Central Asia Futures Conference

 

Join Macaulay Honors College in-person for our first ever Central Asia Futures Conference, curated by Students from The Survey of Central Asia Film and Literature course. The conference features the next generation of path breaking creators in art, film, music and poetry from Central Asia and the Diaspora.

Co-sponsors: Feminist Society and Macaulay Asian-American Pacific Islander Student Society.

To attend in-person, please click the Register Now button above. This conference will also be available for you to join virtually. Please click Attend Virtually button below to register.

 

Opening: Aigerim Myrzakhmet, Founder, Dombra Academy Music [12PM]
Algerim Myrzakhmet will be joining via Zoom

• Aigerim Myrzakhmet is a musician, cultural ambassador, educator, volunteer, and activist for cultural inclusivity and cross-cultural understanding through music. She studied international relations and languages in the U.S. and Kazakhstan. She is a graduate of a music school with Sergei Prokofiev, where she studied the dombra. Aigerim was the leader of orchestras and ensembles and later formed her own ensemble, “Kumbirle.” She initiated the “Dombra Academy” project. She shares Kazakh music and cultural content on social media to raise awareness of this underrepresented region. Aigerim teaches dombra classes and recently formed the first virtual dombra ensemble with participants from eight different countries, ranging in age from 14 to 63. This ensemble received recognition and was featured on major news websites. Aigerim collaborated with the Canadian Embassy and played dombra with the Ambassador for the Nauryz celebration. https://www.instagram.com/dombra.academy/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet&igshid=OGQ5ZDc2ODk2ZA

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Panel 1: Central Asian Artists and Curators [12:10 pm – 1:00 pm]

Moderators: Zarin Syed and Audur Ina Björnsdottir
Panelists will be joining via Zoom and In Person

Aigerim Kapar

• Aigerim Kapar (b. 1987, Almaty – Balkhash) is an interdependent curator, interdisciplinary researcher,  decolonial practitioner, and eco-art activist. Kapar founded Artcom Platform, a Central Asian community-based contemporary art and public engagement organization 2015. She has also been organizing Art Collider, a school where art meets science, bringing communities together, since 2017. Currently, Kapar curates a hybrid reality project Steppe Space, the place for contemporary art and culture of Central Asia, and initiated projects of care for lake ecosystems SOS Taldykol and Balqashqa Qamqor in 2020. Her key previous works include Re-membering: Dialogues of Memories, an international, intergenerational project in memory of survivors and victims of 20th-century political repressions in Kazakhstan (2019), and Time&Astana: After Future, an urban art research and engagement project (2017-2018).

Faina Yunusova

• Faina Yunusova (*1991, Tashkent, UZ) lives and works in Frankfurt (DE). Her work explores digital presence on social media and the creation of diverse virtual identities. She is also engaged in postcolonial studies within Central Asia, focusing on the hybridity and fluidity of cultural identity and self-exoticization. She works with various media, including painting, video, social media, and installation. This year she is participating in the group exhibition at Kunsthalle Bremen Generation, Youth Defies Crisis; the Museum of Modern Art Grand Duc Jean in Luxembourg invites her to workshops “Naqsh: stories, ornaments, and self-acceptance”.  Additionally, she is an active member of the collectives Beyond The Post-Soviet and Steppe Space in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. https://fainayunusova.com/

Farangiz Yusupov

• Farangiz Yusupova is an artist whose work explores ideas of home and inhabited spaces through painting. Born in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, Farangiz immigrated to the U.S. in 2014. She holds a BFA from the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. In the summer of 2018, Farangiz was awarded a scholarship to attend a workshop at Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Aspen, Colorado. Her work was exhibited in numerous group shows such as at FIT Arts and Design Gallery, M. David & Co (Brooklyn, NY), Dodomu Gallery, Liminality Art Space (Long Island City, NY), New York Live Arts (New York, NY), ChaShaMa (New York, NY) and CICA Art Festival (South Korea). Farangiz is a participant in NYFA’s Immigrant Artist Mentorship Program. In 2022, her work was published in Khôra Magazine, Issues 13 – 16. Most recently, she was the artist in residence at the LINE Residency in Austin, TX. Farangiz lives in Brooklyn, NY, and is pursuing her MFA at Hunter College. https://www.farangizyusupova.com/

Gerald Sheffield

• Gerald Euhon Sheffield II (he/him) is an artist and educator living and working in Poughkeepsie, New York. His studio discipline is based in critical and site-specific research, painting and sculpture. Sheffield’s professional background consists of a diversity of institutions and collaborations across borders. He served in the United States Army for eight years as a Visual Communications and Military Intelligence Public Affairs specialist in Paraguay, Guatemala, Brazil, and Kuwait. He deployed to Baghdad, Iraq (2007-2008), working alongside Iraqi civilians and community leaders during the Iraqi Reconstruction Campaign. He received a BFA in Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts, and an MFA in Painting/Printmaking from Yale University. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the United States Armed Forces Meritorious Service Medal, the Alice Kimball English Traveling Fellowship, the JUNCTURE Human Rights Research and Travel Fellowship, and the US Fulbright to Uzbekistan (2019). Recent exhibitions include fables for introverts, NADA House (2022) Artist Residency and Exhibition, Governors Island, New York, and melancholy satire, Steven Zevitas Gallery, Boston Massachusetts (2022). He is a (2022-2023) National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Veteran Fellow. https://gesheffieldii.com/

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Interlude: Siberian Music [12:50 – 1:00pm]

Curators:  Alanna Fields and Marisol Fraguada
Panelist will be joining via Zoom

Theodore Levin 

• Theodore Levin is a longtime student of music, expressive culture, and traditional spirituality in Central Asia and Siberia. As an advocate for music and musicians from other cultures, he has written books, produced recordings, curated concerts and festivals, and contributed to international arts initiatives. During an extended leave from Dartmouth, Levin served as the first executive director of the Silk Road Project, founded by cellist Yo-Yo Ma. He has also served as chair of the Arts and Culture sub-board of the Open Society (Soros) Foundations, and is currently Senior Advisor to the Aga Khan Music Programme, a program of the Aga Khan Trust for Culture. His research and advocacy activities focus on the role of arts and culture in international development, and on the preservation and revitalization of musical heritage. At Dartmouth he regularly teaches courses on world music and American “roots” music. https://faculty-directory.dartmouth.edu/theodore-levin

 

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Panel 2: Afghan Diaspora Poetry [1:00 pm – 2:00 pm]

Moderators: Jane Ekhtman and Sitorabano Hakimjonova
Panelists will be joining via Zoom and In Person

Aria Aber

• Aria Aber was born and raised in Germany and is currently based in Los Angeles, California. Her debut book, the poetry collection Hard Damage (University of Nebraska Press, 2019), won the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry and a 2020 Whiting Award. Her poems are forthcoming or have appeared in The New Yorker, New Republic, The Yale Review, and elsewhere. A graduate of the NYU MFA in Creative Writing, she holds awards and fellowships from Kundiman, the Wisconsin Institute of Creative Writing, and the Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University. Her first novel, GOOD GIRL, is forthcoming from Hogarth (US) and Bloomsbury (UK) in 2025 and will be translated into six languages.  https://www.ariaaber.com/

Sahar Muradi

• Sahar Muradi is the author of the collection OCTOBERS, selected by Naomi Shihab Nye for the 2022 Donald Hall Prize for Poetry and a finalist for the National Poetry Series. She is the author of the chapbooks [ G A T E S ], Ask Hafiz, A Garden Beyond My Hand, and A Ritual in X Movements. She is co-editor, with Seelai Karzai, of EMERGENC(Y): Writing Afghan Lives Beyond the Forever War, An Anthology of Writing from Afghanistan and its Diaspora, and, with Zohra Saed, of One Story, Thirty Stories: An Anthology of Contemporary Afghan American Literature. Sahar lives in New York City, where she directs the arts education programs at City Lore and dearly believes in the bottom of the rice pot. www.saharmuradi.com

Mina Zohal

• Mina Zohal holds a BA in Writing and Literature from Naropa University and an MFA in Poetry from Bard College. She is the recipient of the Zora Neale Hurston award and the Margaret Randall Poetry Prize. Her chapbooks include Narenj ha from Belladonna press and Stalker from Three Weeks Press. She is the co-editor of The collected Poems of Anselm Hollo from Coffee House Press and co-editor of The Selected Translations of Anselm Hollo (forthcoming 2025) also from CHP. She is currently working on a manuscript titled Parwana. https://apogeejournal.org/2015/06/17/baaraan-e-digar-by-mina-zohal/

Hajar Hussaini

• Hajar Hussaini is a poet from occupied Kabul. She translates Afghan literature and lives in Iowa City. Her first book of poems is Disbound, University of Iowa Press, 2022. Her poems scrutinize the social, political, and historical traces inherited from one’s language that retrieve a personal history between countries (Afghanistan and the United States) and languages (Persian and English) constantly disrupted and distorted by war, governments, and media.  https://uipress.uiowa.edu/books/disbound

 

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Panel 3: Contemporary Central Asian Films [2:00 pm – 2:45 pm]

Moderators: Ariana Gaytan and Tisha Mahbuba
Panelists will be joining via Zoom

Anisa Sabiri

• Anisa Sabiri is a London-based self-taught filmmaker from Tajikistan, focused on concepts of identity and memory and searching for an indigenous Central Asian language in cinema. For several years, she worked as a tour guide in the Pamir mountains while building her profile as an avant-garde novelist, photographer, and activist before making her shorts Nolai Tanbur / The Crying of Tanbur (2018) and Az Alla To Vobalam / Rhythms of Lost Time (2021), featured at the Busan International Film Festival, Dokumenta-15, BOZAR, Asian Film Archive and other platforms and festivals worldwide. https://apparatusjournal.net/index.php/apparatus/article/view/358/656

Timur Karpov

• Timur Karpov is the director of the documentary Cotton 100% (2021). Timur is a Central Asian documentary photographer, film producer, and cultural entrepreneur committed to human rights, environmental justice, and sustainable development. He has been working extensively as a project lead, film producer, and art manager in the cultural and creative industry, and non-profit sector for more than 15 years in Uzbekistan. Timur is a go-to resource person for a number of international organizations and companies in program development, institutional networking, multimedia production, and community outreach to civil society, social enterprises, and cultural projects all across Uzbekistan.

Aiganym Mukhamejan 

• Born in 1999 in Shu, Kazakhstan, Aiganym Mukhamejan is a multimedia artist and director whose work explores the complexities of Kazakh society. Through self portraiture and personal narrative, she uses irony to comment on social, economic, and cultural changes. Mukhamejan’s art interweaves neo-folklore with contemporary political discourse, exploring themes such as ancient celebrations as an integral part of modern Kazakh culture, the revival and spread of the Kazakh language, feminism, ecology, decolonization, post-internet culture, and hybrid religious beliefs. Her diverse practice includes video, photography, performance, objects, memes, and more. Aiganym currently lives and works in Shu, Kazakhstan.  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGAW3FacbHvtZJ3q7U82tfw/videos

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Keynote Speaker: Selbi Jumayeva, Grassroots Scholar [2:45 pm-2:50 pm]

Selbi Jumayeva will be joining via Zoom

• Selbi Jumayeva (b.1986,  Ashgabat) is a grassroots practitioner  with over 20 years of civil society leadership and movement-building expertise in Central Asia and the larger Eurasian neighborhood. She is also a cultural producer, collaborative curator, and documentary artist.  Selbi is currently co-founding strategic director of the Central Asian feminist organization FemAgora and collectively establishing the Central Asia Fund together with Leyla Zuleikha Makhmudova.  Previously she founded and co-coordinated Bishkek Feminist Collective SQ with Galina Sokolova (2009-2017), co-created UNiTE Network in Kyrgyzstan with Umutai Dauletova in 2012, advised founding and establishment of the 139 Documentary Center in Uzbekistan (2019-2021), directed strategy on environment and society at Artcom Platform in Kazakhstan (2020-2022).  She is currently studying planetary boundaries as part of her Environmental Science MS at IU O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs and continues to research human-mediated relationships with and in desert ecosystems and planetary-scale entanglements as part of her research design project Dusts in collaboration with Alisa Verbina.  As an artist, Selbi is committed to collecting and curating her kinship’s everyday narratives, memories, and artifacts in Turkmenistan. Her documentary work with Central Asian quotidien pushes and pulls her throughout bazar ecosystems, toý practices, and contemporary food and folk art across the region.  https://www.linkedin.com/in/selbi-jumayeva/
  https://www.instagram.com/s.jumayewa/

 

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Panel 4: Central Asian Comedy and Satire [2:45 pm – 3:15 pm]

Moderators: Angel Arias and Finn Westcott
In-Person

Natan Badalov

• Natan Badalov is a New York-based comedian and writer. He immigrated from Uzbekistan to the United States in the early 90’s. Since then, he has been featured on Adult Swim, New York Comedy Festival, Chosen Comedy Festival, Funnymmigrants Comedy Festival, Laughing Devil Comedy Festival, as well as many others. Natan created and wrote ‘Park West’, an animated web series about his time in yeshiva. He also co-starred and wrote ‘Heartbreakers’, a web series about two roommates that help each other navigate their breakups and find love. His work has been featured on Channel 101 NY, American Jewish Film Festival, Alternative Film Festival, Flickfair Film Festival, Polish International Film Festival, and ANIMATOR – a Polish Animated Film Competition, Smiles Film Festival, and Animae Digital Film Festival.  https://www.natanbadalov.com/

 

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Closing: Haleh Liza Gafori  [3:15 pm – 3:30 pm]

Curators: Alanna Fields and Marisol Fraguada
Haleh Liza Gafori  will be joining via Zoom

https://www.halehliza.com/

Haleh Liza Gafori is a translator, vocalist, poet, and educator born in New York City of Iranian/Persian descent. She grew up hearing recitations of Persian poetry and has maintained and deepened her connection through singing and translating the poetry of various Persian poets. Her book, GOLD, translations of poems by Rumi, the 13th century sage and mystic. GOLD was released in 2022 by New York Review Books/NYRB Classics, distributed by Penguin Random House.

Poet and long-time Chancellor at the Academy of American Poets, Marilyn Hacker describes GOLD as, “the work of someone who is at once an acute and enamored reader of the original Farsi text, a dedicated miner of context and backstory, and a marvelous poet in English,” while Pádraig Ó Tuama, host of On Being’s podcast Poetry Unbound calls her translations, “Gorgeous, fluent, faithful…rendering Rumi’s voice on the page with an original integrity that is as skilled as it is unforgettable.” GOLD was chosen as a Favorite Book of 2022 by Maria Popova at the Marginalian, and declared one of those books “bound to go on nourishing generations to come.”  https://www.halehliza.com/

*Music Session Curators: Alanna Fields and Marisol Fraguada

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