Desired Territory – blog

Dirk-Jan Visser published in Volume 15 Destination Library a serie on the public library of Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia.

Partizan Publik published a co-authored dossier withF.A.S.T and Dirk Jan Visser on Tbilisi’s Hotel Abkhazia, entitled ‘Hotel Abkhazia. Accomodating the victims of Georgia’s past’ in the March issue of the Italian interior design and architecture magazineAbitare.

‘Hotel Abkhazia, an abandoned hotel from the Soviet period in Tbilisi, Georgia, becomes a vertical village housing refugees from
the war in the Caucasus region: each room becomes a capsule where individual transformations reconstruct interrupted lives.’

n close cooperation with, Expodium and Ricardo Basbaum’s Casco, Partizan Publik developed the third day of the Armenia Dreaming projects for the students of Dutch Art Institute.

This third DAI day, which is taking place in Utrecht on 17 April, has as its theme INTERVENING IN PUBLIC SPACE. As such, this group of Masters students, who choose for a transnational project, will engage with two local public art events as a way of preparing the event in Yerevan in May 2008. Our host for the day, art platform Expodium will present its Hoog Catharijne project; artist Ricardo Basbaum will give a lecture and present Casco’s Re-projecting Utrecht project.

Partizan Publik made a preparation trip in January for their art project on Post Soviet Urban Imaginaries.

The trip was made in January to Yerevan, the capital of Armenia. A diary was kept during this trip, which offers slight peek of what we can expect of this ambitious project in the Caucasus. They have met several interesting Armenian artists, who attempt to recapture Armenia’s forgotten history and to express it in their art, each in a different way.

Partizan Publik’s aim for this project is to build a visual archive of dreams and nightmares as a way of researching where Soviet and post-Soviet reality and fiction meet. Armenian artists are working with them already, Vardan Azatyan among others.

The Armenia Dreaming project consists of a tutorial project at the DAI, a series of public lectures at various locations and a two-week art event in Yerevan.

Some impressions of the trip

To read the diary click: diary_yerevanjan2008_pp

Temporary’ Home, a series by Dirk-Jan Visser on the life of IDPs from South Ossestia in Georgia.

‘Temporary’ Home can be seen as part of ‘ACROSS BORDERS’.
Galerie Kunst in de Kop, Trompsingel 21 9747 ZZ Groningen.

In this issue F.A.S.T., D.J. Visser and Partizan Publik present the first results of the research trip of september 2006 in the South Caucasus. Via articles, maps and photography we describe and analyse two places: Barda and Nagorno-Karabakh. Moreover, artist Sofia Tabatadze introduces her Venice Biennale piece ‘Humancon Undercon’.

Order this issue at www.archis.org

As part of the Netherlands Architecture Institute contribution to the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam, FAST will show an overview of its projects, including work from the South Caucasus.

From May 24 – October 21 2007 the NAI presents an exhibition about the groups who “overthrow power”. The exhibition A Better World – Another Power displays works by groups whose consultative initiatives, spontaneous creativity and activism is like a fresh breeze blowing through the urban planning world.

Keep an eye on the websites of NAi, Rotterdam Biennale and FAST.

On March 12-19 the Architecture Workshop took place in the State Academy of Fine Arts with a summary presentation held in the office of Architectural company Arci. The Dutch Embassy together with IKV Pax Christi sponsored the workshop.

To read more: check here

Check here an impression of the architecture workshop and how the students found solutions for three different sites in Tbilisi. The first site are the Soviet blocks at the ‘Nutsubidze plateau’, the second site is Hotel Abchazia, where IDP’s from South Ossetia are living and the third site is the deserted Kirov factory.

dirkjan [at] dirkjanvisser.com

Check here already the first of a series of photos shot by Dirk-Jan Visser at the Kirov Factory in Tbilisi. Dirk-Jan was here in March 2007 during the same time as the workshop at the Arts Academy.

dirkjan [at] dirkjanvisser.com