Talks & Lectures

Resynthesising the Traditional

Talks, lecture-performances, workshops, and other discursive formats explore artistic strategies, aesthetic journeys, tools and innovations, as well as socio-political contexts grounding explorations into the traditional. Below is a selection of audio and video recordings of past discussions, hosted on our YouTube or Soundcloud pages.

Aisha Orazbayeva, Rustem Myrzakhmetov, Şüräle in conversation with Anuar Duisenbinov

Resynthesising the Traditional

In this conversation the curator and poet Anuar Duisenbinov will host a discussion on Resynthesising the Traditional with Aisha Orazbayeva, Rustem Myrzakhmetov, and Şüräle on how cultural memory and lived environment have gradually emerged to shape their practices, even when they did not set out to explicitly engage with tradition. The conversation took place within the II Korkut Sonic Arts Triennale at the Tselinny Center for Contemporary Culture in Almaty, and was presented together with CTM Festival under the theme of Resynthesising the Traditional.

Talk by Anuar Duisenbinov

Desacralise to preserve. Falling in love with traditional culture as a guide to the future.

This talk closed the CTM 2026 Discourse series. By weaving examples of Barsakelmes, a project that re-examines myths around a former island in the now-vanished Aral Sea through the perspective of the ancient Central Asian legend of Nurtole; the ui kuii project, and interviews with Kazakhstani musicians and researchers, the Kazakh poet Anuar Duisenbinov examines the tension between preserving and breaking open past knowledge. Who is allowed to talk about tradition today? Do some practitioners have more authority to engage with it than others? Can traditions change, and how? On the contrary, how are traditions preserved, and who preserves them? These questions can provoke many doubts, which Duisenbinov will address through a story braiding several testimonies of love.

Adela Mede, Marta Forsberg, and Nindya Nareswari in conversation with Ján Solčáni

Folk Forward – Resounding the Roots Through a Contemporary Voice

This panel discussion hosted within CTM 2025 Festival brought together three distinctive artists: musician Adela Mede, whose work crosses linguistic and socio-cultural boundaries through Slovak, Hungarian, and English voices; the sound experimentalist Marta Forsberg; and light artist Nindya Nareswari. Together, they shared their collective approach to the resynthesis of folklore, challenging its notion as a static form.