March 2006 pilot project: ‘Georgia here we come!’

Organised by ERforS (Marjolijn Dijkman and Maarten Van den Eynde) and Expodium Utrecht in collaboration with GeoAIR
www.enoughroomforspace.org and www.expodium.nl

Responding to the call of new Georgian President Saakashvilli, ERforS and Expodium organize a site specific project. This call was for Georgians, who have studied and worked abroad, to return to Georgia and help to rebuild the country. We want to respond to this call too and investigate how art could contribute to this quest for freedom and democracy. Should they change something and if so what and how? What is freedom and what is democracy? For the project it is important to have an open view towards the situation and not have a fixed idea about Georgia at the moment. The interaction with artists and locals is important to understand more about Georgia and it's future. With small interventions and works in the public sphere we want to create changes and stimulate the use of committed art.

Participants :

Daan van den Berg (NL) www.rotterdamsekunstenaars.nl
Stefaan Dheedene (BE) www.stefaandheedene.com
Marjolijn Dijkman (NL) www.marjolijndijkman.com
Orgacom (NL) Teike Asselbergs/Elias Tieleman www.orgacom.nl
Eric Robertson (USA) Center for the Advancement of Recreation and Leisure http://carl.typepad.com
Suze May Sho (NL) no website. (Rossel Heijmen, Jessica Helbach, Connie Nijman)
Maarten Vanden Eynde (BE/NL) www.massproductions.nl

During the project in Georgia Expodium will select artists to go to Utrecht to develop a similar project in Holland. 1st part of the project in Georgia will take place from 2nd until the 24th of March in 2006. The part in Holland will take place in July 2006. The two curators of Expodium will come in Tbilisi to choose 6 artists to come to Utrecht for a similar project. They will put advertisements in newspapers in Georgia to ask artists to apply for the project. The artists will develop a site-specific project in the Netherlands.

'We think the influence of our installations, projects and interventions will create small scale differences in the city. The interaction between the inhabitants and audience will hopefully create an interesting soil for committed art and the future developments of GEO-AIR and residencies in Tbilisi'. - says ERforS