Aesthetics of Subtropics: Invention, Cultivation, Separation

• In Event: Echoes of Empire: Taming the Nature, Bodies, and Knowledge of Georgia's Black Sea Coast

Abstract

landscape of the Black Sea seems to offer the necessary working and projection surface for the creation of „Tropics of Tsardom“ (O. Polianichev). In addition to the political-ideological programmes for mastering and optimizing nature, the artistic practices with their diverse aesthetic and poetic concepts are constituted in the visual and verbal landscapes of the Caucasus.
Artistic explorations of environmental transformation in the Soviet-Georgian avant-garde and the 1930s are crucial here. The Georgian silent films by female director Nutsa Gogoberidze, in particular the film „Ujmuri“ from 1934, as well as the animated film „Kolkhida. Argonavtebi“ (1934/35) by Lado Mujiri and works by Soso Chkhaidze and Shalva Chagunava revolve around western Georgian ecologies and establish a new cultural and aesthetic understanding of Georgian nature. The Kolkheti wetlands becomes an actual experimental site for testing and implementing new ideas of modernization, ranging from the draining of swamps (melioration) to the fight against malaria, creating cinematic settings for the negotiation of ancient myths – with the re-actualization of the Argonaut legend and the cultural memory with Medea and Jason and the Colchis. This Performative Subtropism takes advantage of the favorable climatic conditions and uses new transformation mechanisms to bundle the knowledge/practice and new resources in order to achieve economic and ideological goals and establish new cultural-aesthetic concepts of Tropical Modernity.

Author

• Irine Beridze, Freie U Berlin (Germany)