DREAM YURT PROJECT

Dream Yurt, A Socially Engaged Interactive Community Project was founded by Mongolian Culture and Heritage Center of Colorado in 2017 and had its first project debut at Redline Contemporary Art Center’s 48 Hour Summit in summer 2018.

The Dream Yurt Project, interactive community art workshop is available for rent at your next event. Contact us for further information.

BACKGROUND

The Mongolian Culture and Heritage Center of Colorado is a non-profit international US organization founded in 2003 by artist Tsogo Mijid. MCAHCC is committed to the preservation, cultivation, and advancement of the rich Mongolian culture and heritage through cross-cultural educational exchange for the greater Mongolian and surrounding world communities.

ABSTRACT

The “Dream Yurt” project is designed to eradicate social barriers through the power of art and community, and in place celebrate kinship across our differences. By engaging/challenging systems of power, the project aims to transform systems of structured oppression and displacement while celebrating diversity, promoting social activism, equal justice, and inspiring social change.

ABOUT

Movement as time/space/change, movement as migration, movement as nomad, globalization, urbanization. Following Colorado / Denver’s on-going rapid growth, expanding diversity, and to a larger extent – in face of the globalizing world – gentrification, displacement and discord rampantly follow.

As direct counter response and antidote/remedy to this dizzying contemporary phenomena of movement, we at the Mongolian Culture and Heritage Center of Colorado propose to conduct a uniquely eccentric, locally art-specific, multi-faceted art workshop and performance entitled “Dream Yurt” project.

WHAT

Yurt in Mongolian means home. The Mongolian yurt has been a distinctive feature of nomadic life in Central Asia for over three thousand years. Mongolian yurts are ecologically friendly and one of the world’s most practically designed habitations. The construction and decoration of a yurt is infused in history and cultural/folk symbolism that range from equality, unity, strength and protection.

A traditional yurt is a portable round tent structure covered with felt and designed to be easily dismantled. The yurt frame structure comprises of expanding wall sections, a doorframe, roof poles, wheel crown, and two columns inside to support the roof. The roof structure is self-standing and relies on the support of 108 poles that resemble the rays of the sun. Complete construction takes around 2 hours or less depending on the amount of assembly support.

The Dream Yurt project represents/implies a conceptual, symbolic space; a domain where different cultures, communities, and dreams are housed/safeguarded under one unifying “circular” roof, where a wealth of knowledge can be shared/exchanged with each others as part of Colorado’s rich and diverse cultural offerings.

The project is heavily interactive and depends on the local communities participation to help build a three hundred year old ancient Turkic-Mongolian yurt structure, with particular emphasis on erecting the roof. The Dream Yurt project is designed to create positive contemplative and social impact on the individual and community through a combination of game, creative “wish ribbon” making workshop, and through the performative act of constructing a yurt.

YURT CONSTRUCTION

The second half of the project will conclude with the symbolically performative process of constructing the yurt. The yurt can be constructed either indoors or outdoors. The community will be instructed to assemble the inner frame structure of the yurt by merging together the walls and roof. Afterwards, participants will be invited to come inside and to tie/attach their “wish ribbons” onto any which part of the 108 roof poles. The act of tying the ribbons becomes performative, anthropological. The end product should result in a bouquet of colorful ribbons draping under the roof.

MISSION

The Dream Yurt project intends to eradicate social barriers through the power of art and community, and in place to celebrate kinship across our differences. By incorporating elements of time and space, when the yurt, a foreign cultural artifact is allegorically situated into modern society and erected at specifically gentrified/marginalized locations in the city – an intentionally binary/oppositional atmosphere/environment is created where two opposing structures/domains start to contrast/contradict one another. But through this very paradoxical action and visualization, the issues of displacement, marginalization, urbanization and gentrification are made prominent and intentionally highlighted while simultaneously, the physical presence of a Mongolian yurt presents a hub of “visual curiosity” where the surrounding community is welcomed to come inside; to come together and merge.

The Dream Yurt project has an open door policy. Throughout the duration of erection, the community is invited to participate in the project at anytime and to partake in the cultivation/exchange of cultures, customs and knowledge; to unify through the celebration of the old and new.

The Dream Yurt project engages and challenges systems of power, and through the process, transform systems of structured oppression. The project explores the notion of urbanization, globalization, and displacement while celebrating diversity, promoting social activism, equal justice, and inspiring social change.