20 Oct 2014

Tbilisi InSights goes Tbilisi at Gallery Nectar

The project Tbilisi InSights was originally conceptualized for the Georgian Pavilion at the 14th Architecture Biennale in Venice and then has been selected by the International-Georgian Committee [www.culture.gov.ge/topicdetals-11.9514.html]. The jury decision however was afterwards not taken into account by the Georgian Ministry of Culture, Tbilisi InSights was not commissioned and the Georgian participation at the 14th Architecture Biennale in Venice was canceled [See Tbilisi InSights' statement regarding the process: art-leaks.org/2014/03/23/tbilisi-insights-collective-statement/].

NOW TBILISI INSIGHTS GOES TBILISI!

Tbilisi InSights aims to outline a non-linear, personal perspective on the transformations of daily life in Modern Georgia. Architecture, when not explored as a merely functional assemblage of speechless elements which compose inhabited spaces, incorporates life, therefore Tbilisi InSights considers, as the very foundation of architecture, people. People who need places to live and work, who build and envision, who inhabit and change the given and future architectural structure.
Hence the project presents glimpses into personal, unintentional archives of those living within Tbilisi's architecture, a collection of various media and different forms, yet extending this insight into the past to imaginary concepts and critical alternatives of living within the modern city today.

The individual tends to be set in an inadequate dichotomy of private and public spaces which we are made to believe are for the people's good, yet state structures as well as those created by private enterprises disrupt not only the understandings of dichotomous space, but even more so interactions within. These are phenomena to be observed in building tendencies throughout the city as well as in funding opportunities and decision making for artistic and architectural projects, generating a process shaped by local but also Western financing connected to their respective agendas only, leaving the city with blanks when it comes to a common envisioning of its future.

The exhibition will open on October 9, 2014 at 6 p.m. at Gallery Nectar in Tbilisi and will run through October 30, 2014.


Tbilisi InSights Collective also invites to a discussion on 'Public, Private, Other Spaces?' with Nini Palavandishvili (curator, GeoAIR), Lali Pertenava (art researcher/critic), Ruska Mirzikashvili (architect, Urban Reactor/Docomomo) purporting the parameters of Tbilisi InSights' concept as starting points for our conversation.
'Public, Private, Other Spaces?' will hence focus on the issues of
- the private as well as the personal in possible and yet inadequate opposition to the PUBLIC
- ARCHIVING as a means to think and retain the voluble traces (from the past)
- FUNDING agendas operating for a homogenous, controlled cultural scene instead of risking unpredictability

The discussion will take place on October 11, .2014 at 7 p.m. at Gallery Nectar.


After the exhibition the collective will work together with London based P.E.A.R magazine [pearmagazineuk.blogspot.com/] on a special issue, additionally inviting other contributors. The publication will be launched in Tbilisi and London in Spring 2015.


The project is conceptualized and initiated by the Tbilisi InSights collective after deciding to proceed with an adapted version of the proposed project for the Georgian Pavilion for the 14th Architecture Biennale in Venice. Defeated in all efforts to secure funding for the adapted project, Tbilisi InSights is presented between concept, process and imagination.
The collective consists of four Tbilisi based members: Public Space with a Roof artist Tamuna Chabashvili, anthropologist Data Chigholashvili, architect and Tbilisi Moare researcher Gvantsa Nikolaishvili and artist and curator Katharina Stadler. Italy based curator and theorist Lucrezia Cippitelli has been invited for collaboration.

Contact: tbilisi_insights@yahoo.com
Website: tbilisiinsights.wordpress.com/