At the beginning of July, I visited Bishkek for a public art symposium organized by B’sek Art Center. (Please see the detailed report at the symposium website http://publicartbishkek.blogspot.com/.)  After finalizing my work, I decided to visit to Almaty, which is 3 hours away from Bishkek.

The road to Almaty was an inspiring experience with towering mountains on one side, and endless steppes on the other, thousands of kilometers of smooth surfaces, like the sea—somewhat wavy, sometimes rough, offered an amazing unobstructed view. It would be fascinating to stroll through this landscape, day and night, very calm… Perhaps next time, for another occasion!
I was fortunate that prior to my visit to Almaty, Defne Ayas introduced me to the artists and curators based there, which made my short visit very enjoyable. Alexander Ugay was a very kind to host. We quickly realized that we share many common issues although situated in very different part of the world. Together with him, we visited some art spaces and various other parts of the city.
It was obvious that Kazakhstan is undertaking a big renovation project—as roads, signs, and buildings are being refurbished—things looks much newer than Kyrgyzstan. Renovation is not a radical break from the past (at least in architectural terms) it is a reformation of an existing structure, it can be used as a strategy to readapt spaces for different uses and it may add new functionalities, etc…

The National Museum, like the one in Bishkek was built in Soviet times and holds a relatively rich collection of paintings and sculpture. It was nice to see that there are cultural producers, like curator Yulilya  Sorokina, developing exciting new programming. However it was sad to hear that it was very hard for her to bypass strong conservative state bureaucracy and her operational freedom is extremely limited, if not censored! Like the whole country, the museum is also under renovation. In front of the building there were newly constructed fountains, which seemed very foreign in relation to the main building. It was like a forced marriage, modern architecture with a neo-conservative backdrop. It is a counterfeit addition because when you get closer to the fountain, you realize that it is made out of fiber similar to the ones in Las Vegas and pretending to be stone. Whether you like it or not, you have to appreciate that soviet architecture and its urban design has something very consistent about it. You see these new additions all over in Almaty, some of them built by Turkish construction firms, perhaps that is why they looked familiarly intimidating to me. For instance, an Eifel tower in front of a building is signaling marvelous developments in Astana, the new capital, constructed from ground up, 1000km north of Almaty. It is as though a puzzled dream is actually being realized as an eclectic phantasmagoria.
This is the new status-quo, preserved by an authoritarian market economy, so called “patriarchal neo-liberalism”. Alex was rightly pointing out that the abundant Kazak natural resources have a negative effect on its livelihood. Wealth earned from gas and petroleum is not shared and kept by the few (oh how surprising!). As production sites close and creative productivity is all together left out from the public agenda, people are transformed into mere consumers, totally dependent on outside production. Like oil rich Arab countries, money from natural resources is the negation of actual creative production, it permanently alters the quality of labor, replaces it with cheap or expensive imports, and the general culture is transformed so that it can serve the kitschy taste of the nouveau-riches. That is why perhaps this new poverty of  x-soviet countries is coming from their absolute richness of their natural resources, like a curse needed to be overcome. That is why we, together with other cultural producers around the world, have enormous intellectual responsibilities to fulfill, like fighting this ugly authoritarianism(s).

By imam@xurban_collective

İSTANBUL’U TERKEDİN!
Ahmet Atif Akin, Gokce Taskan, Ali M. Demirel

Yama ekranı için geliştirilen proje, Anadoludaki deprem sensörlerinden gelen verileri gerçek zamanlı bir biçimde grafiklerle şehire sunuyor ve sismik aktivitenin olduu anda, şimdi, izlenmesine imkan veriyor.
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Xurban is a transparent non-organization, therefore, without any worries, we are disclosing the fact that we received zillions of euro ‘federal funding’ to update our main website. Yeap we did it, we got the money and drank the beer! But, believe me it was not easy~ After years of dedicated work, countless of man/woman/gay/lesbian/transexual/transdressed/shemale/hefemale/hemale/shefemale hours, hiring many consultants across the continents, traveling around the world with the balloon, kissing so many cute asses if you will, we finalized the design. Yes it is minimal, no it does not consume much of network traffic, yes it requires javascript, no it is not php-mysql, yes it is simple html, yes we like it; www.xurban.net

//ENG:We are friends with Ecotopia. In fact Albay@xurban worked at Eyfa office helping to organize many Ecotopia events. Shaman and I participated some of their gatherings. This is a great opportunity for Anatolian eco-activists, it is pure fun and a great participatory learning experience. Don’t be shy, participate, pass it along!

//TR:Ecotopia bu sene Turkiye’de duzenleniyor, bilhassa ana kuzusu turk genclerine katilmalarini salik veririm, tabii mumkunse bisikletle gidilsin. Cekinmeyin, katilin, uretin, paylasin;

ECOTOPIA CALL-OUT!

Come to the 20th annual Ecotopia gathering!

This year, Ecotopia will take place between 9-23 August 2008 in Turkey,
close to a city Sinop at the Black Sea. You are invited to take part, and
discuss energy and other issues, support local activists and meet with
groups from different parts of Europe. (more…)

A small temporary public art work placed in Berlin Biennial sculpture garden. The space is defined by an other art work made out of same type of material.

Don’t ask me what the relationship between these two sites is. There were many inspiring elements in both of them

I had to spend some time in IKEA to get some furniture for Ali, who recently moved to Berlin after a long immigration battle with the Germany’s backward immigration offices.

Next day we visited Berlin Biennial Sculpture Garden. It follows the new trend in the art world; keen appreciation of art made out of junk materials… When you place them in a junky yard, however, they blend into the scene, the distinction between art and ‘nature’ gets blurry, you lose your orientation, no signage, no directions, no curatorial text that can interrupt your experience (hehe). In that sense the sculpture garden was a successful curatorial attempt, however artists could be a bit more surprising

Last sunday we went to an abandoned American radar base in Berlin. On the way back, we spotted some wild boars in the dark. Looking deep into this darkness was a hair-raising experience. Boars in Berlin are protected by laws and their population grew tremendously over the last couple of decade to ~8000.