Tselinny Center Opens in Almaty and Announces Second Edition of Korkut Sonic Arts Triennale

Courtesy Tselinny Center of Contemporary Culture. Photo: MIR

2nd Korkut Sonic Arts Triennale
“Rites of Eternal Wind”
September 6, 2025 – November 1, 2025
Korkut Sonic Arts Triennale

This April, a landmark moment for Central Asia’s cultural landscape will take place as the Tselinny Center, one of IBA’s newest members, opens its doors in Almaty. Housed in a transformed Soviet-era cinema, the center will serve as a hub for contemporary art, education, and cross-disciplinary cultural programming, undoubtedly contributing to Kazakhstan’s cultural role in regional and global networks.

Tselinny’s transformation has been driven with the vision of creating a contemporary cultural institution that fosters local and international cultural makers, while also preserving and reinterpreting the region’s architectural and artistic heritage. The new space will host exhibitions, performances, and educational initiatives, serving as a meeting point for artists, researchers, and cultural practitioners from all Kazakhstan and beyond.

From September 6 to November 1, 2025, the Tselinny Center for Contemporary Culture in Almaty will host the second edition of Korkut Sonic Arts Triennale – Rites of Eternal Wind. Through the natural evolution of the Sound Art and New Music Biennale into the Sonic Arts Triennale, the second edition of this key event in the region keeps its initial focus on sound and music but extends this vision further, pushing the institutional boundaries that often restrict this artistic field.

Venturing beyond sound installations and live concerts, Rites of Eternal Wind will showcase some of the most adventurous sonic events and situations, including soundwalks, experimental choir performances, hybrid poetry readings, research-driven audio essays, guided listening sessions, and more. The updated conceptual framework is rooted in the understanding that Central Asian, Turkic, North Asian, and many other cultures in the broader region are fundamentally auditory, with oral and listening traditions historically taking precedence over written ones. For generations, sonic practices of these lands—whether instrumental music, spoken literature, or various forms of improvisation—have been central to shaping societies and their worldviews.

The newly opened Center for Contemporary Culture will transform into a vast resonating space for sonic ceremonies, sonic rituals, sonic dialogues, sonic celebrations, sonic mournings, and sonic remedies. Many of these practices are accessible to nearly everyone, regardless of special training or social status, yet, in some cases, they require a lifelong commitment. Inspired by this duality, Tselinny will also host an extensive educational program designed to engage both professional audiences and people with no prior experience in music and sound—those passionate about sonic arts but uncertain of where to begin. The program, featuring workshops, lectures, roundtables, and artist talks, will culminate in an artistic research lab—a special project closely aligned with the triennale’s thematic pathways.

At its core, Rites of Eternal Wind draws inspiration from the simple yet complex relationship between sound and wind, in which wind is examined as both a powerful cultural symbol and a physical element. Understanding wind is fundamental to our understanding of acoustics. As the movement of air, it interacts with objects in the environment, causing vibrations that produce sound. This principle lies at the core of the design of many musical instruments, starting with the voice—the most primal and fundamental instrument of all. Instruments such as the Bashqort quray or the Kazakh sybyzgy rely on the performer’s breath to create wind, which makes them resonate.

Honoring the patron saint of poets and musicians in its full official title, the Korkut Sonic Arts Triennale invites participants to critically engage with the myth of Qorqyt Ata, who played the kobyz to ward off death and achieve immortality through music. The triennale will feature artists and researchers reflecting on the role of sound in memory, ritual, and resistance, reexamining the ways in which sonic traditions have been shaped by and have resisted forces of colonization and commodification.

Participating Artists

The artists who have been confirmed so far are: Yara Asmar, Ännäs Bağdat, Nurbak Batulla, Medina Bazarğali, Syrlybek Bekbotaev, Azadbek Bekchanov, Ivan Beketov, Bint Mbareh, Budhaditya Chattopadhyay, Cevdet Erek, Jolda, Kokonja, Lovozero, Jazgul Madazimova, Sainkho Namtchylak, Aisha Orazbayeva, Raushan Orazbayeva, Intizor Otaniyozova, Cinna Peyghamy, Samrattama, Mieko Shiomi, Şüräle, Aina Zhekebatyr + more TBA.

Curators

Anuar Duisenbinov (born 1985) is a Kazakh poet, translator, and mediator of SteppeSpace, a project on Central Asian culture. He is the manager of the publishing program at Tselinny Center of Contemporary Culture. His work has been published in Polutona, textonly, Literatura, Soloneba, Helikopter, Esquire, Satori, and Satenai, and he co-authored the Spoken Word Project Balkhash Dreams.

Madina Sadybekova is an art manager at Tselinny Center of Contemporary Culture in Almaty, Kazakhstan. She obtained her BA in Business and Management (Marketing) in 2013 at Brunel University London and an MA in Contemporary Theory in 2021 at Goldsmiths, University of London.

Stas Sharifulla, also known as HMOT, is a Basel-based researcher and artist working with sound and listening. Born and raised in East Siberia, Russia, with Bashqort (Bashkir) roots, Stas explores how sonic practices transform political imagination into direct action. He is currently a guest lecturer at the Institute Art Gender Nature HGK FHNW (Basel), an associate researcher at Critical Media Lab, and a co-host of the Artistic Research Lab at the CTM Festival (Berlin), while pursuing a doctoral degree at the University of Basel.

We look forward to upcoming news about the Korkut Sonic Arts Triennale which, together with the opening of the Tselinny center will without a doubt turn Almaty into a key destination for contemporary art in Central Asia.

Keep following us for more updates as the full program for Rites of Eternal Wind will be revealed in the coming months.