How the artist in search of becoming a researcher?! Or so What?
Chinara Majidova
After the presentation of my thesis topic, I understood how broad is it and I
became confused in my future direction with it. Now I have even more questions
in my mind about it than before. The main one is it possible to separate
tangible heritage from intangible in “Sovetskie’ neighborhood? Do I want to
separate them or it is just for narrowing the topic? What impact it will bring
for the community and my hometown with my research?
I started to analyze what I was doing before as the
artist and how it is now different from the researcher perspective. In 2018, I
and my colleagues with whom we were working on this project got support from
Yarat NGO which dedicated to nurturing an understanding of contemporary art and
organized “Mehelle” (neighborhood) exhibition.
More information about the exhibition you can find in the
links below:
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| From "Mehelle" exhibition. Photo by Mike Raybourne |
The uniqueness of this exhibition was not only in
presenting this topic in public between the people who usually attend
exhibitions but also that we tried to engage and invite Sovetski residents to
the exhibition. İn result, Sovetski neighborhood community was not only
presented there as an art and documentary subject but also was invited as
exhibition visitors. A lot of people recognized their streets, houses, and
people on the TV screens of the exhibition and was a part of Meykhana performance,
which took the place at the closing of the exhibition. For the people who is
not familiar with Meykhana meaning here is sort description is a distinctive Azerbaijani literary and folk rap tradition.İt was important for us to see
them there because they are the one who opened the doors to us to our cameras and shared with us their lives.
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| From "Mehelle" exhibition. Photo by Mike Raybourne |
Looking to all past now I ask the most important question
in for any thesis topic “So what?” What will you research for your thesis?
So firstly I decided to get more information about the
community which was living there. Maybe then I will know where to move. I know more or less about build monuments but
what I know about the community? Who they are? How they appeared there and what
were the values of this community?
I started my research from two interesting books one is
Bailyn, John Frederick, ed. The Future of (post) socialism: Eastern European
Perspectives.
Which gives information about backyards and Bakuvian
understanding: The bakinets, or Bakuvian, lived in Baku and reportedly became a
unique ethnos, a “nationality” that encompassed a wide range of nations,
including Russians, Armenians, Azerbaijanis, Georgians, Tatars, Ukrainians,
Jews, and other nationalities of the southern Caucasus. Diverse in class as well as ethnicity, the bakinets encompassed
intellectuals, workers, and even rough- and- ready urban gangs that were, as Stephenson
(2015) notes, neither anti- Soviet nor deviant, but rather the product of
informal alliances that frequently intersected with formal and state-sanctioned
institutions.
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| From the movie " In one South city"1969 |
The second important book for my research now is
Hatton-Proulx, Clarence. "Baku: oil and urbanism: by Eve Blau, Ivan
Rupnik, and Iwan Baan. It gives the picture of Baku urban planning in the past
and present which was changed with the oil boom and Independence.
Besides my research paper, I am also thinking now on
collecting more data from the family archives with stories behind which at the
end can be the part of a new art project.
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