contemporary art, such as, for example, seminars titled “An Open Museum: Strategy of Survival”, “Artistic Critique and Theory of Interpretation”, master-classes “Two in One: The Art of New Media”, “NetArt project”, conferences “Avant-garde and Asia”, “Art at the Turn of Millennium”, round tables “Culture and Authority”, “Mass Media and Contemporary Art” etc.
3. MultiMediaCenter of the SCCA is a laboratory where visitors can work on their media, audio- and video-projects. Additionally, this is also a place where work is being done on assembling video-archives, video-films, CD-catalogues, maintaining the website of the SCCA as well as designing and publishing booklets, digests and catalogues demanded by the SCCA and the community at large.
4. Exhibitions, events, presentations. The SCCA organizes concerts, poetry evenings, and experimental exhibitions. These can be either quite large events such as Annual Exhibitions or very small one-two day-long events like “Spirit’s Feast” (Book as an Artist’s Object) exhibition or “Soviet Lenin’s Internet”, which was an exhibition of small tablets from the Soviet times accompanying a presentation of the SCCA’s website or an electronic music concert.
5. International programs. The SCCA helps the artists and art professiaonals to search and establish contacts with colleagues and cultural organizations abroad, and to take part in various exhibitions (e. g. , duet “Zitable” and Erbosyn Meldibekov participated in “Politik-um” exhibition in Prague). The SCCA also organizes exhibitions of contemporary art in different countries, such as “No mad’s land” in Berlin (jointly with the House of World Cultures) or “Trans Forma” in Switzerland (jointly with CCA-Geneve and the Nawao Production Fund).