Metrobish – Ala- Too Square ( -Bishkek’s virtual underground station)

Slovene/Kyrgyz interdisciplinary workshop of contemporary art.
Date: 14-27 September.
Metrobish was displayed on 27 September at 18:00- 22:00 in the old KGB underground garage under Bishkek’s Ala Too Square.

When you descend through the socialist made grey marble stairs into the deserted underground behind the grand Statue of Liberty in Ala Too Square in Bishkek, a full size underground train appears in front of you. Closer inspection shows it is just a concrete wall on which wooden sticks and broken pieces of picture frames are mounted with tiny nails like a strange technical drawing that could also be a poor man’s map, a grid or a strange network, patching one site of history into another. It could disintegrate in a mare breeze into dust from the wall, or brake up and disappear into the air like the Internet connection in Bishkek can caused by unstable Kyrgyz electric frequency, resembling the delicate and fragile ends that strangely bond reality and imagination.

Metro-bish is a multimedia project and one day installation that connects physical (site specific) and “virtual” spaces on the Internet allowing digital, analog and material visual art to be thought about, discussed, worked on and displayed in the abandoned underground KGB garage structure in Ala Too Square in Bishkek.

This workshop intertwines elements of multimedia art work, video, photography, digital imagery, and archiving, and is a result of a collaborative work of young evolving artists from Kyrgyzstan and students at Famul Stuart School of Applied Arts in Ljubljana (Slovenia).

This website was created during the workshop, with initiatives to reflect the main issues in contemporary art in Kyrgyzstan and more.

Metrobish is the third underground web site station in a series of seven interdisciplinary projects by Slovenian artist Miha Vipotnik. Two other underground web sites already made and still developing are Metroljub in Ljubljana (http://freeweb.siol.net/famul/) and Metrout in Beirut (http://www.usek.edu.lb/metrout/). These sites are all part of creative interdisciplinary workshops in progress.

The Metrobish Ala Too Square underground workshop and installation was organized by ArtEast* Telephone.+996 (312) 49 45 37
E-mail: mjumali@vandex.ru

Project partners:

• Famul Stuart School of Applied Arts, Ljubljana, Slovenia
• Ministry of Culture the Kyrgyz Republic