Paper long abstract:

Monuments that stand in capital cities have often been studied symbolically as representations of desires on the parts of elites or governments to emphasize certain aspects of ideology or to create an ontology of the nation as a whole. This is perhaps especially true in the former Soviet Union, where the connection between symbol and political ideology has a long and powerful history, and where there have been notable examples of the re-writing of symbolic landscapes in the post-Soviet period.

In Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, there are many monuments that exist from the Soviet period as well as a plethora of new monuments, which might be said to reflect post-Soviet political ideologies and processes of nation-building. However, these monuments are not always direct reflections of political will, but are rather the outcome of work by multiple groups from social funds, to architects and sculptors, to city government. These groups must balance sometimes conflicting desires; for example, the wish for greater representational importance, such as having a monument in the center of the city, with practical considerations such as availability of space and funds, or aesthetic considerations of how a design will fit within the city as a whole. This perspective extends approaches to monuments as symbolic objects, suggesting the necessity of seeing these objects also as material outcomes of multiple desires and decision-making processes.

In this paper, I explore the material and social aspects of constructing monuments in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, asking how ideological and pragmatic constraints and desires combine in this sphere to produce symbolic material objects. Through interviews and archival research, I investigate the processes of constructing public art in the form of monuments, including the conditions under which these processes are more or less open, the kinds of desires that various groups express in their professional capacities, and the material and spatial constraints which are inherent to this sphere of production of culture.