Tashkent Modernism. Index

Tashkent Modernism. Index is the first public presentation of Tashkent. Modernism XX/XXI research project, initiated by Arts and Culture Development Foundation, coordinated by Grace, and conducted by an international team of architects, historians, and experts in restoration, including the Politecnico di Milano, Boris Chukhovich and Laboratorio Permanente, who got together to document, interpret and preserve the modernist architecture in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. 

Through the images and narratives of 20 buildings the exhibition explores key themes related to architectural, social and cultural history of Tashkent and its current condition. It exposes the Soviet modernist layer of Tashkent as a unique artistic, cultural and social phenomenon capable of  adequately revealing the specific character of Soviet modernization in Central Asia. More than just another “peripheral case” of multiple modernities or a white spot on the world map of architectural modernism of XX century, this architecture—being relevant to the global cultural scene—reflects the colonial, postcolonial and, at the same time, decolonial aspects of the Soviet social and cultural experiment. After WWII Tashkent was assigned the role of the capital of the Soviet Orient, a vitrine of socialism in the East. Conceived by both local and Moscow architects, the distinctive quality of Tashkent modernism derives from the tension between this aspiration to embody the socialist Orient in architecture and the one that resisted it to find more subtle interpretations of the local.

The exhibition consists of two interwoven layers: photographs by Armin Linke, and archival documentation, exposing the research narratives and preservation strategies.

Armin Linke’s work poses a larger question of the nature of images. Today, as photography has become  much more than a mere representation of reality, but an ambiguous reality onto its own, the exhibition maintains an attitude critical towards the image as a sublayer. Intending to avoid the clichés formed during the last 15 years in the representation of Soviet modernism, whereby the modernist buildings are portrayed out of context, and glorified as remnants of an exotic, remote and extinguished culture, Armin Linke’s photographs aim—rather than immortalizing the passing beauty of Tashkent modernism—to highlight its contemporary value, at times intrinsic and at times acquired. Similarly to Agamben’s contemporaneity, defined as the “relationship with (own) time that adheres to it through a displacement and an anachronism”, these buildings, built between 1960s and early 1990s, are seen as powerful metaphors to reinterpret the present day Tashkent. 

The archive includes fragments of research materials, analytical and preservation processes. Departing from a specific building, it articulates the key themes for understanding Soviet modernism: the relationship between the center and the periphery; the role of institutions; typological, technological and materials experimentation; the competition between republics; the ideology, the orientalism, post-independence transformations and the contemporary condition. The archive also elucidates the repertoire of preservation strategies that have been developed specifically for Tashkent. 

The first step in implementing the preservation effort is to assure the protection of selected buildings through including them in the national list of monuments and describing their significance. Likewise the preservation and modernization of one of the studied buildings—the former Republican House of Tourism to become the new French Center and Center for Restoration of Art—will soon enter the construction phase. Finally, the Cultural (Modernist) route, connecting the city’s modernist buildings, will be developed as a thematic intervention and will start operating through a mobile app.

Events
Index: lecture by Armin Linke: April 17, 2–3pm. Lecture by Armin Linke followed by a conversation with Ekaterina Golovatyuk.

Preserving Modernism: April 19, 1:30–3pm. Preserving Modernism: a conversation between Gayane Umerova, Rem Koolhaas and Jean-Louis Cohen.

Towards a Conservation Management Plan for Tashkent: April 20, 3–4:30pm. Conversation with Davide del Curto, Andrea Gritti, Nicola Russi and Boris Chukhovich.

Soviet modernisms. Stories of Appropriation and Engagement: April 21, 2–3:30pm. Lectures and a conversation between Ruben Arevshatyan, Nini Palavandishvili and Boris Chukhovich.