xelovnebis saerTaSoriso Jurnali - Artisterium

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response in terms of the new territorial becomings in the
capital of the newly independent republic. Embassies were
one of the first signs of reterritorialization on the landscape
of his/my generation: after the soviet system collapsed, after
the independence movement, after civil war, after long lasting
isolation, against the background of ruins, uncertainties and
chaos; also in terms of our desire to be recognized, of our
expectations and our hopes, when with the establishment
of embassies suddenly the desirable distant world became
close to real. However, ‘open’ embassies soon became sites
‘closure’, with long queues and frustration in front of heavy
guarded doors, where all our previous dreams fell short.
Koka Ramishvili wanted to pass that frontier in order to question
the homogeneity of their facades in their interior design.
Inside, things (objects, furniture, technology) were eclectic, as
was expected, from different countries and manufacturers.
I remembered all that when I was in Belgravia Square,
surrounded by several embassies. There was a moment of
close parallel evocations, bridges between my past experience
and future journey, with the Venice Biennale, which stages art
and artists in similar frameworks (the Biennale gives the artist
a ‘green cars’ in terms of her worldwide acceptance); very
different landscapes and buildings resembled each other in
terms of uniformity, at the same time providing the same sort
of questions: about their interiors, about ‘invisible’ and about
‘heterogeneity’.
My initial questions were produced by the same circumstances
and by the same sort of proliferations. They were about
identity and subjectivity, about identity and difference. But
not in terms of their binary presuppositions, or any sort of
causalities in between them, rather in terms of becomings;
becoming ‘which lacks a subject distinct from itself’, or any
sort of form (Identity), just in it’s pure process (Deleuze and
Guattari, 1999: pp 283-284). ‘Take off your shoes, with naked
feet, put on the two crystal shoes, close your eyes, don’t move,
and make you departure,’ those were the instructions of the
performance artist Marina Abramovic to her audience, in
order to turn viewers into participants, to show perspectives
opening through relations with the art. Crystal shoes, or shoes
for departure, were one of the rare art objects which this
artists ever made, for the mental journey, for the metaphysical
departure.
I took the words ‘Shoes for Departure’ as the title of my work,
it order to indicate another category of participation, spaces of
frustrated imaginations in our society and human gatherings,
in transitory spaces such as embassies. I also took them to
as a reminder that beyond the misery of mundane thresholds
which ironically thwart our desires, there is always a possibility
for the imagination, for art.
There is a general desire for a common, international space
and there are social and political reproductions of that desire:
institutional formations and structures, such as the Venice
Biennale, which are founded on that interest. This desire
expands into more and more areas of advanced technologies
and new media of communication. Within those systems,
neither borders nor subjectivities are static anymore, especially
in terms of art and creativity, in terms of the constant process
of transformation and becoming. Art, as the medium of
proliferations, of affects and/or desires, challenges all sorts of
borders, ‘stereotypes’, ‘framings’ and boundaries.
Borders are simultaneously real and abstract, territorial
and temporal phenomena; invisible lines of divisions with
different manifestations: in mythologies, in politics, in art, in
language; sites or negotiations and differences, segregations,
relationships and conflicts; symbolic but still ‘heavily armed’,
borders are always in a process of becoming, of transformation;
zones where an alternative history takes place; places of
placeless histories and placeless geographies.
Today art is maybe more mobile that anything else, despite
strict regulations and complicated rules concerning it. Attempts
to administer art have resulted in a whole set of policies and
institutional hierarchies for it. In many countries there are still
restrictions in terms of art traveling, involving bureaucratic
scenarios and official governing bodies dealing within it, where
the dream of a free space for art and artists often fails. But
sometimes, on the contrary, it inspires the changing of its
own boundaries. It is interesting that very contemporary art
is almost invisible (in the sense of ephemeral, or immaterial)
in terms of border crossing, in terms of control. The art
which resists selective judgments about it (judgments about
what is valuable and none-valuable), and cannot be defined
in terms if bureaucracy (customs declarations); far from
any particularities (styles or genres) and the moral rhetoric
of heritage, it escapes sight completely and is smuggled
without being noticed. It is just a matter of curiosity and
further frustrations, when to the question whether they carry
with them or not any artwork, artists deny their mission.
© Keti Japharidze, art critic, Tbilisi – London
Images:
Koka ramishvili,
uK Embassy to Georgia, Tbilisi. 1998 from
the series ‘pronostic Eventuel’.
Color photography, on aluminum, limited
edition, courtesy of the artist.
The uSA Embassy to Georgia, Tbilisi.
1998 from the series ‘pronostic Eventuel’.
Color photography, on aluminum, limited
edition, courtesy of the artist.
German Embassy to Georgia, Tbilisi. 1998
from the series ‘pronostic Eventuel’.
Color photography, on aluminum, limited
edition, courtesy of the artist.