Danarti issue twelve is dedicated to Davit Kakabadze’s sketches of the ornaments of Georgian heritage. This small part of the artist’s legacy sheds light not only onto his interests and methodology of research, but also on artistic methods and specificities of the medieval art and art of the avant-garde. The so called “Picture Making”* or studying pictures, which could be considered as classical and scientific methods of arranging objects – either within a genre or across multiple genres – often implies elusive relations, while also being characterized by quiet lucidity. In our attempt to read the forms and methods of the art of the past in the light of today we have talked with two contemporary artists of different positions. Relating to the artists or the artistic and scientific methods of the past and the present, reading history, multiplicity of light, time and space can resemble a repeated and, at the same time, unrepeatable plexus.

* D. Kakbadze, A. Kirilova, E. Lasson-Spirova, P. Skovitinov, P. Filonov, Made Pictures, 1914 

Edited by Elene Abashidze, Irine Jorjadze 

Where am i? I am in a Garden.

There is a Garden.

 Alejandra Pizarnik

Danarti Issue 11 turned out to be quite vast. Works of the original language and their Georgian translations occupy the main part of the texts in print, instead of including their international English translations. As a small series of publications of a small budget, Danarti cannot afford to buy English translations from big international publishing houses. Therefore, for most of the works, we have included texts in their original languages. Thanks to the support from the family members of authors and translators, the copyright issues were solved and we were given the texts in their original appearance for free. This issue is mostly about support. It is also about pain and being and working alone or collectively and those vulnerable opportunities, which do not exist without the sensations listed above. The emotional language of the works issued is the illumination, which with equal caution, care, and radicality turns into the most tender friendship and shapes strong support. Together with the support, it takes silence and warmth and also solitude to heal the wounds. This is why this Danarti is to be read under the shadow of a tree. If being alone under a tree lets us become more sensitive towards listening and observation, it will also lead us to understand that pain is not a personal thing. Deep down in our hearts still lives that childish part, which always awaits for kindness.* From under the shadow of the tree, it goes back to the garden, where apart from the sun, flowers and leaves find support within each other.

*Simone Weil,  La Personne et le Sacré, 1933

Edited by Irine Jorjadze

The issue is commissioned by Lisa Offermann in collaboration with LC Queisser, Tbilisi for a group show I Do Speak Landscape, (November 22 - January 26, 2018) Braunsfelder Familly Collection, Cologne, Germany.

Text - Elene Abashidze
Image - Nanka Dolidze

Tbilisi Style is our first color and image-based issue. 

It is dedicated to the Tbilisi contemporary style, which is quickly disappearing due to the massive gentrification policies.

Contributions:

Ketuta Alexi-Meskhishvili

Elene Abashidze

Ana Chorgolashvili

Nanka Dolidze

Andro Eradze

Lado Lomitashvili

Florian Meisenberg

Nata Sopromadze

Anna Tsitsishvili

Le Mocassine Zippe

Edited by Elene Abashidze

The eighth issue of Danarti is dedicated to the Tbilisi first architectural biennial Buildings are not enough and responds to its main topic - informal architecture. The Issue gathers works by researchers which respond to the political, economic and cultural context which can be considered as the basis of the so called Architectural Practice, implemented and run by Tbilisi citizens.

Today, Tbilisi Informal Architecture has shaped the city's core character. Most of the city's micro-districts of the late Soviet era contain extensions, garages and storages of different size, form and function. The reason to such phenomena is embedded in the yet unsatisfied needs of the Tbilisi citizens.

Tbilisi Informal Architecture is indeed the hyperlink , which using its unique language tells a story about the city’s recent hostorical experience and perfectly describes the reality, which we share as the citizens of Tbilisi and in which we coexist.

Edited by Ana Chorgolashvili

Twelve Women Gone Missing - A Questionnaire is an alternative to an exhibition catalouge for Twelve Women Gone Missing.

It focuses on the missing gaps and female voice within Contemporary Georgian art historical narrative.

The issue includes questions and answers with artists:

Ketuta Alexi-Meskishvili, Thea Gvetadze, Keti Kapanadze, Anna K.E., Tamara K.E., Salome Machaidze, Sophio Medoidze, Maia Naveriani.

Edited by Elene Abashidze


Cover:
Maia Naveriani,Twelve Women Gone Missing (Women with life belt) and Twelve Women Gone Missing (Red Door) 2001, Coloured pencil.  Courtesy the artist.

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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