artistic fragments
along the steppe and
silk roads

Dispersed & Connected

artistic fragments
along
the steppe and
silk roads​

The project collects and explores narrations, images and imaginations, fragments and artistic expressions along old and new steppe and silk roads, which link dispersed and connected biographies, artistic traditions, cultural monuments and memories. These fragments will be joined in exhibitions and a concomitant scientific-artistic fieldwork notebook.

Hereby, fast processes of transformation as a result of establishing new roads will be juxtaposed to slow narrations and memories of individuals as well as historic artefacts and fresh artistic works developed within the project. This research therefore opens a space to individual and artistic voices in response to current and future determining emerging global-economic projects and plans. The artists and scientists (social- and cultural anthropologists, musicologists and archaeologists) of the core project team document and collect fragments of expressions developed by formulating specific questions on themes such as mobility, nomadism, memory, cultural and knowledge transfers along the roads to create an artistic project cartography for the joint exhibitions and publication.
The artistic works include photographs, videos, film, poems, songs and music, and drawings as different narration lines. Museum artefacts will be links or starting points for these forms of narrations – which show the fragmented and yet interwoven sidelines and branches of existing and emerging roads, which transform the landscapes like an expanding uncontrolled nervous system. Artists from i.e. Mongolia will be invited to create new works which will be integrated into the museum exhibitions. A new multi-layered collection – seen through the eyes of the other – will be added to and enliven the historic ethnographic collections.

Steppe & Silk Roads at the Museum am Rothenbaum in Hamburg (11.12.2020–07.11.2021)
Dust & Silk at the Weltmuseum Wien in Vienna (16.12.2021–03.05.2022).
Dust & Silk at Völkerkundemuseum der J. und E. von Portheim Stiftung in Heidelberg (17.5.2023–17.3.2024)
Nomin Bold & Baatarzorig Batjargal: Multiverse at Völkerkundemuseum der J. und E. von Portheim Stiftung in Heidelberg (17.5.2023–14.9.2023)

Funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) / Programme for Arts-based Research
(PEEK–AR 394-G24)

 
Tar Player

Ramin Pirmamedov
"Sari Gelin" (Blond Maiden)
Tbilisi, Georgia, Oct. 2020
Vento Della Seta

Daniele Ventola, social anthropologist
Palermo, Nov. 11th, 2021
Transportation
ARCHIVE FILMS

Mongolia 1940s, 1950s
©Mongolian State Archive
Silk Roads

Dimitri Kostyushkin, Silk Road Institute
Samarkand, Nov. 7th, 2019
Notebooks

Michael Taussig, Anthropologist
Vienna, Nov. 7th, 2019
Milk

Otgonbayar, Herder
Yoroo, Selenge province, 2018
Orkhontamir, Herder
Kharkorin, Ovorkhangai province, 2019
Ikat

Rasul Mirzaakhmedov, Master Weaver
Margilan, Usbekistan, Oct. 31st, 2019
Ikat
BAZAAR

Margilan, Usbekistan, Oct. 2019
Heavenly Horses

Horse breeding station
Fergana, Usbekistan, Nov. 2019
Gan Zam
(STEEL WAY)

sung by Goyo
Dulan Khan, Selenge Province, July 2018
Earth & Dust
ON EXCAVATING

Coal mining
Tavan Tolgoi Coal Mine
Ömnö-Gobi, Mongolia, June 2018
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M.-K. Lang & C. Sturminger © project Dispersed & Connected (PEEK–AR 394-G24) funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF)