RE-DIRECTING: EAST. Conversations # 6: Bermet Borubaeva & Diana Ukhina
July 10, 2013 at 5 p.m. RE-DIRECTING: EAST. Conversations RE-DIRECTING: EAST Conversation # 6:
During last twenty years the government of Kyrgyzstan has passed a number of neo-liberal reforms. Basic ideology behind this process is reduction of the government’s influence on the economic and social life to a minimum. This process is combined with patriarchal mode, which leads to the degradation of social infrastructure and influence to the instability of the political regime. After the USSR’s collapse and the time of adaptation, unstable processes of coercive regime change took place ("revolutions" in 2005 and 2010 years).During this period there were a number of self-organised, non-institutional, independent communities of artists in Kyrgyzstan and in the Central Asian region who began to work in contemporary art. Along with contemporary art exhibitions in Almaty (Kazakhstan), where a Center for Contemporary Art is based, other exhibitions were organised in Bishkek, i.e.: «Plus-Minus», «And others ...», «The area of risk», «In the shadow of heroes» and etc. These were regional exhibitions with artists from Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. In 2005 the first Central Asia Pavilion was opened in Venice. It was the first big step into the global world of contemporary art for artists from the region. Contemporary art in that period was a field of independent, enthusiasm, and freedom; a self-studied process based on self-organisation. Every participant had an equal right to decide about art production without hard hierarchical structure. However, due to the absence of any contemporary art teaching programs in the state schools, there remains the important issue of education for artists, art-managers and curators. In 2009the first pilot project of "ArtEast" - School of Contemporary Art was initiated for students who never studied contemporary art before. This school became a source of unique experience with innovative methodology of learning and generated growth of local self-organized communities such as: Initiative group of young artists "InsideOut", which now operates as "Jon ele emes", and "StrekOOza group". They initiated a number of art events and participated in different local and international exhibitions. Diana Ukhina is art manager and artist, member of the «СтрекООза» (StrekOOza) art group and the initiative group of young artists "InsideOut". She graduated the ArtEast’s School of Contemporary Art in Bishkek; Summer school with Cascoland (Dutch artistic group), Bishkek; Summer school of contemporary art for young artists and intellectuals "Terrain Orientation", Dushanbe; Curatorial Summer School at ArtEast, Bishkek, and "ClimaSight" workshop, Munich. Over the last four years she participated in the organization of art projects: Summer school of the documentary photography, video and animation "Investigate Real Life"; Eco-festival "Trash II" with international festival "Make a Forest"; First Young Central Asian exhibition of Contemporary Art ON/OFF, Mini-festival "Trash" - (ecological festival). She was a co-curator and manager of the educational program of the exhibition Lingua Franca / Frank Tili – an exhibition about language, history and politics organized by the art group StrekOOza. She collaborated with curatorial team of the first exhibition of the Central Asia Pavilion at the Venice Biennale which was extensively presented in Central Asia. Ukhina is a project coordinator of STAB, School of Theory and Activism – Bishkek, which is Central Asian art research initiative, Its participants determine art as a mechanism of social critic and radical imagination. She lives in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.
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