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About project | Addresses

To participants of International Project “Great Silk Way. West - East dialogues”

For centuries art is a sphere of free international and interhuman relations; it easily overcomes States, language and religious barries. Art works, - while being time envoys reflected in symbols and signs, - are read easily because the language of art is universal and it does not need translation. Your project demonstrates tendency to peace and respect to another culture.

I hope that your action will demonstrate very important role of art in the international dialogue, and will promote improvement of mutual understanding between people of different nationalitites, religions and cultures, and will become remarkable event at the public-political and cultural scene.

Yours sincerely,

Koichiro Matsuura, Director - General of UNESCO

Presidential Address to the Participants of the International Project West-East Dialogs: Great Silk Road

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,

With great pleasure and an open heart I welcome your project “International Project West-East Dialogs: Great Silk Road.”

Such a significant international action of great artists bears a brilliant witness to consolidating role, belonging to an Art.

I am emphasizing the notion that in the beginning of the third millennium the global society approaches with attention and hope an understanding of the unique talent of every ethnos and value of the spiritual richness of the wise East and pragmatic West.

I think that the dialog of cultures helps link the present with the future and overcome all kinds of social barriers and prejudices. Such interaction also updates a link of times. The Great Silk Road has not disappeared from this planet, but is again a live artery of the positive development in the world's spaces.

Kyrgyz artists have made significant contribution to this action; they expanded the form and geography of communication with their colleagues from other countries for the elaboration of new developments and mutual enrichment of cultures.

Askar Akaev, President of the Kyrgyz Republic

Dear Devotees of Art,

Just as it had before, the Ancient Silk Road today plays a role that connects different people and cultures through trade, history and art connected. Since time immemorial, trade caravans, pilgrims and people thirsting for adventure have endured mountains and deserts to connect China, Central Asia and Europe. Continuing this tradition, the international project “West-East Dialogues: The Great Silk Road” helps lay a new silk road, on which is displayed the creativity of artists from Germany, Japan and Central Asia.

From the very beginning and in 2000, the German Embassy in Bishkek supported this cultural exchange that is the Great Silk Road: West-East Divan, a term that dates back to the works of the great German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, whose work 200 years aimed to bridge East and West.

In this way, the exhibition “West-East Dialogues: The Great Silk Road”, which will take place in autumn 2004, is both a continuation of an ongoing project and a stand-alone venture with its own
goals. The fulfillment of this project, which is to gather different artists, will dissolve the borders
between East and West. The project aims to present art as the link between different peoples, cultures and religions.

In supporting this project, Germany aims to lay an enduring creative foundation for political and
economic contacts between people who are part of the Great Silk Road. Let this foundation thrive
through the century as has the Great Silk Road.

I sincerely thank the artist and participants of this exhibition for their contributions to and achievements in this venture.

Klaus Achenbach

Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany

From the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Aleksji

I express the hope that your intended event will further the development of cultural and other multilateral ties between the peoples of Russia , Kyrgyzstan , Germany , and other countries of the broad, diverse Eurasian continent. Such ties, enriching all nations, are of utmost importance today, when those striving for peace, concord, and mutual understanding

between peoples of different nationality, religion, and culture must decisively oppose enmity and separation.

May the Almighty prosper the work of the organizers and participants in all good beginnings.

With great respect,

Aleksji, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia .