Humanity and flow in Central-Asian digital art-history: the Astral Nomads model

Abstract

Currently, during the COVID-19 pandemic, cultural actors are faced with the urgent problem of preserving humanitarian values using digital tools. The countries of Central Asia are laggingbehind the global process, which has introduced an imbalance in the digital presentation of world artistic heritage. The aim of this study and project is to organize an online art history of post-Soviet Asia in the complex context of human destinies, stories and facts, through the creation of an interactive book and website. During the research process, the author followed the cross-methodologies of critical analysis and digital archiving. That is, analytical constructs were founded and documented by archival materials and scientific sources through a hypertext system. In turn, the hypertext system has something in common with the philosophical concept of the "rhizome" – one of the key concepts of the philosophy of post-structuralism and post-modernism, introduced by J. Deleuze and F. Guattari. In the course of this research, materials of contemporary art from Central Asia were collected from the studios of artists, and an archiving system was developed in accordance with international standards. In 2013, the online resource astralnomads.net was developed and launched, which took its name from the unfinished novel by the artist Sergei Maslov Astral Nomads. The novel described the adventures of Kazakhstani artists on a spaceship in the future. The study asks questions about the timeliness and necessity of digital archiving of art collections. These processes are not just technical innovations here, but an indicator of the compliance of the country's cultural policy with the new humanitarian challenges of the era. Based on the results of the study, it can be concluded that, despite lagging behind global trends in archiving, the processes of digitalization of archives and art collections are gradually building up in the region. The study proposes a model of the Astral Nomads resource as a pilot project for the preservation of the heritage of art of the 20th-21st centuries.