The workshop focuses on the figure of ‘The Voyeur’ and explores the passive and active aspects of looking, viewing, and gazing as acts of empowerment and resistance from Western perspectives on the South Caucasus. Using visual culture, the structure of the gaze and its effects are examined to problematize standard(ized) ways of (gendered) looking.
Together with invited artists from Tbilisi, the discussion extends to themes such as post-communist and post-Soviet contexts of art, architecture, and counter-art practices, as well as artivism, feminism, LGBTQIA movements, activism, and (democratic) struggles in Georgia, offering a broader outlook on Eurasian (artistic) identities that challenge dominant Western norms and visually oriented media societies.
The practical workshop involves performative, movement, and visual exercises. Public Programm starts at 6 p.m. at blauer Salon at HfG (Lorenzstrasse 15). There will be a discussion with Natia Chkvaidze and Georgi Rodionov about the situation of artists in Georgia and the democratic struggles.
Natia Chikvaidze is co-founder of Plasm Platform, dancer, performer and choreographer, working on post-soviet trauma and female bodies. She graduated from Vakhtang Chabukiani Tbilisi School of Choreography and Ecole Supérieure de Danse de Cannes (France). As a dancer she worked with Cannes Jeune Ballet (France), Campanie Linga and Ballet d’Europe (Marseille, France), Aalto Ballet Theatre in Essen (Germany), Kamea Dance Company in Israel. She has worked with such famous choreographers as Tamir Ginz, Itzik Galili, Sharon Eyal and Ohad Naharin and Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company. She works as a choreographer, dancer and teacher in Georgia and across Europe.
Giorgi Rodionov is a media artist and curator. With a multidisciplinary approach to artistic expression, he does performance, photography, participative art, drawings, podcasts, 3D art, art books, and storytelling. Giorgi’s practice delves into themes of identity struggles, migration, queer issues, and the evolution of new forms of existence. Giorgi’s art is deeply rooted in personal experiences. His main focus remains on the South Caucasus region, which he sees as a symbolic crossroad of diversity. In 2019, Giorgi founded untitled tbilisi, an art space dedicated to promoting collaboration among artists and art activists from the South Caucasus region.
In cooperation with the UNESCO Creative Cities of Media Arts Karlsruhe and Tbilisi (Georgia), Embrace Platform, Untitled Tbilisi, Plasm Platform.
