The Tselinny, Kazakhstan’s first Center of Contemporary Culture, will open in 2020

In 2020, the Tselinny Center of Contemporary Culture, a first for Kazakhstan, will be opened in the city of Almaty. The country’s first private cultural institution will focus on developing interdisciplinary interaction between contemporary culture and art. Founded by businessman Kairat Boranbayev, the Center is based on the premises of the Soviet-built Tselinny (“Virgin Lands”) cinema theatre. Reconstruction of the cinema is to begin in late 2018 under the direction of the British architect Asif Khan, who aims to transform the building into a multifunctional space.

Asif Khan: “The history of Kazakhstan is very rich. You could say it’s the centre of the world: hundreds of ethnic groups have travelled along the Silk Road down the centuries, bringing with them their ideas, religions, textiles and symbols. And it continues to change, which inspires us.

“My experience of Almaty during the Summer is: wide pavements and buildings set back from the walkways, the green spaces in front of them provide a comfortable natural shade, creating a huge network of green. It’s a great asset for the city and our goal is to link the Tselinny Center of Contemporary Culture to this green network, so one could move around the city on foot, from one public area to the next, on to the park and culminating in Tselinny, creating a cultural promenade through the city.

“Tselinny will be a place to work, a place to hang out with friends, and a place you can bring your family to and be inspired. It’s also about bringing it to life in a new way. When you’re on the roof, your auditorium is the sky and the beautiful clouds, move to the front of the building and the street itself becomes your auditorium. On the inside it will be the original cinematic space and can transform into a huge multi-purpose flexible contemporary performance and exhibition space.”

After the final opening in 2020, the Tselinny Center of Contemporary Culture will focus its efforts on the study and representation of processes taking place in the spheres of contemporary culture and the arts, as well as social processes and developments in the humanities and STEM fields.

Jama Nurkalieva, project director for the Tselinny Center of Contemporary Culture: “The new Tselinny will be a high-tech institution, offering truly unique formats for interaction in the arts and other interdisciplinary sciences. We plan to make available a wide range of programmes appealing to both the general public and a professional audience. In addition to exhibition and educational activities, we will be offering a variety of research programmes, support for publications, grants for young professional. The Center will also support grants to receive professional education in art. In short, we want the Tselinny to participate in the development of contemporary culture in Kazakhstan and Central Asia, to interact with institutions that share similar goals, and actively contribute to the further development of the city and its infrastructure.”

From September 15 to the November 4, 2018 the Tselinny cinema theatre will host the three-part project Beginning, realised jointly with Moscow’s Garage Museum of Contemporary Art. The first part of the project is “Open archive. Almaty”—devoted to the architecture of the city in the 1960s-1980s, when the cinema itself was built. The second part of the project is called “At the corner: City, place, people.” The exhibition will be held in the space of the former night club which was built into the Tselinny building at the early 2000s, and brings together the work of contemporary Central Asian artists of different generations. The third part of the project is to take the form of a public programme: film screenings, lectures, discussions, workshops and excursions. Project curators are Ekaterina Golovatyuk, Giacomo Cantoni and Meruyert Kaliyeva.

About Asif Khan
Asif Khan founded his London-based architecture practice in 2007. The studio works internationally on projects ranging from cultural buildings to landscapes, exhibitions and installations, primarily work which engages the public. The studio has just been awarded Architects of the Year 2018 by the German Design Council.

Khan’s practice investigates how technology, matter, nature and human sensibility can be utilized to define and enhance the atmosphere and specificity of place and space. His interest expands this idea into how material and social innovations can fundamentally alter the way people experience and shape their environment. Current major projects include the forthcoming New Museum of London, the public realm of Dubai Expo 2020 and a 5000sqm Museum in Sharjah, UAE.

Notable projects include the “MegaFaces” pavilion at the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics which won the Cannes Lion Grand Prix for Innovation, the Coca-Cola Beatbox at London 2012 Olympics, a finalist entry in the international competition for the new Guggenheim Museum Helsinki from 1700 anonymous designs, and a Summer pavilion for the Serpentine Gallery which was located in Kensington Gardens, London during Summer 2016. Most recently he designed the award winning UK Pavilion at Astana Expo 2017, and the Hyundai Pavilion at PyeongChang Winter Olympics 2018.

Khan lectures globally on his work and sits on the Board of Trustees for the Design Museum.

The history of the Tselinny
The Tselinny was built in 1964 to a standard design for panoramic cinemas and immediately became one of the most popular recreation venues of the inhabitants of Soviet Alma-Ata (recording visitor numbers in 1982 of over two million people). Facing Alma-Ata’s very own “Broadway,” the unique visual image of the Tselinny film theatre with its foyer’s luminous glass facade was provided by a gigantic mural by the artist Yevgeny Sidorkin, visible from the street, which depicts races, dances and various genre scenes. In the first decade of the 21st century the cinema was rebuilt for use as a nightclub, remaining a popular urban leisure spot. In 2018, during the adaptation of the building for exhibition projects, Sidorkin’s original artwork, thought to have been lost, was rediscovered.