Georgia Here We Come

Tbilisi, 3-24 March 2006

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. ERforS respond to this call was to investigate how art could contribute to this quest for freedom and democracy. Should Georgia 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 was important to understand more about Georgia and it's future. With small interventions and works in the public sphere ERforS created changes and stimulate the use of committed art.

'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 GeoAIR and other organizations in Tbilisi'. - says ERforS

Besides the individual projects the Dutch artists did series of the lectures at the Tbilisi state academy of arts. The themes for the lectures were based on the gaps of knowledge in the art academy, as defined by GeoAIR and teachers from the academy, and related to the artists practices. Lectures were held on the topics of: the artists role in the society, using the knowledge of traditional craftsmanship in contemporary design, cross disciplinary cooperation, curatorial practices and the artist as an one-man enterprise.







Georgia Here We Come, central presentation space at the National Art Center Tbilisi.

Participants and their works:
Maarten Vanden Eynde (BE/NL) www.massproductions.nl
Preservation of the Future project. "After the Independence of Georgia in 1991, many things have changed. The Lari, for instance, became the new currency in 1993. The western economy was introduced and brought many new products, which made others disappear. To ensure the remembrance of this period in Georgian history, I want to collected artifacts representing Georgia at the present moment and put them in the ground, for future archaeologists to discover."
Marjolijn Dijkman (NL) www.marjolijndijkman.com
Street Kiosk project. "During my stay in Tbilisi I conducted research on the transition of the street kiosk and the way people developed and constructed displays to sell their goods in the city."
Marika Asatiani (GEO)
Is a photographer and she exchanged places with Maarten van den Eynde who was taking part of the residency program in LA. During Maartens three weeks of stay in Tbilisi she took his place and went to LA.
Daan van der Berg (NL) www.rotterdamsekunstenaars.nl
Designed a kitchen suitable for the gallery using the materials the he could find in Georgia. Kitchen had several uses during the project.
Stefaan Dheedene (BE) www.stefaandheedene.com
By observing the situation on Rustaveli just around the corner next to the gallery where this group worked, and where the demonstrations take place, Stefaan made videos registering these happenings.
Suze May Sho (NL)
Rosell Hijmen, one artists from the trio Suze May Sho http://www.suzemaysho.com/ She collected material for making a book. For this book she asked Georgian and Dutch artists to contribute their works.
Eric von Robertson (USA) Center for the Advancement of Recreation and Leisure http://carl.typepad.com
Designer Eric von Robertson participated into different projects with various Georgian artists. His projects are mostly of right here right now character and have performing or playing character. Woolen outfits for the street dogs were designed during his stay in Tbilisi
Orgacom (NL) www.orgacom.nl
The Dutch artist initiative Orgacom issued a prize of 850 Lari for the best Initiative, to groups or duo’s of artists and designers for the most imaginative proposal for an artist initiative in Tbilisi. The winner group T.Chapodze; I.Svanidze and G.Doborjginidze, got the prize for realization of the project “Mental Hybrid”. Taike Asselbergs from Orgacom will assist the group further for enlarging their network and creating possibilities outside Georgia.
David Djindjikhachvili (GEO/NL) and Krzysztof Wegiel (PL/NL)
Registered the whole project on video and will make a documentary about the activities and outcome that took place in Tbilisi and later in Utrecht. They also started one Minute Video workshops where students of the art Academy could participate. David and Krzysztof would help the students with filming and editing. In total there were 21 one-minute films made by the Georgian artists that will participate in the one-minute competition that is taking place in Amsterdam.

Media attention:
The project got a lot of media attention and therefor reached even more people than the ones that visited the project space and presentations.
TV: Rustavi 2, Imedi TV and 1st channel news covered the project.
Radio: there was a radio broadcast from the 1st channel.
Newspapers: the newspapers 2x 24 hours and Resonance wrote three articles about the project.



For the realization of this project GeoAIR thanks the Dutch Embassy in Georgia and the National Art Center in Tbilisi.

See more on: www.enoughroomforspace.org

უცხოელი/Foreigner

July-August 2003

'უცხოელი/Foreigner', was a two-month collaborative project of 6 Georgian and 6 Netherlands based artists.

The project 'უცხოელი/Foreigner' was realized in the Summer 2003 in collaboration with Felix Meritis Foundation and involved 6 Georgian and 6 Netherlands based artists that worked together for 2 months in Tbilisi, Georgia and set up a collaborative exhibition that was shown first to the Georgian and later to the Dutch public.

The theme of the project, foreigner, is with a broad understanding of the word. It can mean physical person coming from the other country, somebody you don’t understand anything about or allude to the position of art and artist in the society. This one word, foreigner, can also have a very different perception to it. For Georgians it stands for rich, smiling person with photo camera and no worries and for Dutch - poor, emigrant, rude.

During the two month working period group of international artists worked together, reacted on each other, on the city and it’s political and social aspects. The working period and exhibition took place in an old wine factory territory in Tbilisi, giving the location a new meaning. Later the same show was presented to the Dutch public in the framework of ‘Georgian Days’ organized by Felix Meritis Foundation in Amsterdam. The project had a very positive response in Tbilisi as well as in the Netherlands, attracting many visitors and media attention.

Participating artist:
Tamar Chabashvili (Geo/NL), Zura Macharashvili (Geo), Lado Darakhvelidze (Geo), Sophia Bazgadze (Geo), Sophia Tabatadze (Geo), Ani Riaboshenko (Geo), Xiang Yan Yang (China), Nanna van Heest (NL), Kirsten Leenaars (NL), Adriel van Drimmelen (USA, NL), Lovve Geeven (NL)

The ‘უცხოელი/Foreigner’ project was realized in collaboration with:
Felix Meritis Foundation and De Phenix Foundation

Financial support:
Amsterdam Foundation for the arts;
De Phenix Foundation;
Haëlla foundation;
Georgian Glass and Mineral Water Company;
The Royal Netherlands Embassy in Georgia;
The Dutch foundation for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture (Fonds BKVB).

Freya van Dien, notes from Georgia

This autumn I am staying with my friend and project partner Sophia Tabatadze from half October till half November. We are working on setting up an NGO GeoAIR in Tbilisi for international exchange between people from the fields of art and design. Last year around this time I was also here to see Georgia for the first time, but during my 9 days stay I felt I was just flying over. This second time I am here for 3 weeks which makes it possible to go a little deeper into trying to understand Georgia’s contemporary society and how it relates to it’s history. Still I feel I am only gathering pieces of a puzzle and I have not idea yet how to put them together. My notes from Georgia autumn 2006 is a collection of phenomena I’ve found in writings, words spoken by people here and in observations, that I feel are part of the Georgian reality.

My notes can be found on: freyavandien.wordpress.com

GeoAIR, starting point

Dear colleagues, friends and relations:

In August 2005 we: Sophia Tabatadze (Tbilisi-based artist) and Freya van Dien, (Rotterdam-based organizer in the field of art), decided to make a plan for setting up an artist-in-residence in Tbilisi, Georgia. During Freya’s first visit to Tbilisi in October, we received the good news that the Dutch Fund for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture (FondsBKVB) granted us a subsidy for the necessary research to realize the project.
The first reactions to the initiative, by people from the local Tbilisi art scene, the art academy and the Dutch embassy, are supportive of the goals of the project.
Geoair.blogspot.com will keep you up to date on the projects developments. If you know anyone who might be interested in this project, please pass it on. And, if you have any questions or remarks, feel free to contact us at: infogeoair@gmail.com

Best,
Sophia Tabatadze & Freya van Dien



Research year 2006.
The central question for the project is: What methods and platforms offer the best format for an exchange between professionals from the art world when they find themselves in a different cultural context? In this project, we hope to develop a vision for the cultural and social value of cultural exchange in Tbilisi, and how this exchange can become of sustainable value.

In the research period of 2006, the focus is on 6 aspects of the project:

1. The content of the residence: How can we introduce urgent and relevant cultural issues and connect the visiting professionals to those issues? How can we organize a long-term development on what is important to the context (Georgia & Tbilisi) in this exchange project?
2. Conceptual development towards the social changes that are taking place in this part of the world or in similar regions. What is the best way to relate this “bigger picture” to the context of the residency?
3. Relation between the context of the residence and the facilities that could be provided to artists.
4. Guidelines and methods for selecting professional artists.
5. Building a network of engaged people and organizations that can support the project on the level of content, PR, communication and funding.
6. Setting up a small organization to run the residency.