Sch(ism) Bishkek

Bishkek -  Up to the day of today signs and signals of the Soviet times can be read everywhere in public space. On a flatbuilding it shows in big iron letters ‘Do not allow your children to play with matches’. There is Subbotnik: the people of a neighbourhood, students of a University but also the nurses (and doctors?) of a hospital are out in public space to broom, clean and repair their environment. Many people with paint buckets: white for stones and bottoms of trees and multi colors for the benches and iron objects in all the playgrounds the city counts. But there are also the big billboards with captitalist slogans. Not long ago ‘lounge’ was the magic word in advertisement, now ‘art’ is fashionable in the recommandation of clubs, casino’s, dancings. We saw ‘Dental Art’ as well. Society is in the middle of these two ideologies. The USA and the USSR are both equally present in Kyrgyzstan. Bishkek hosts the USA troops for Afghanistan and the ties with the USSR never vanished. All the former Soviet states in Central Asia still hold mutual relations as well as common ones with the USSR. Not in the least economic ties.
Lino Hellings – Bishkek Lab