Sarah Boulton

Ulijona Odišarija

selected works 2014-2018

edited by Elene Abashidze

Georgia 1990's: Tips on Survival

Hotel Iveria, Tbilisi. The image is found on the internet

'The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the 

new cannot be born.' 

Antonio Gramsci

This issue of Danarti is dedicated to Tbilisi, addressing the changes in the city’s architecture and urban space and attempting to reach to the reasons and conditions behind the pressing urban problems by observing Tbilisi as the carrier of historic memory of a post-soviet city.  

The essays presented in this issue focus on the 20th century, the century that brought crucial transformation for Tbilisi. Under soviet regime the scale of the city expanded significantly changing its appearance and way of life. On the first stage, in the beginning of the 20th century, new centers of the city emerged and historic city center lost its primary function and importance; on the second stage, from the 50’s of the 20th century, the soviet urbanists and architects inspired by the principles of modernism, took upon the rationally planned construction of a 'new' 'soviet' Tbilisi with great enthusiasm. Rayons and micro-rayons - so called 'dormitory districts' - built up with typical block buildings were added to the city. By the end of the 20th century, after collapse of Soviet Union centralized government was dismantled, the city was subjected to spontaneous unplanned transformation. Consequently the city went from absolute control to radically different extremity of 'freedom'. From that critical period onwards modifications of architecture and urban tissue of the city lacking research and understanding of local context became some kind of a tradition. In early 2000s, after the Rose Revolution, control over the built environment went from the hands of inhabitants into the hands of the government. The scale of construction expanded, the interests and participation of inhabitants lost its importance and commercial interests emerged as the new totalitarism.    

The essays in this issue investigate precisely this epoch characterized with controversy attempting to understand its basis.

Edited by Ana Chorgolashvili

Taken as a symbol of the LGBTQ community in Georgia, Bianka Issue is dedicated to the memory of Bianka Shigurova, a transgender woman who passed away earlier in 2016. The issue focuses on the issues around LGBTQ politics today. 

Original printed matter was published in the frames of Tbilisi 16 festival, organized by Kunsthalle Zurich earlier this year. 
Online version is open for new contributions.

Elene Abashidze, editor

Image credits: Nik O Nik, Untitled; 2016

Danarti second issue presents avant-garde texts of the beginning of the XX century. This is an attempt to look at the differences and similarities between Dada movements in Zurich and Tbilisi. Both, Tbilisi and Zurich are the places which sheltered those who fled the First World War and the Bolshevik revolution of 1917. Here they created the space where the cohabitation of artistic polarities, styles, ideas and languages became possible.

Alongside with Dada manifests,  abstract gestures and radical criticism of the contemporary society, the texts explore the relationship between the Western and the Eastern cultures, and examine notions such as religion and magic.

They show their interest not towards the dogmatic and hierarchic systems, but instead towards the 'Apocryphal'. These are the things and events which are not accepted by the culture, but intentionally denied by it.

Georgian avant-garde texts might be considered similarly 'Apocryphal' because of the certain reasons. Here, Avant-garde’s absolute yearning for the futureis met by the past and the endless intersections of different times and spaces. Avant-garde considers itself in the center of everything and 'consciously laughs and expediently spits from above into downward perpendicular direction and in a rectilinear way'.

Edited by Irine Jorjadze

This is Danarti: MEMORY, 

the original issue published in the frames of the project 'Memory', curated by Elene Abashidze, Ana Chorgolashvili and Natuta Bagrationi, held at the CCA- Tbilisi and supported by The Open Society Georgia Foundation in 2011.

The issue is in Georgian language only.

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