New article by Oksana Zaporozhets and Alexandra Kolesnik

A new article by Associate Professor of School of Sociology Oksana Zaporozhets and Senior Research Fellow of IGITI Alexandra Kolesnik was published in Journal of Cultural Geography (Vol. 37, Issue 1, 2020). The title of the article is "Music geography in Russia: non-auratic places and institutionalization 'in becoming'". The full text is available on the journal's website.

Abstract
This paper focuses on the Tsoi Wall in Moscow, an iconic place on Russia's music map that appeared in Moscow in 1990 in memory of the cult Soviet rock musician Viktor Tsoi, to develop a framework for studying non-auratic music place – that is, places that are not connected with the biographies of musicians or musical events, but emerge directly from the experiences of visitors and fans. These places are constantly negotiated and only lightly formalized, but are nevertheless enduring. To analyze this type of place, we propose a concept of institutionalization “in becoming”. The case of the Tsoi Wall reveals that light formalization (vague and changing positions and rules, and openness to different interpretations of a place and ways of using it) leads to the recognition of the place as a significant one and to its popularity. We put institutionalization “in becoming” in a wider context and juxtapose it with well-studied musical places in Europe and the US.

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