On Tselinny Center of Contemporary Culture and Museum of Modern Art Almaty

 

To juxtapose: it is also mind catching that Uzbekistan’s journey to contemporary art has started with an event funded by public money, while in Kazakhstan with institutions established by private families, patrons and collectors: Kairat Boranbayev is behind Tselinny and a Nurlan Smagulov is a founder of AMA. These different approaches affect the models backing up large cultural projects: historically private money is always managed more efficiently, though at a certain scale the participation of public funding is also inevitable. A healthy combination would probably be to balance between the two but for now such a split exists and its consequences are already visible: Bukhara marched through all the western media establishing itself as a regional force for the international art community loud and clear. Pelham communication was hired to manage the communication, a colleague mentioned that the Instagram feed of most of the MoMA  board of trustees was full of Bukhara Biennale and everyone is wondering what’s happening in there. The enthusiasm was not, however, shared by some local artists and professionals in Tashkent who did not see or feel the impact inside of the country - a lot of resources were allocated to impress the outside. It worked very well though In Almaty, the feeling was quite the opposite - the celebration of both openings involved predominately local voices from various generations, cultural backgrounds, career stages and working in different mediums - most of the artists who in one way or another contributed to the development of contemporary art were involved in the program or exhibitions. While the city of Almaty is now granted with architecture by Asif Khan or a monumental work by Richard Serra, at the end of the day, the main character of the first couple of weeks of September was still locality with its histories, notions, politics, beauty, complexity, tradition and the reflection.

 

Almaty Museum of Modern Art’s presentation justified its title and immediately felt like a private collection becoming a museum with a strong scent of object-centric modernity. Massive attractive sculptures-statements, vivid walls of the Qanaqtar group exhibition, detailed thought provoking solo of Almagul Menlibayeva - all that resonates with what one would expect from a modern art museum: a research-based open archive of various objects carrying stories and framing time periods while in conversation with one another. A format is known and healthy - international stars act as light houses attracting audiences, perhaps, more interested in the hype than in the arts, but that too serves as a bridge to wider, more nuanced art history. Think of it as a portal, a place where the journey begins, not as of a trophy with which it ends. The museum is very much about the present, it displays leading living or recently deceased artists who already earned their place in art history and can now represent the overlapping era between the end of the troubled XX century with no least troubled beginning of the XX|. 

 

Tselinny, on the other hand, chose a more risk-averse strategy and presented a fully performative body of work Barsakelmes that felt partly like a deconstructed purification ritual, partly like a roar of everything that was hiding beneath the surface: fear, resistance, representation, and orality. No fancy public art outside, objects or conventional formats: the viewer is expcected to co-create and participate, not only to observe and absorbe. To inaugurate an institution with an act instead of an object, is, perhaps, more in line with constructing the future than addressing the present for instance. This is perhaps why Tselinny does not have any permanent collection and consistently refers to itself as a center, not a museum, implying experiment, openness and the avoidance of favoritism. The logic of art history is a logic of exceptions and newly formed institutions attempt to challenge this methodology serving more as empty vessels than stuffed rooms. Though it still remains an open question how do we preserve oral tradition, new media, performances, sounds especially when it is an assemblage of all. Should we, at all, preserve it or is physical presence the only way to “remember” it? How does it challenge traditional ways of collecting and archiving? 

 

Both models are equally important for the long term development of the proper cultural ecosystem for we cannot talk about the future, without acknowledging the present. Both seem to co-exist in harmony while focusing on two almost conflicting states of being. There is a third one often overlooked in today’s conversations that has also contributed to the cultural landscape: a State Museum of Art named after Abylhan Kasteyev.

 

 While that museum was never meant to display contemporary art and the official state is resisting this phenomenon for the most part, some selected professionals inside of the institution housed significant exhibitions like the first museum solo of Yelena and Victor Vorobyevy in Kazakhstan or solo of Yerbossyn Meldibekov in 2015. The permanent collection also consists of the foundational names (though mostly through donations) from Georgy Tryakin-Bukharov to already mentioned Blinova and Khalfin making a somewhat representational hall of the core scene. In this rather still emerging and relatively fragile ecosystem, Kasteyev’s part is to, perhaps, unify the scene by inviting the past into the ongoing and ever evoking conversation. That way the city will have three cultural superpositions transcending three states of time, exchanging and multiplying knowledge, growing rising rhizomatically and ornamentally filling more gaps that are much needed to be filled.

 

Many words have already been said about the recent cultural adventures of Almaty — both positive and not. In this kaleidoscope of thoughts and emotions, it is hard to add anything relevant or authentic, but one should always try. And it can probably be an argument against trying.

 

So many exhibitions that we encounter seem to impress in the moment, only to fade away almost the next day. Others feel like nothing much, yet somehow continue living in your head rent-free for years. It always seemed odd when a few hours into a preview in, let’s say, Venice, you start overhearing opinions shared by visitors. Informational society with its derision of the new and the reaction to the new creates conditions where the context of art itself almost demands our immediate and utmost detailed reflection at all times. We know very well about how to think and write about art, but not as much about how to experience it. We share opinions as if they are demanded from us, seldom allowing time to decide what was important or not. Culture is much more complex than cultural professionals can comprehend. The truth is we don’t really know which seed we plant will grow into a strong tree — that’s why it’s better to plant as many as one can: the good, the bad, and the ugly. We don’t quite realize which lecture or a book or maybe a movie will hit this or that kid in their meow meow in which moment of their life. Maybe a year, sometimes it takes fifty. We don’t know where or how our brain stores art-related emotions and how we unpack it later on if ever. We like to pretend we know but it feels certain that art is not something consistent or linear, it is a pure chance - sometimes it clicks, more often it fades away to be forgotten on a side road of the river of time. Boom and it’s gone forever. Even if we appreciate something right away or are disturbed by it. That is why thinking about now and what is around is always so damn difficult and somewhat even pointless: you shoot at stars with a slingshot and then life goes on.

 

Of course it doesn’t mean that institutional critique is dead worldwide though it seems to be stuck somewhere between cancel culture, fight over resources, and paid PR articles while undoubtedly going through some structural changes. We ought to categorise, label and draw conclusions faster than the real situation evokes, sometimes preventing it to do so. Words can hurt and it is essential to be gentle at least within one’s own community and despite the nearly sacred importance of art do always place people above whatever object or idea there is. It is, if I may, a decolonial practice resisting bigger institutional and imperial forces, a practice of acceptance and guidance. Not to forget, critique was invented as a tool to make one’s practice better, not to stop them from tryingitnever again (though some exceptional cases require this particular approach). It doesn’t of course mean that the community should tolerate nasty things - and there are plenty - but giving your immediate surroundings a bit of an extra chance can help not to atomize things further. It keeps from playing on the side of the very powers that see the community divided and isolated. We are too often too in rush to label, categorise, offend or be offended, to place something in the box so complex it might take generations to unpack. 

 

Partly that’s why I don’t have much to say about Bukhara Biennale, Tselinny Center or Almaty Museum of Modern Art or to even say it properly, choosing the right academic frame and words, using jargon that would set this piece of writing apart. I don’t, because I only want to say something good and obvious and boring but letting it go like that feels more honest than to search for little or large imperfections that were there too. What difference will it make to register something like that here in the face of eternity. Art is here precisely to oppose itself (and us with it) to mortality, to become this eternity. In this becoming words are just drops in the ocean. Everything as correctly said by John Cage, “I have nothing to say and I am saying it”. And another one by Borges, “Don’t talk, unless you can improve the silence”.

 

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A few minor parts of the text were extracted from Master’s thesis “Crafting the city” by Joshua Horneff, Mimi Donaldson and Vladislav Sludskiy