Marina View That We Love
Where do new ideas come from? The answer is simple: differences. Creativity comes from unlikely combinations.
Art Collider x Water Futures
Art Collider × Water Futures is a school dedicated to water, ecological memory, and climate justice. It brings together nomadic science, art, embodied practices, and collective imagination to restore relationships with water and reimagine possible futures.
The school approaches the Ile–Balkhash basin as a hydrosocial space, a living ecosystem, and a mentor. We will follow the water—from the glaciers of the Alatau and the urban rivers of Almaty to the Ile, Karatal, and Lepsi rivers and Lake Balkhash.
Art Collider creates a space where scientific, artistic, local, embodied, sonic, and mythological forms of knowledge can meet through shared practices of care.
We see artists, researchers, and cultural practitioners as agents of transformation, and art as a force capable of restoring sensitivity, connections, and responsibility towards water territories.
What does water know and remember? How can we listen to it? How can artistic practice open up new languages of justice for bodies of water?
The school will take place in Almaty from August to October 2026. It will culminate in a collective exhibition at Aspan Gallery in spring 2027. Participants will gain experience in producing artworks, curating, organising, and delivering an exhibition.
Art Collider × Water Futures is organised by Artcom Platform and Care for Balkhash—an initiative dedicated to caring for the ecosystems of Lake Balkhash—with the support of the Embassy of Switzerland in Kazakhstan and in partnership with Aspan Gallery and The Steppe.
The school approaches the Ile–Balkhash basin as a hydrosocial space, a living ecosystem, and a mentor. We will follow the water—from the glaciers of the Alatau and the urban rivers of Almaty to the Ile, Karatal, and Lepsi rivers and Lake Balkhash.
Art Collider creates a space where scientific, artistic, local, embodied, sonic, and mythological forms of knowledge can meet through shared practices of care.
We see artists, researchers, and cultural practitioners as agents of transformation, and art as a force capable of restoring sensitivity, connections, and responsibility towards water territories.
What does water know and remember? How can we listen to it? How can artistic practice open up new languages of justice for bodies of water?
The school will take place in Almaty from August to October 2026. It will culminate in a collective exhibition at Aspan Gallery in spring 2027. Participants will gain experience in producing artworks, curating, organising, and delivering an exhibition.
Art Collider × Water Futures is organised by Artcom Platform and Care for Balkhash—an initiative dedicated to caring for the ecosystems of Lake Balkhash—with the support of the Embassy of Switzerland in Kazakhstan and in partnership with Aspan Gallery and The Steppe.
Art Collider x Water Futures
The programme brings together public lectures, seminars, workshops, collective walks, mentoring sessions, and research trips for the school’s participants.
We will discuss glaciers, celestial and earthly rivers, plants and biodiversity, nomadic ecological knowledge, oral traditions and music, hydrocosmology, water governance, and the rights of bodies of water.
We will meet the Tūı́yqsu Glacier, walk with the Kishi Almaty River, gather observations, and create mental maps. We will travel to Lake Balkhash, following water connections and meeting new communities and institutions along the way.
The programme includes workshops in moving image, shym shi reed weaving, embroidery, sound, and visual research. These practices will be approached as ways of transmitting ecological memory, telling stories, and restoring relationships with land and water amid the climate crisis.
The school will culminate in a collective exhibition at Aspan Gallery in spring 2027. Participants will gain experience in producing artworks, curating, organising, and delivering an exhibition.
We will discuss glaciers, celestial and earthly rivers, plants and biodiversity, nomadic ecological knowledge, oral traditions and music, hydrocosmology, water governance, and the rights of bodies of water.
We will meet the Tūı́yqsu Glacier, walk with the Kishi Almaty River, gather observations, and create mental maps. We will travel to Lake Balkhash, following water connections and meeting new communities and institutions along the way.
The programme includes workshops in moving image, shym shi reed weaving, embroidery, sound, and visual research. These practices will be approached as ways of transmitting ecological memory, telling stories, and restoring relationships with land and water amid the climate crisis.
The school will culminate in a collective exhibition at Aspan Gallery in spring 2027. Participants will gain experience in producing artworks, curating, organising, and delivering an exhibition.
- Key dates and events:The open call will close on 2 August 2026, inclusive
The school programme will run from 8 August to 27 September 2026
Presentation of the school’s outcomes: October 2026
Preparation for the exhibition: November 2026–March 2027
Exhibition in Aspan Gallery: Spring 2027
Art Collider x Water Futures
About the organizers
Artcom Platform is a collective of women artists, researchers, and curators founded in Almaty in 2015. Working at the intersection of contemporary art, climate justice, nomadic knowledge, ecology, and community engagement, Artcom develops artistic practices rooted in the steppe and water ecologies of Central Asia.
Over the past ten years, the collective has initiated Care for Balkhash, SOS Taldykol, Art Collider, and Steppe Space. These long-term initiatives bring together artistic projects, interdisciplinary research, and public education, creating spaces for communities, researchers, and cultural institutions to act together in response to environmental and social challenges.
Care for Balkhash is an open initiative dedicated to caring for and preserving the ecosystems of Lake Balkhash. Since 2020, it has engaged communities and institutions in the collective care of the lake basin’s ecosystems, the study of its history, culture, and ecology, and the production of local knowledge for the region’s sustainable futures.
The school is supported by the Embassy of Switzerland in Kazakhstan.
Partner: Aspan Gallery
Media partner: The Steppe
For further information about the school, please contact Antonina van Lier at artcom.platform@gmail.com.
Artcom Platform is a collective of women artists, researchers, and curators founded in Almaty in 2015. Working at the intersection of contemporary art, climate justice, nomadic knowledge, ecology, and community engagement, Artcom develops artistic practices rooted in the steppe and water ecologies of Central Asia.
Over the past ten years, the collective has initiated Care for Balkhash, SOS Taldykol, Art Collider, and Steppe Space. These long-term initiatives bring together artistic projects, interdisciplinary research, and public education, creating spaces for communities, researchers, and cultural institutions to act together in response to environmental and social challenges.
Care for Balkhash is an open initiative dedicated to caring for and preserving the ecosystems of Lake Balkhash. Since 2020, it has engaged communities and institutions in the collective care of the lake basin’s ecosystems, the study of its history, culture, and ecology, and the production of local knowledge for the region’s sustainable futures.
The school is supported by the Embassy of Switzerland in Kazakhstan.
Partner: Aspan Gallery
Media partner: The Steppe
For further information about the school, please contact Antonina van Lier at artcom.platform@gmail.com.
public programme Art Collider x Water Futures together with Almaty Museum of Arts
Public programme
Art Collider x Water Futures
in collaboration with Almaty Museum of Arts
August 9, sunday
15:00 - 20:00
Al-Farabi avenue, 28
in collaboration with Almaty Museum of Arts
August 9, sunday
15:00 - 20:00
Al-Farabi avenue, 28
15:00
Tattigul Kartayeva: Interpreting Wells: An Ethnoarchaeological Study of Traditional Groundwater Use
Tattigul Kartayeva is an ethnographer, ethnologist, and historical anthropologist, Professor in the Department of Archaeology, Ethnology, and Museology at al-Farabi Kazakh National University, and Candidate of Historical Sciences.
This lecture explores traditional methods of engaging with groundwater in the steppe and arid regions of Kazakhstan, considering wells as carriers of ecological knowledge and cultural memory. Drawing on ethnographic and archaeological research, Tattigul Kartayeva will discuss the diversity of traditional wells, the technologies used to build them, water-use practices, and the knowledge of nomadic and semi-nomadic communities that has allowed life and movement in arid landscapes for centuries. The lecture invites us to see wells as part of a cultural landscape, holding the memory of a centuries-long relationship between people, water, and the steppe.
16:30
Discussion. Hydro-Cosmology in Kazakhstan: Art, Ecology, and Infrastructures of Care
with Aigerim Kapar, Inga Lāce, Assiya Baqdaulet,
and Bridget Peak
and Bridget Peak
Bringing together curatorial and artistic research perspectives, the discussion examines how water has been conceptualised, represented, and contested in modern and contemporary art from Kazakhstan. It traces artistic engagements with water—from local ecological knowledge and Soviet-era depictions of rivers, lakes, and industrial modernisation to recent practices that foreground the environmental crisis and memory. Water emerges as a site where competing narratives intersect: as a resource and commodity, as a carrier of cultural and cosmological meaning, and as a medium through which artists address the legacies of colonial infrastructure, extraction, and ecological degradation.
Focusing on water bodies and aquatic landscapes—particularly the Aral Sea, the Caspian Sea, and Lake Balkhash—the discussion explores how changing aquatic environments reveal broader hydrosocial processes and evolving relationships between communities, ecosystems, and water. Drawing on museum collections, Kazakh cinema, and long-term artistic initiatives, the panel proposes water as a framework for understanding questions of identity, care, responsibility, and planetary interdependence.
Aigerim Kapar (Artcom Platform)
This talk examines Lake Balkhash within the Ili–Balkhash basin as a hydrosocial system shaped by intersecting histories of Soviet colonial industrialization, post-independence extractive processes and ongoing climate pressures. It approaches the lake as a relational environment where water, memory, and power are continuously reconfigured through infrastructural interventions, ecological change, and everyday practices. The concept of hydrocosmology is developed to foreground water as a carrier of cultural knowledge and relational practices, drawing on nomadic epistemologies, embodied observation, and oral traditions that remain embedded in the steppe and lake environments. Drawing on the long-term initiative Care for Balkhash, the paper explores how care operates as an infrastructural practice that reconnects fragmented hydrocommunities and enables forms of translation between local knowledge and institutional governance.
Inga Lāce (Curator, Almaty Museum of Arts)
This talk looks at paintings from natural landscapes to industrial scenes, exploring how water has been represented in modern and contemporary art from Kazakhstan. From depictions of rivers, lakes, and the steppe’s scarce water sources in Soviet-era painting to works celebrating industry on rivers and lakes, to more conceptual and critical approaches in contemporary practices, water emerges as both material and symbol of shifting historical and artistic contexts. Bringing together works from the collections of Almaty Museum of Arts, alongside broader regional practices, the presentation proposes water as a lens through which to understand the entanglement of landscape, identity, and history in Kazakhstan.
Dr. Assiya Baqdaulet (Film Scholar)
Water occupies a complex symbolic and aesthetic role in Kazakh cinema, functioning as both a material presence and a metaphorical device through which filmmakers explore identity, memory, and environmental transformation. This talk examines how water is represented across key works of Kazakh film, from the late Soviet period to contemporary productions, situating these depictions within broader cultural and ecological contexts of the Central Asian steppe. In Kazakh cinema, water bodies often appear in tension with the dominant landscape of steppe. Rivers, lakes, and seas—are not merely geographic features but the unknown landscapes of inner worlds, as well as loss and transition. At the same time, water functions as a medium of introspection and spiritual reflection. In several films, scenes set near and under water mark moments of personal transformation or existential pause, aligning with broader poetic traditions in Central Asian art. Overall, the representation of water in Kazakh cinema reveals a layered visual language in which environmental, historical, and philosophical concerns converge.
Bridget Peak is a graduate of the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at MIT. Her research interests relate to the inheritance of extractive industries in contemporary artistic practices. Taking inspiration from the munadara tradition of poetry, her recent research employs binarism as a heuristic, unsettling the conceptual dichotomization of a pearling era and oil modernity through attention to their period of overlap in the early twentieth century. She was Co-Editor of Thresholds: Record (MIT Press, 2026) and has written on art, architecture, and literature for The Markaz Review, Asymptote Journal, AGSI, and others.
Focusing on water bodies and aquatic landscapes—particularly the Aral Sea, the Caspian Sea, and Lake Balkhash—the discussion explores how changing aquatic environments reveal broader hydrosocial processes and evolving relationships between communities, ecosystems, and water. Drawing on museum collections, Kazakh cinema, and long-term artistic initiatives, the panel proposes water as a framework for understanding questions of identity, care, responsibility, and planetary interdependence.
Aigerim Kapar (Artcom Platform)
This talk examines Lake Balkhash within the Ili–Balkhash basin as a hydrosocial system shaped by intersecting histories of Soviet colonial industrialization, post-independence extractive processes and ongoing climate pressures. It approaches the lake as a relational environment where water, memory, and power are continuously reconfigured through infrastructural interventions, ecological change, and everyday practices. The concept of hydrocosmology is developed to foreground water as a carrier of cultural knowledge and relational practices, drawing on nomadic epistemologies, embodied observation, and oral traditions that remain embedded in the steppe and lake environments. Drawing on the long-term initiative Care for Balkhash, the paper explores how care operates as an infrastructural practice that reconnects fragmented hydrocommunities and enables forms of translation between local knowledge and institutional governance.
Inga Lāce (Curator, Almaty Museum of Arts)
This talk looks at paintings from natural landscapes to industrial scenes, exploring how water has been represented in modern and contemporary art from Kazakhstan. From depictions of rivers, lakes, and the steppe’s scarce water sources in Soviet-era painting to works celebrating industry on rivers and lakes, to more conceptual and critical approaches in contemporary practices, water emerges as both material and symbol of shifting historical and artistic contexts. Bringing together works from the collections of Almaty Museum of Arts, alongside broader regional practices, the presentation proposes water as a lens through which to understand the entanglement of landscape, identity, and history in Kazakhstan.
Dr. Assiya Baqdaulet (Film Scholar)
Water occupies a complex symbolic and aesthetic role in Kazakh cinema, functioning as both a material presence and a metaphorical device through which filmmakers explore identity, memory, and environmental transformation. This talk examines how water is represented across key works of Kazakh film, from the late Soviet period to contemporary productions, situating these depictions within broader cultural and ecological contexts of the Central Asian steppe. In Kazakh cinema, water bodies often appear in tension with the dominant landscape of steppe. Rivers, lakes, and seas—are not merely geographic features but the unknown landscapes of inner worlds, as well as loss and transition. At the same time, water functions as a medium of introspection and spiritual reflection. In several films, scenes set near and under water mark moments of personal transformation or existential pause, aligning with broader poetic traditions in Central Asian art. Overall, the representation of water in Kazakh cinema reveals a layered visual language in which environmental, historical, and philosophical concerns converge.
Bridget Peak is a graduate of the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at MIT. Her research interests relate to the inheritance of extractive industries in contemporary artistic practices. Taking inspiration from the munadara tradition of poetry, her recent research employs binarism as a heuristic, unsettling the conceptual dichotomization of a pearling era and oil modernity through attention to their period of overlap in the early twentieth century. She was Co-Editor of Thresholds: Record (MIT Press, 2026) and has written on art, architecture, and literature for The Markaz Review, Asymptote Journal, AGSI, and others.
19:00
Echoes of Water
sound performance by Anuar Kaldekhan
sound performance by Anuar Kaldekhan
Anuar Kaldekhan is an independent Kazakh musician, composer, and sound artist whose work is rooted in the traditional philosophy of küy. Through guitar, voice, traditional instruments such as the dombra, qobyz, and sibyzgy, together with electronics and improvisation, he has developed a distinctive sonic language that bridges ancestral memory and contemporary expression.
An improvised sound performance inspired by water as a source of memory, movement, and listening. Through evolving textures of sound, silence, and resonance, the performance invites the audience to experience water not as an image, but as a living presence in constant transformation.
Art Collider x Water Futures
