SOCIETY

Take the Long Way Home

BLOG BY TONY HANMER

Title borrowed from Supertramp’s song of the same name, from their classic album “Breakfast in America”.

Home, from Tbilisi, is always the long way, nearly 500 km to Etseri, Upper Svaneti. If I don’t have a good reason to drive there and back using my own gasguzzling 4x4 Toyota 4Runner, I take the regular marshrutka (minibus) between Mestia and Tbilisi, which is what I did this time. It leaves the capital from a couple of locations: below Samgori Metro and in front of the main Railway Station. 7am start, 8-9 hour journey with two meal stops en route.

I Bolted, most conveniently, to the railway start for 0630, having a bit too much luggage to lug through the city’s Metro. First passenger for the Mestia van, which might never have happened to me before. But it’s a slow season now in Georgia, with summer tourism wound up and skiers not yet arriving, and perhaps few local people making the journey.

Almost instantly, a lady in her 50s or 60s appeared selling hot tea, coffee or cocoa, as well as cigarettes, bottled water and snacks. “I get up at 5 am daily to do this,” she announced, “to make ends try to meet.” Other people of similar ages were also making the rounds, as there would be plenty of alternate destinations across the country starting from here all day long. Everyone just trying to get by. A street sweeper lady also began her job. Having heard the hot drink seller’s sad story, I decided to give her 20 GEL as she left, which she refused only for a moment, then took with profuse thanks. A minute later, she was back to slip a chocolate bar and a pack of salted bread snacks into my pocket, which I also reluctantly accepted. How many hundreds or thousands of such are there in Tbilisi and elsewhere?

We set off with a nearly full complement of passengers; I’ve done this so many times over the decades, it’s all old hat. But still, each time there are new things I notice.

The big pass between east and west Georgia is still undergoing its Chineserun transformation from 60 km bottleneck to doubled highway, so we won’t be stuck behind fl eets of trucks anymore. Now they are focusing on building embankments edging the many riversides which this project threatens, hopefully to preserve the natural systems coexisting with the engineering megaproject. A couple more years, I suppose, and there will be a completed highway from Tbilisi to Batumi, with branches to the bigger cities on the way.

Rain obscured the views, and fogged up our windows on this cold day, but I tried some camera-phone shots as we passed through endless villages. Where the roads are being re-laid, such as in Senaki, the old tarmac has been dug up and left on roadsides in hideous broken piles which will take decades if not longer to disintegrate back into the earth. Georgia might be stunningly beautiful, but it also has plenty of less gorgeous sights if that’s what you happen to notice. Same as everywhere in this regard, I realize.

Petrol stop, eating stops, passengers leaving and new ones entering, impromptu postal system collecting and delivering parcels of all sizes on the way. Poor driver getting endless cell phone calls connected with all this, and trying to get us safely from A to B. At least he’s no longer smoking in the van nor drinking moonshine when he stops, like in the “good old days”.

We begin to ascend from Jvari into Upper Svaneti at last, and eventually the rain turns into the expected snow. Now the mountaintops are graced with this while their lower slopes are still stuck in late autumn’s reds and golds, always a beautiful combination. There are easily a hundred new temporary waterfalls as well on the way, I estimate, pointing to the heavy precipitation which the region has been having in my absence.

My wife has overseen a drop-off of half a ton or so of soft drinks at the junction of our road and the highway, and one of her younger school pupils is guarding this while I add my own bags to it and trudge the 1 km home, then return with the car to load it all up. Home at last, into her arms, wood stove burning, waiting for electricity, which does eventually return as the night closes in. Home.

And…as always at the moment, in Georgia’s current political season, #mishavs means: “It matters to me”!

Tony Hanmer has lived in Georgia since 1999, in Svaneti since 2007, and been a weekly writer and photographer for GT since early 2011. He runs the “Svaneti Renaissance” Facebook group, now with nearly 2000 members, at www.facebook.com/ groups/SvanetiRenaissance/ He and his wife also run their own guest house in Etseri: www.facebook.com/hanmer.house.svaneti

"Digital Natives" - Exhibition of Contemporary Art at TBC Concept Flagship

BY ANA GABISIANI

From October 28 to December 28, TBC Concept Flagship will host an exhibition of international artists, whose works will refl ect the impact of the digital age on the work of artists. The title of the exhibition "Digital Natives" is the term of the poet and internet activist John Perry Barlow and unites people who had to adapt to digital technologies in the wake of the development of the information age from an early age. This is an exhibition on the Internet that answers the main question of how artists refl ect on existing reality. The works of artists form one large network, which is as eclectic and comprehensive as the Internet itself. According to the curator of the exhibition Nina Kintsurashvili, the works in the exhibition address one specifi c aspect of the global phenomenon, where artists respond to digital reality both directly and indirectly. The exhibition, the idea of which was sparked by the Covid-19 pandemic period, brings together more than 10 international artists. The works presented at the exhibition, which are located in two different spaces, make the viewer a participant of the digital audiovisual show and present the specifi cs of the language of the artists in different mediums. "There is an idea that the Internet is a global phenomenon, but the exhibition questions this notion and tries to highlight the local formations of the Internet, which were infl uenced by various sociopolitical contexts. For this, I decided to present several artists whose work is interested in the local context, "- said the curator of the exhibition Nina Kintsurashvili. "Very often in the West, when museums and galleries exhibit such works, one feels the admiration for technological innovations and new media. However, in this case I was interested in discussing the Internet in a historical context and exploring it not as a technological innovation but as a cultural and social phenomenon.

TBC Concept will introduce you to the works of some of the artists you will meet at the Digital Natives exhibition.

TEZI GABUNIA - SINKING OF THE LOUVRE

According to artist Tezi Gabunia, "The sinking of the Louvre" is one of the stages of a big project, which was preceded by works - "Fake Exhibition" and "Enter the Gallery." "The sinking of the Louvre" which was exhibited at the New York Armory Show, was presented at the exhibition as a single-channel video installation in the form of artist's Facebook Live by the agreement between the artist and curator. The video installation also shows the comments of astonished users along with the fl ooding of the Louvre, who are very confused by the fact of the sinking of the museum. "The new representation of Tezi Gabunia's 'Sinking of the Louvre' arises the question of the Real News VS Fake News phenomenon and information circulating in the online space, where objectivity is overshadowed by sea of information and we have to navigate this reality on a daily basis," said the exhibition curator.

TAMO JUGHELI – “HALF - HUMAN, HALF - MACHINE

You will also meet the experimental work of Georgian artist Tamo Jugheli within the framework of TBC Concept Exhibition. The young artist, whose main creative practice is related to hand painting, exhibits a work at the exhibition in which the digital image she creates and the hand-drawn painting are synthesized into each other. "The work was created while learning Photoshop, which I have not yet learned because the more times I open the program, the more times I start painting. When this particular work was completed, I saw the moment in the material world as a painting. I printed the work on canvas and then added oil paint stains to contrast it with the human hand and its traces," says the artist of the work, "Half-human, Half-machine."

NIMA BAHREHMAND AND RAMIN ROSHANDAL – THE STATUS OF PIETA

At the exhibition "Digital Natives" you will see many interesting works of foreign artists alongside Georgian artists. Among them is a one-channel video installation by Iranian artists Nima Bahrehmand and Ramin Roshandal, which is shown in the form of an audiovisual collaboration of artists. The creation of the work was due to the decentralized wars in the Middle East region, due to which the locals have to live under the constant supervision of drones and satellites. "For a year, Iranian artists fed artifi cial intelligence with war photos found in the region depicting drone escapes, and later AI independently produced similar images. "In these photos, the bodies are distorted by a computer and it is diffi cult to read information about them, but it is easy to read the same anxiety and uncertainty that the decentralized wars in this region brought," said the curator of the exhibition.

KEU MEPARISHVILI - INSTITUTE OF VIRGINITY

Keu Meparishvili's video installation is presented in the form of a screen on wheels at the exhibition. According to the artist, the work was fi rst created for a group exhibition in Vienna and shows the original version of the video installation in the TBC concept space. The research, which the artist conducted before creating the work, includes anonymous messages from closed Facebook groups where women share their confi dential stories with other women. The protagonist of Keu Meparishvili's work is an avatar of the collective experience of women, which illustrates issues related to modern myths related to the institution of virginity. explores the human relationship with an automated sound system.

BOGOSI SEKHUKHUNI - CONSCIOUS ENGINE 2: ABSENTBLACKFATHERBOT

The exhibition will also feature a 2-channel video installation by South African artist Bogosi Sekhukhuni depicting robotic communications. According to the curator of the exhibition Nina Kintsurashvili, the work of the South African artist emphasizes the inconvenience of communicating on social media. The artist's video installation shows two animated subjects facing each other through different screens. One of the animated subjects of the work is Sekhukhuni himself, while the other is his estranged father. Their communication is based on the letters that 18-year-old Bogosi and his father sent to each other for six years.

TAMAR GURGENIDZE – “HOW WONDERFUL GIRLS YOU ARE”

Tamar Gurgenidze's work at fi rst glance reminds us of the compositions that we often come across while looking at old photo albums. Therefore, it is not surprising that the inspiration for creating the work was the photo archive of the artist's grandmother, which is brought to life by Tamar Gurgenidze in three-dimensional videos. "In Tamuna Gurgenidze's work, digital technology becomes a conduit of nostalgy, which the artist uses to refl ect human emotions and fl ow of memories," said the curator of the exhibition. JON RAFMAN - DISASTERS UNDER THE SUN

The work of Canadian artist Jon Rafman will be found in the exhibition space of the TBC Concept Dark Room. The posthuman dystopia shown in the video installation depicts a terrifying image of a future where all humanity is uploaded to a virtual purgatory and endlessly abused.

ANNA K. AND FLORIAN MEISENBERG - COWNTOWN BELLADONNA

Georgian artist Anna K. and German artist Florian Meissernerg will present a 2-channel video installation at the exhibition. In the exhibition space, the screens are located next to each other, at a distance of several meters. Both of them show the human eye taken with a micro-lens and a 4K camera, at the depth of which the screen images are refl ected. The moving images, which are generated on the cornea of the eye, depict excerpts from movies and Youtube videos, as well as footage from social media platforms. As the curator of the exhibition says while talking about the work, the video installation by Anna K. and Florian Meisenberg speaks of the organic body as a channel for the fl ow of information, where the screen represents a microchip that is directly connected to the cornea of the eye.

Within the framework of TBC Concept Exhibition "Digital Natives," there will be a panel discussion with the artists. The exhibition is open Monday - Saturday, from 10:00 to 20:00, at 7 Marjanishvili street. Attendance is free for all. Translated by Ana Dumbadze