IFA + Akademie der Künste Berlin + Heroines’Wave

Analysing the possibilities, limitations and risks involved in producing The Enclosed Garden #4, festival of contemporary arts by and for women in 2022 or 2023 in Uzbekistan.

Ahead of the festival, we conduct a context analysis in order to begin building connections, to raise interest about the project, but also to apprehend the structural and emergent social landscapes that we operate in as a collective residency, as an activist network and as a public platform.

Assessing the possibilities and limitations of a city is a delicate research endeavour, requiring space for qualitative nuance and individual depth. It is key to provide an open space for exchange, as a lot of questions could be very intimate and dealt with topics often frowned upon, or even taboo in Uzbekistan; at the core, the human interaction was most important, as the conversations were precious moments of connection between the participants (respondent, researcher, and translator). A series of semi-structured interviews were conducted in Tashkent, Ferghana and Bukhara with women from different social, cultural and educational backgrounds. The meetings were majoritarily held in public spaces, where establishing a private safe space was not the easiest; but the choice of a venue like a cafe made it easier to arrange the interviews. The sample of 89 participants was based on direct recommendations, some were found on social media (Instagram, Telegram groups), and others were met in public spaces or in their workplace.

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The strategy of HW, for this initial research phase, mixed methods from cultural management and anthropology. Using interviews, participant observation, photo and video elicitation, the researchers eventually create an assessment of the cultural landscape in the form of a SWOT analysis (focusing on Opportunities & Threats). The objective is not of course to evaluate the cultural landscape of female artists in Uzbekistan, which can neither be done in a month, nor can ever be undertaken by foreign researchers, but rather to assess how the structure of The Enclosed Garden festival could fit and bring growth here. It is crucial for us to think with researchers who question the production of hegemonic forms of knowledge by researchers from European contexts. We dedicate attention to non-conventional forms of knowledge, particularly oral knowledge and traditions, that have long been muted by cultural policies from the USSR, which were described for instance by Yuri Slezkine: "cultural imperialism was the highest form of socialism" (The Russian Review, 2002). It is also important to highlight the distinct cultural identities and the forms of resistance shown by non-Western women, in a genuine search for artistic formats that respect and uplifts the local context. As the researcher, Celia Stroom's notes from fieldwork in Uzbekistan read, interviewing must be accomplished as a way of caring for the other: '...And if taking Care of the Other was simply about to feel, every detail of the interview, a given act, be it a glance at another person, a shift in posture, or an hesitation, or silences. Such acts have no intrinsic meaning, they be can only be understood when taken in relation to one another'. Therefore, conclusions emerge not out of spoken, rather from the feeling of physical behaviour that often speaks louder than words.

When does one decide to lift the walls and share their true life story? What does it mean to receive these stories and welcome them as part of a great web of shared experiences? The process of fieldwork is entered with an open mind, devoid of hypotheses, accepting as well that we may have trouble communicating through an interpreter, and accepting that both sides do not know each other's implicit verbal and non-verbal languages. In only a few weeks, we try to see emerge a scope of possibilities and collaborations; but the main focus of this fieldwork was listening. Some women told us that no one had asked them about their lives before and that they suddenly felt they could exist by the simple act of talking and, above all, being listened to. 

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The research was run from Celia Stroom & Anna Frick (from Berlin) and translated/guided by Sitora Ismatova, Mariyam Muhammadovna Asadova, Maria Khudayberdieva, Madina Barnoyeva (from Tashkent & Bukhara).

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89 women with various professional, social, ethnic, backgrounds:

- Employees of international institutions,

- Members of NGOs and cultural institutions like galleries and art schools,

- Independent artists,

- Survivors of domestic abuse sexual violence,

- Public activists & hidden members of the LGBTQI+ community

- Craftswomen and artisans

We also met few institutions to evaluate their interest for the project: Goethe Institut, French Embassy, UNODC, Suisse Cooperation, Ilkhom Theater, 139 Documentary Center, Sarpa Media, Bonum Factum Gallery, Nemolchi, MOC.

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