AYARKUT

01.02.2022 — 15.04.2022

About foundation

The AyarKut Foundation for the Support of Contemporary Art sets an ambitious task to put Yakutia on the world map of contemporary art by creating a new creative environment and conditions for the development of specialists in the field of art in the Republic. The Foundation's mission is the active development of international cooperation in the field of contemporary art, as well as the search, development and presentation of the culture of Yakutia both in the region itself and throughout Russia and abroad. The foundation's work is aimed at supporting Yakutian art professionals, foreign artists and art workers from other regions of Russia who are interested in exploring the Yakutian context in their practices.

The Foundation's program for the 2021-2022 season will include its own media resource, educational programs, three art residencies, international residency exchange programs, grants and exhibition initiatives.

The project was created on the initiative of the Arsen Tomsky's Sinet Spark Foundation. Like other projects and programs of Sinet Spark, the foundation aims to improve the quality of human life in conditions of extremely cold climate, vast and sparsely populated territories, geographical remoteness from world centers and poor development of human capital and infrastructure.

Journal

Anna Lifirenko 30/03/2022

The formation of the Yakut national theatre: from the 1990s to the present day

A new milestone in the formation of the Yakut national theatre came with the collapse of the Soviet Union. In the 1990s, the Yakut theatre developed at an uneven pace, although a generally positive tendency may be observed in the dynamics of its development.

Mikhail Bashkirov 23/03/2022

“Aiyy Dyöһögöi”: when a god comes to the horde

“This is a story about a guy named Dyöһögöi, who rode to Ysyakh from a faraway ulus. Dyöһögöi is as innocent as a child and as pure as a mountain stream. This is his first time at this big national holiday. Here he will meet many different people, see beautiful horses, games for strong-willed men, and listen to delightful singing. And it is here at Ysyakh that he will meet someone who, as it seems to him, has stepped straight out of his dreams...”

Olga Bubich 17/03/2022

A book named “Suzanna”

Photographer Suzanna Sedalishcheva regards every interesting person as a book full of the potential to teach something new to any sensitive reader.

Elena Sakirkо 09/03/2022

We’re Losing the Land: Indigenous Peoples and Climate Change. Part 2

Indigenous peoples are connected with the space around them – with the forest, water and wild animals – on a very deep level, and climate change affects their daily life, traditional economic activities and living standards, as well as the inner feelings of the individual, his connection with his ancestors, and his cultural identity.

Elena Sakirkо 01/03/2022

The Forest is My Planet: Indigenous Peoples and Climate Change. Part 1

When researching the impact of climate change on the life and culture of indigenous peoples, the words of the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, always come to mind: as I see it, she very accurately underlined the special connection these peoples have with nature: “Traditional indigenous territories encompass about 22% of the world’s land surface and they coincide with areas that hold 80% of the planet’s biodiversity.

Egor Sofronov 23/02/2022

Mourning via installation. The exhibition Abandoned by the Fishers of Men by Xenia Kudrina

«Follow Me and I will make you fishers of men» (Mark 1:17) — such was the name given to the first apostles in the Synoptic Gospels: the fishermen on the shores of the Sea of Galilee who abandoned their nets to throw in their lot with the revelation of struggle and creativity

Olga Bubich 18/02/2022

A Drone at the Edge of the World. The Aerial Photography of Nina Sleptsova

Desertedness and expanses of untouched nature have shaped the visual language of the Yakut photographer Nina Sleptsova: she examines snow-covered uluses with occasional flowing streams of deer and the frozen rivers at the end of the world from a bird's eye view

Mikhail Bashkirov 15/02/2022

In the splendour and poverty of Yakut “garage”: A review of Gannibal, a film by Ivan Krivogornitsyn

The documentary film Gannibal (dir. Ivan Krivogornitsyn, Spik DV Studio, 2018) is not quite the usual fare when it comes to Yakut cinema

Alisa Yakuba 10/02/2022

Overcoming loneliness in the eternal cold

Winter in Yakutia is not eternal, but it can be lonely there, and the cold plays an important role in this. And the immensity of its territory coupled with a small population only helps to further alienate people from each other and hamper communication

Daniel Lekhovitser 05/02/2022

Inner America: why the setting of the Yakut games is so reminiscent of the United States

An opinion is held among certain film critics that some of the best Russian films of recent years have been shot in Yakutia. Ichchi by Kostas Marsan, Scarecrow by Dmitry Davydov, Black Snow by Stepan Burnashev...

Maxim Seleznev 25/01/2022

Simultaneous ping pong with reality and mythology. Interview with Liesbeth De Ceulaer

How did the idea of creating such a film come about – with Yakutia as the location, a plot involving a mammoth, and the people who became the main characters? Could you sense the distance between your home country and Siberia, which is thousands of kilometres away? Considering that distance (temporal, media, imaginary) seems to be one of the main themes of this film

Anna Lifirenko 15/01/2022

The Formation of Yakut National Theatre: The Soviet Period

The next period in the development of the Yakut national theatre was directly related to the establishment of Soviet power in Yakutia

Karina Karayeva 24/12/2021

From bison to bison. From mammoth to mammoth. Some notes on the film "Zimov's Hypothesis" by Denis Snegirev

The film develops its storyline so that it is structured almost like a surreal narrative. Sergey Zimov, who appears as Zeus the Thunderer and starts talking about a time bomb, is straightforward enough to be associated with any of the gods of Olympus, punitive or merciful.

Dmitry Zamyatin 16/12/2021

Post-Urbanism and Cold: Geo-Cultural Images and Representations of Cultural Landscapes of the Northern and Arctic Cities

Cold is a perception and a feeling that has deep ontological backgrounds. Human communities, their structures, forms, functions, and the peculiarities of their interactions have developed largely in the struggle with cold and its derivatives such as snow, ice and wind. It is especially characteristic for the areas within both the temperate belt and the polar regions, as well as in areas where a harsh continental climate prevails.

Anna Lifirenko 12/12/2021

The formation of the Yakut national theatre: from its folkloric origins to 1917

The history of the Yakut theatre goes back over a century. Admittedly, this is an understanding of the term that does not exactly refer to the kind of theatre we are accustomed to thinking of today; Yakut theatre derives from a long-term intertwining of Yakut folklore and the Russian classical theatrical tradition that had developed in the European part of the Russian state over the 17th-19th centuries.

Anna Prilutskaya 08/12/2021

A modern fairy tale in the game "Yakutsk Train"

The game "Yakutsk Train" is more like a simulator: you can walk around the carriage that has been manufactured under the Tver Carriage Works since 1998, sit at a table, look out the window at the snow-covered landscape, or listen to the wheels' rattle.

Tatyana Pavlova 03/12/2021

Who is the epic horse of the olonkho?

The core of myth is the form of a worldview: what has been set up in this world and how, how relationships are constructed in this life and why, and so attempts to decipher the cultural and philosophical code of myth will always be relevant – from several different angles and on various different levels.

Erkin Alekseev 29/11/2021

Khomus through the Centuries: Modern Sounding of an Ancient Instrument

Khomus has been and remains the fundamental instrument of musical intonation in the Yakut culture. However, with its primitively simple construction and vibrant sound possibilities, whose potential has not yet been fully disclosed, it is also a phenomenon of religious culture. The latter has received a new round of awareness and development in the new century and continues to evolve.

Elena Vasilieva 30/11/2021

Olonkho as a Cultural Pattern and Universal Source of Meanings

Every year Olonkho increasingly steps out of its chamber forms and becomes a brand of the territory, thanks to the possibilities of wide publishing and events dedicated to the epic.

Maxim Seleznyov 28/11/2021

A Journey with the Yakut (Un)Dead

Horror crept its way into the Sakhafilm studios almost immediately after they were founded. The past three decades have seen Yakut cinema take the incredible journey to achieving a unique and recognisable artistic style, the creation of a fully viable industry, and to success with audiences in the Republic, followed by acclaim far beyond its borders.

Egor Sofronov 17/11/2021

The Work of Grief: "Mannequins" by Danila Tkachenko

One of the works nominated for this year's prestigious Kandinsky Prize for Russian art is Danila Tkachenko's series "Mannequins" - landscape art of Gulag sites, mainly in Yakutia.

Olga Bubich 17/11/2021

A paradise for the Eyes. Dolgans and other indigenous peoples through the lens of Jimmy Nelson

British photographer Jimmy Nelson considers himself a photographer who creates something "far more than photographs."

Ye.N. Romanova, O.E. Dobzhanskaya 04/11/2021

An anthropology of the cold: methodology, concepts and images (on materials from the cultural traditions of the indigenous peoples of the North and Arctic)

The article is based on materials from the cultural traditions of the peoples of the Arctic (the indigenous people of Northern Sakha and the Taimyr Peninsula).

Anastasia Ermolova 22/10/2021

"Udagan kyrgyttar" ("Udaganki"). The performance of Stepanida Borisova at the Olonkho Theater

Development of the Olonkho tradition: how the theater team translates the Yakutian heroic epic into body language.

Anna Lifirenko 14/10/2021

"If a person considers himself a shaman, he can be a shaman"

About the Theater.doc performance "The Tale of the shaman" and not only

Elena Vasilyeva 12/10/2021

Dragons of Yakutia

If our ancestors had found dinosaur skeletons as often as mammoth remains, then, undoubtedly, the mythology of the Yakut people would have been full of images of dragons, and perhaps dragon would have become the central system-forming deity or the spirit of the earth. It is difficult to imagine a more vivid image for the lively, very plastic imagination of the Yakut storyteller than a lizard breathing with flame, shimmering with silver scales, hovering over the rocks.

Alexandra Generalova 11/10/2021

Images of the Yakut graphic school and why they should be studied in the era of overproduction of digital images

Young Yakut artists create micro-media about the Yakut printed graphics of the 50s and 60s and are looking for ways to actualize this heritage in their artistic practice.

Dunya Zakharova 09/10/2021

Dunya Zakharova. Yakut “zaum” (abstruse)

For me, the use of the Yakut language in my works has no narrative function. When a language has the status of an endangered language, like Yakut, it turns into a mysterious set of words for non-native speakers, which everyone can interpret in their own way.

Anastasia Ermolova 07/10/2021

"Dzhyrybyna the Warrior Woman." The performance is an introduction to Olonkho

Trends in the development of the Yakut heroic epos. The story of Dzhyrybyna the Warrior Woman at the Olonkho Theater

Igor Pernikov 06/10/2021

The Wild Eight game: Yakutia as the basis of gameplay

In 2019, the Yakutsk indie game studio Fntastic released "The Wild Eight" game, combining elements of the action-adventure and survival simulator genres. What does survival mean from a philosophical point of view and why did scientists turn into monsters?

Nikolay Smirnov 04/10/2021

Death, Immortality, and the Powers of the Subterranean world

We present the essay exhibition of the artist and curator Nikolai Smirnov "Death, immortality and the forces of the Underworld". The project, expanding the study of permafrost, was made specifically for the V Ural Industrial Biennale of Contemporary Art and presented in Yekaterinburg in the fall of 2019.

Inga Shepeleva 02/10/2021

Inga Shepeleva: The Bear Festival/hebeerin/

It is difficult to return to the stages that inevitably took their place in the formation of your own language and voice, it is difficult to talk about what has already become a pillar of subjectivity, which is inextricably linked with what I call myself now – a person, an artist. However, rethinking past experiences is useful, though painfully difficult.

Alexey Medvedev 01/10/2021

Time is ticking

The hero is dying. This is almost not a spoiler, since the seal of defeat is visible on it to any attentive viewer from the very beginning. Yakutia, the second half of the 19th century, a distant district, where Khabdjiy and Keremes, having been pushed around as slaves by a local Yakut prince, are trying to run an independent household and, finally, give birth to a healthy child. The beast and the fish have gone no one knows where. Local gods (ichchi) do not help and do not get in touch.

Environmental agenda and recycling practices in the works of Ien Sur

The artist talks about her works from recycled check paper on the theme of Yakut mythology, motherhood and domestic violence.

Eva Ivanilova 17/09/2021

"The Middle World": The first full-length Yakut film as a decolonial project

Is a camera in the hands of one or two people capable of embodying the imagination of the people? One of the episodes of the first full-length Yakut film "The Middle World" insists that this is real.

The works of 6 young Yakutian artists at the Blazar fair in Moscow

At the fair, you will be able to get acquainted with the art of one of the coldest regions of Russia. In total, the works of 6 artists will be presented at the stand: Dunya Zakharova, Ksenia Kudrina, Anya Enot, Selena Shestakova, Nadezhda Komissarova and Yen Sur.

Read the user agreement and privacy policy