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Encountering the multiple semiotics of marshrutka surfaces – what can marshrutka decorations and advertisements tell us about its everyday actors?

ABSTRACT Marshrutka minibuses are in charge of providing daily transport services for millions of passengers in the post-Soviet space. In doing so, they shape the perception of public sphere and contribute to the production of community. In this sense, the interior design of marshrutka minibuses contribute to a number of publicly negotiated discourse formations on collective identity patterns, such as nationhood, memory culture, as well as folkloristic values. Drawing on empirical evidence from Kyrgyzstan and Russia, we try to deconstruct multiple layers of marshrutka signposts. In their heterogeneity and contrariness, the marshrutka semiotics unveil the minibuses as a place of encounter and conflict, where fluid social institutions are consistently calling for negotiation. Triggered by the question how cultural trajectories of identity are performed, we will choose a number of marshrutka messages like official licenses, advertisements or patriotic proverbs and analyse them in the local setting of application. The expected insight of this paper is twofold: firstly, we contextualise societal struggles, which are reproduced in everyday marshrutka encounter and secondly, we contribute to a better understanding of the mobility practice as such, pointing to general deficits in the broader marshrutka enterprise, read out from visualised statements in the social space of marshrutka.