The aesthetics of nomadism in kazakh visual culture: based on the monograph “nomads. Aesthetics”

Abstract

This article examines the philosophical and methodological foundations for studying the visual aspects
of nomadic culture, in the context of analysing the findings of the first comprehensive domestic study, *Nomads:
Aesthetics* (1976). The reference to this book as a theoretical and methodological foundation for studying the visual
aspects of traditional Kazakh culture has its historical context and justification. Firstly, in the year of its publication
(1976), this work was not released, having been classified as ideologically ‘dangerous’, and was destroyed. Subsequently,
a rather abridged and, to some extent, revised version was restored and published in 1993.
Fifty years ago, the authors of this collective work, recognising the need to articulate their own ideas within their
culture and to interpret their history in terms of their own worldview, set out to clarify the methodological framework,
correlative to the typological, cultural-historical and civilisational characteristics of traditional Kazakh culture in terms of
its aesthetic foundations. The content of the book, like any fundamental classical work, has not lost its relevance, as it
laid the foundations for the formation of a coherent, aesthetically grounded picture of traditional Kazakh culture, in which
the visual world is directly linked to nomadism as a cultural type.
In the course of a comprehensive analysis of the book a number of key concepts relating to the aesthetics of the
visual in traditional Kazakh culture were identified: ‘spiritual universe’, ‘the nomad and space’, ‘the path as a symbol of
knowledge’, and ‘the search for harmony’, though the theoretical and methodological potential of the source under
analysis is by no means limited to these. In the process of examining the typological characteristics of nomadic visual
culture, the author puts forward a hypothesis regarding the features of ‘heterotopia of imagery’ as a property of the
aesthetic exploration of cultural space, which combines the meanings of ‘space of visual images’, ‘alternative visual
spaces’ and ‘heterotopia of visual representation’.
Key words: visual culture, the aesthetics of nomadism, the spiritual universe, the nomad and space, the heterotopia
of imagery.

Key words: visual culture, the aesthetics of nomadism, the spiritual universe, the nomad and space, the heterotopia of imagery.