TATIANA SOUTHEY-BASSOLS

The Silk Road network represents the world's central nervous system, where multiculturalism was born, connecting people and places. However, alongside this cultural transience, the regions of Central Asia were subject to forms of power, psychological dislocation due to oppressive and authoritarian regimes, something people are still trying to come to terms with.

 

In undertaking this journey through Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, I wanted to understand the material and immaterial response to cultural repression through traces found in the built environment, a key mediator to preserve memory. In Kyrgyzstan, the internal felt surface as well as absorbing the mark of time,it is a mark of experience and becomes a vehicle to remember. In fact, the act of naming the structural parts of the yurt after the human body which feeds back into the Kyrgyz language to communicate the time of day, is a physical reflection of their cosmological perception of the world. Similarly, the iwan in mosques of Uzbekistan serves a transitory function, whilst the surface acts as a communicator of meaning through calligraphic inscriptions.

 

However, whilst memory is engrained in the surface of architecture, it is also vulnerable to manipulation and appropriation. There was a clear tension between the national authority's effect on collective memory and the local community memory. The act of preservation may pause the effect of time on the material, but the representational and symbolic nature undergoes reshaping. To what extent are we experiencing a curation of history or a continuation or creation of memory? The change in the way memory is acquired has transitioned from the direct transmission of body habits and skills through generations, to indirect memory, which is experienced as a duty and no longer ingrained in the body.