We decide to publish few chapters from Esma Berikishvili's book "Eurasian Laboratory:Poetry,Prose and Music in Georgia" - socio-anthropologic research about earlier activities of our smArt Groupware.
the book will introduce you to the brief history of Georgian cultural field and state ideology, 80-90s underground art and contemporary art-practice by smART-GROUPware ELY -- through the prism of Bourdieu's field theory and Cohen's theory of Symbolic communities.
the whole pre-version of the book you can read here:
you can purchase the book here:
<The artistic wonderland of Georgia - full of passion, breeze of Chernobyl, five floors Khrushovka's, professor grandfathers and drug addict fathers, black sea and mains of Chiatura, beautiful girls and boys, abandoned industrial buildings and dreams about Georgian Cosmonavtica - seen through theoretical prism. The book takes you to the world of Georgian artists who in their twenties experienced war, fear, darkness, cold, drug addiction, alcoholism, three unsuccessful attempts to build the state and consequently became abhorrent enough to "dance on the ruins". Follow the book and let new artistic viruses in.>
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Chapter
3: “Eurasian Laboratory”
In
the following chapter I will discuss the emergence of “Eurasian
Laboratory”. I will show how
the
art collaboration was formed, the priorities and goals that they try
to archive, how the
“alternative”
community is constructed and how it establishes the “alternative”
social and
cultural
space for performing without any symbolic violence. I will be looking
at different
projects
that “Laboratory” runs and illustrate how they produce knowledge
which is an
alternative
to the State discourse. I will also demonstrate the external
influences on
“Laboratory’s”
art and expose how this particular art group struggles for
legitimation: “for the
right
to monopolize the exercise of “symbolic violence” (Swartz
1997:123).
It
is important to examine how underground movements emerged in the
1980s in order to
theorize
the state of arts at that time and also to follow the appearance of
“Eurasian Laboratory”.
In
this part of the chapter I will look at how underground movements
were formed in Georgia in
the
1980s and show how with the rise of the nationalistic movements the
art scene and creation
was
somehow stopped in 1990. At the same time I will demonstrate how new
artistic movements
emerged
from the historical context and how in 2006 “Laboratory” was
established.
In
1980, before the national movements were established, the Georgian
underground started a
new
era in its development. The most important aspect of 80’s scene was
that Georgian artists
and
especially musicians started to create their art in Georgian
language. The culture that was
34
present
in Georgia in the 1980’s was characterized by a strong social load
and it had significant
elements
of protest. It can be argued that in the 1990’s Georgian
underground culture
experienced
highest level of development. For that time there were a significant
number of
individual
artists and collectives who did not suit the established clichés of
Communist culture.
The
most important was the musical scene and its sufficient element rock.
During this period
various
bands were performing not only in the capital of Georgia – Tbilisi,
but also in Kutaisi,
Batumi,
Gori, Rustavi, Telavi and many other small towns. Most of the
alternative music was
performed
in Georgian. From the late 80’s there were several important art
groups performing in
the
underground scene: Lado Burduli and his band “Recepti”, Dada
Dadiani first with “Taxi”
and
later “Children’s Medicine”, Kisho Glunchadze and the band
“Kisho and Inteligencia”, band
“Outsideri”
with the leader Robi Kukhianidze. A bit later Irakli Charkviani
started the individual
career.
The art that was created by these outstanding artists was not only a
pure art; it had a clear
message
of social protest. As it is acknowledged “rock is a political
phenomenon both because
rock
artists sometimes take positions on controversial issues (or on the
elites themselves) in their
songs
and because political elites may use legislative or coercive force to
suppress, inhabit or
regulate
rock performers, regardless of the political intent or content of
their songs” (Ramet
1994:102),
and the same was true for Georgian rock scene.
The
political and social situation that emerged in 1991 had a great
influence on the later
development
of the art scene in Georgia. The circumstances made those bands to
fall apart, most
of
them went abroad and others who were still in Georgia had no chances
to work. However,
when
civil war started artists who were still in the country did not stop
artistic work, but their
performances
lost their scale and after the war, the rock and underground scene
were facing the
destruction,
as nearly everything in Georgia. And still in 1996 the big festival
“Margarita-96”
35
was
held where newly emerged artists were present; nevertheless their art
lost that social and
political
aspect which was the main characteristic of 1990’s art (Lasha
Gabunia).
As
it is obvious from this small description, Georgian art and most
importantly subversive or
underground
art lost its ‘soul’ from the 1990’s, moreover the process of
cultural development
was
in a significant stagnation as a result of hard political, social and
economic conditions that
war
brought in Georgia. Irakli Charkviani’s words are a clear
demonstration of this process:
“There
is no culture in Georgia against which the counter culture or
underground art should be
directed”.
However, as I showed earlier, new transformations of the nation and
the state after the
Rose
Revolution in 2003 made it possible to think about culture, and the
state even designed the
cultural
policy. The new political situation brought new problems and issues
for Georgian
society
and accordingly new art groups were established, whose art was
directed at the protest
against
the new political “regime”. One of the most significant movements
or art collaborations
that
emerged in 2006 is “Eurasian Laboratory”, which is the focus of
this thesis and will be
discussed
in the following parts.
3.2
Birth of “Eurasian Laboratory’’
The
group of Georgian artists known as “Laboratory” is an alternative
movement which was
established
in 2006. “Laboratory” is a collaboration of artists Ana
Tabatadze, Beso
Kapchelashvili,
Misha Bajhsoliani, Tazo Liparteliaini, Zura Jishkariani, MK-ULTRA,
Paata
Shamugia,
Leo Nafta and Acorn Guy. The official definition of art group that
can be found on
their
blog reads as following:
36
"ELY"
[Eurasian Laboratory] is experimental post-art movement from the
ghetto of the
third
world. Dreamhacking, Art Experiments (audio, video, visual...),
Theatre of the
Nuclear
Sunrises. ELY is ever changing, think tank collective of artists,
writers,
musicians,
programmers, psychonauts, dream hackers, scientists and just
experimentlover-
party-people
(eurasianlaboratory.blogspot.com)
Throughout
the interviews with the members of the art group it became obvious
that
“Laboratory”
started as “tusovka” (party) of people who shared the same ideas
and values;
however,
after a short period it was already established as a collaboration of
artists.
Notwithstanding
the fact that members of “Laboratory” refuse to define themselves
in terms of
artistic
collaboration, I still argue that all characteristics of the group
lead us to acknowledge this
project
as the art group.
Judging
from my interviews, all members of art group agree that “Laboratory”
is a life style. The
roots
of “Laboratory” can be found in Acorn Guy’s apartment where as
he explained different
people
were meeting for years, talking about art, drinking etc and according
to him it was
tusovka
(party), many people where coming and going and those who stayed
finally understood
later
that they are in the role of observers and decided to create
something out of these multiple
experiences.
“Laboratory
is the life style. When it was established there was no idea of art
group. We,
people
who formed “Laboratory” in the beginning we were living together
and were
drunk
for almost one year. It happened so that everybody had some problems,
personal
ones,
from childhood and everybody was taking the psychotropic pills and I
realized that
it
was a “Laboratory”, there was a medical aesthetic everywhere. At
the same time, there
were
demonstrations, wars, the revolution and I got the feeling that
Caucasus was the big
laboratory
where they make experiments to create a mutant and I discovered that
we are
all
mutants. We are not Europeans for Europeans and we are not Asians for
Asians, we
are
absolutely different species, we have mixed consciousness”. (Zura
Jishkariani
interview)
If
we look at “Laboratory’s” art it is easy to identify elements
of avant-garde, alternative culture
and
other subversive forms of art and yet “Laboratory” according to
its members is out of any
cliché
categories. In order to identify, or if you like stigmatize, or on
the contrary to argue that
37
“Laboratory”
is or is not an avant-garde or alternative art, it is essential to
look at how avantgarde
and
alternative movements were formed and theorized later on.
The
avant-garde and alternative movements brought a significant change in
the concept of art
and
culture in a broader sense. The term avant-garde can be dated back to
1825; however for that
period
avant-garde served not only as a term referred to art, but to the
political radicalism as
well.
From Saint Simon the avant-garde was characterized by a balance
between art and politics,
but
from 1930 the ways of these two notions separated and as Huyssen
asserts “the avant-garde
has
lost its cultural and political explosiveness and has itself become a
tool of legitimation”
(Huyssen
1986b:221).
However,
before Huyssen suggested this interpretation of avant-garde, there
were different
attempts
to define what is avant-garde and how it works in society. Even
naming the scholars
working
on this issue would surpass the capacity of this work. The very
beginning of the works
concerned
with avant-garde was Renato Poggioli’s 1962 book The
Theory of the Avant-Garde
(Poggioli
1968) and Peter Burger’s (1974) Theory
of the Avant-Garde (Burger
1984). They
defined
avant-garde as non-conformist art and argued that avant-gardists
question current trends
and
ideals. Consequently, avant-garde artists are often estranged from
society; moreover they are
on
the margins of society. The concept of avant-garde refers entirely to
marginalized artists,
writers,
composers and thinkers whose work is not only opposed to mainstream
commercial
values,
but often has an uncompromising social or political edge. The ideas
of these two
academics
were different to some extent, but it is not the subject of this
paper. One of the most
influential
works in addressing the matter of avant-garde was Clement Greenberg’s
(1939) essay
“Avant-garde
and Kitsch”, where the author showed that historically avant-garde
was opposed to
“mainstream”
and “high” culture and argued that it was contradiction to mass
culture as well, a
culture
which was produced with industrialization (Greenberg 1939).
Avant-garde movements in
38
art
such as Dada, Surrealism, Futurism, Constructivism and Productivism
attempted to overcome
the
art/life dichotomy. However, Huyssen (Huyssen 1986b) argues that
these avant-garde
movements,
later marked as historical avant-garde, tried to challenge bourgeois
“institution art”
and
this process largely depended on the transformation of bourgeois
society itself, and
according
to him, since this transformation did not happen these movements
failed. After the
technological
revolution new avant-garde emerged, which was again concerned with
overcoming
the
art/life dichotomy; however for this time the new technologies played
a significant, even
crucial
role in defining what is avant-garde.
The
avant-garde movements varied from county to country. For instance,
Russian avant-garde
aimed
to create a socialist mass culture using the technical opportunities
of the 20th
century.
And
it
was visible that technology helped to some extent to instigate the
avant-garde artwork and its
break
with traditional art and values, but later on it “deprived the
avant-garde of its necessary
living
space in everyday life” (Huyssen 1986a:227). As opposed to the
avant-garde, the cultural
industry
or mass culture succeeded in overcoming the art/life dichotomy and in
changing
everyday
life in twentieth century.
Notwithstanding
the fact that historical avant-garde failed to some extent, today in
the world of
mass
culture and production there can be observed different
neo-avant-garde movements
radically
shaped by internet communication and different advanced software
programs, which
had
a significant effect on all kinds of communication and forms of life
and to a large extent on
the
“art world”. It can be argued that art created in twenty first
century is characterized by the
use
of internet and working on the global level.
39
If
one looks at “Laboratory’s” art it becomes apparent that it
suits the characteristics of
alternative
and avant-garde art and, at the same time they, are pushed to the
margins of society
and
are opposed to the mainstream values; however, it is hard to argue
that they are alternative or
avant-garde
artists, but it is possible to suggest that they suit more the
neo-avant-garde
movements.
It is obvious that “Laboratory” is not a mainstream art, but is
hard to claim that they
are
alternative since the members define themselves in absolutely
different terms, moreover
some
projects of laboratory fell exactly in the category of mainstream,
and for instance Tazo
explains
that one of their projects “Kung Fu Junkie” is precisely directed
towards the pop scene.
This
practice can also be viewed as one of the strategies that laboratory
works with in order to
spread
the subversive viruses in the society. It is important to see how
they ‘classify’ themselves
and
by ‘classifying’ themselves how they ‘classify’ others
(Bourdieu 1992). For Zura Jishkariani
laboratory
is an “experimental post-art movement from the ghetto of the third
world” and as he
told
me during the interview, this art collaboration is a “new world
disorder”.
Acorn
Guy makes it clear:
If
we look at famousness of laboratory in Georgia then yes it is of
course underground.
But
if we look at the things from the artistic perspective I think that
we are not neither
underground
nor pop culture. We do different things, we create not only
underground or
alternative
style but we have many pop projects, using hip hop etc, everything is
our
instrument.
We are not standing on any side (Acorn Guy)
This
line is continued by Paata Shamugia, according to whom in the begging
they were called
the
“underground project”:
In
the begging it was seen as an alternative and then we moved to
counterculture, since
we
realized that what we were doing was not an alternative culture.
Alternative culture
means
that you as an artist are still in harmonic relationship with
“official” art. It
appeared
that we were not practicing that, moreover we are sharply opposed to
the
official
art discourse. It happened not because we were “cool”, but
because our creation
was
not acceptable for society and for artists as well. We wanted to
provoke society and
40
we
did, but we somehow overdosed and that is why we were marginalized.
We were
teenagers
when we were already marginals
As
for Leo-Nafta, he also agrees that in the beginning they were
underground, but he also adds
that
at some point they left the underground “since being and fixed
there is not an art”. Leo-Nafta
also
has more radical claims about being alternative, counter culture or
any other categorization
“even
though we are still called alternative I would ask you: for what are
we alternative, where is
the
culture”. (Leo-Nafta)
The
reason why we cannot claim that “Laboratory” is underground is,
as explained by Zura
Jishkariani,
that even though in the very beginning they were underground this was
the period
when
they were not officially performing, they were somewhere in the
suburbs and were not in
any
kind of field. “We were not even offline; we were online, but
online that nobody needs”
(Zura
Jishkariani interview). After giving some performances they entered
the field and as Zura
claims
they are now the parallel culture. “Maybe for this culture it is a
subculture, but I would
rather
call it parallel culture, it exists as a parallel, it is against
everything and yet we cannot call
it
counter culture since at same point we realized that as banal as it
is to be the counterculture, it
also
troughs you in a such field where you are left alone and you cannot
take any action. That is
why
we chose another strategy”. The other strategy can be understood as
following, some
members
of laboratory are at the same time in so called mainstream culture
and are working in
that
environment. They enter that field and function as a mechanism to
spread laboratory’s
“viruses”,
in that field they do “Laboratorial” things. Zura claims that
this is a new cultural
strategy
“you do and say absolutely opposite things and yet you are in that
culture”. Eco,
relatively
new member of art collaboration is totally against any kind of
definitions and as he
says
in his interview “Why underground? I am undersky”.
41
Overall,
even though one can easily identify aspects of alternative or
avant-garde art in
“Laboratory’s”
art we cannot claim that they fall in these categories, since the
members of the
group
refuse to acknowledge any kind of categories.
3.2.1
“Laboratory”: its essence and aims
According
to different definitions the word “Laboratory” means the facility
that provides
controlled
conditions in which experiments, scientific research and measurements
can be carried
out.
In a similar manner the credo of “Laboratory’s” art is free
creation and unlimited
experiments.
According to its members, “Laboratory” is interested in
schizophrenia, autism,
atomic
dawns, cosmic migration, the perspectives of cyberspace, and the
resistance of the third
world,
embryonic dreams, coma, totalitarism, and the post biological
opportunities of humans,
conspiracy
and paranoid theories. Media art group “Laboratory” is working on
different projects,
which
includes but is not limited to eight musical projects, translation of
various literatures, the
project
of internet television, painting and producing poetry and prose.
The
identity of “Laboratory” is characterized by claims that they
live in the country which is in
the
world’s underground (meaning Georgia). They are just 20-22 years
old and have already
experienced
“war, fear, darkness, cold, drug addiction, alcoholism, dead (lost)
relatives and three
unsuccessful
attempts to build the state. Consequently, they have enough
abhorrence, mistrust
and
yearning for warmth to dance on the ruins” (Zura Jishkariani).These
above mentioned
aspects
of lives of “Laboratory” members are crucial for defining their
identities. They are
42
heavily
influenced by the instability of the state and the enormous number of
different wars in
Georgia.
They are children of war.
On
the other hand “Laboratory” is inclined towards Timothy Leary’s
ideas and this can be seen
in
their activities and art. They claim that human mind can be seen as a
biocomputer, where
different
practices of human life are accumulated and the individual can reset,
delete, change and
release
anything from those programs that are installed in his/her brain.
They refer to Leary who
started
to investigate the possibilities of programming the human mind seen
as a biocomputer.
“Laboratory”
has an ambition to be global and they argue that with their art they
are talking to
the
whole planet not only to Georgia. However, as it can be seen in their
art, for this level they
are
more concerned with local problems and fight against local
stereotypes. They call in question
the
values of traditional society and struggle against the tyranny of
authorities.
“Laboratory”
has different aims: lots of demonstrations, concerts and diffusion of
created mediaviruses
(demonstration
for supporting the first unborn Georgian Cosmonaut) psycho-geographic
campaigns,
creation of alternative informational stream- magazines, journals,
forums, recording
studios,
radio etc. The projects which are already realized are psychotropic
poetry of Zura
Jishkariani
(patient number 0), imperativism of Paata Shamugia (patient number
13) and
fragmentary
prose of Aryis Bichi (patient number minus infinity). Art group
“Laboratory” aims
experiments
on the ontological basis of civilization, experiments on the basic
codes of culture
such
as: classical physics, family, moral, economy, taboo, art, religion,
law. They have and
ambition
to be total. As Zura Jishkariani, one of the founders, explains
“Laboratory is Antonin
Artaud’s
the theater of cruelty (for more details about the theater of cruelty
see Antonin Artaud
“The
Theater and Its Double” 1958), it is the vagina where progressive
mutations are born,
43
Laboratory
does not care about government (and Vano Merabishvili - Interior
minister of
Georgia),
Laboratory asks for legalization” (Zura Jishkariani 20062).
“Laboratory”
addresses their art to different types of audience. Their audience
includes the
inhabitants
of huge, post-industrial and small, anonymous towns, empty flats,
self-made
laboratories,
inhabitants of ghettos and soviet electrification underground. The
synthesizers of
probing
drugs, stripteaser beginner writers, feminist gays, triple pilled
lesbians, desperate
housewives,
young penniless chemists, aliens dressed as a neighbors of sleeping
humans,
constantly
unavailable abonents of all networks, ozone logs of the system,
proletariats who are
motivated
with new ideas of beauty, viruses of elite, the teachers of geography
with strange
habits
and cocaine in globe, melancholic’s with post-apocalyptic
instincts, children of forgotten
wars,
cheaply sparkling queens of spoilt ghettos, retired secret generals
and astrophysics,
cybernetic
shamans with ugly eyeglasses, failed self-murderers, researchers of
dreams and
anonymous
painters of town walls from communal settlements, documented citizens
(Zura
Jishkariani
2006). However, the current audience of art collaboration is not that
wide. As
members
of art group explained in their interviews, in the beginning their
audience was limited
to
their friends and a very small circle of people, but today the
audience is growing and this
tendency
can be mainly observed on their concerts. As Acorn Guy explains in
his interview,
even
though their audience is not that wide, the most important is that
people who come to their
performances
leave the place with slight changes in attitudes and start thinking
in another ways:
“this
is the highest satisfaction for us as artists” (Acorn Guy
interview).
2
The
texts by the members of Art Media “Laboratory” are translated by
the author
44
It
can be argued that “Laboratory” is industrial since it is based
on five elements of industrial
cultural
collective established by Jon Savage in the introduction to
“Industrial Culture
Handbook”
(Savage 1983). These elements are: organizational autonomy, the
processing of
information,
the usage of electronic and alternative music, the usage of
extra-musical elements
(elements
which are out of “musical borders” and choking tactic). Artistic
collaboration
“Laboratory”
can be addressed in the same terms and viewed as cultural collective
that is
industrial
since they are successfully using the above mentioned aspects.
“Laboratory”
uses different strategies to legitimize itself. They are often giving
performances in
public
places, for instance, parks, cafes, famous rock clubs. They publish
journal “Sindromi”
(Syndrome),
where one can find their prose, poetry CD’s etc. “Laboratory”
is an active user of
different
web cities (www.myspace.com.
www.blogspot.com
www.facebook.com
www.wordpress.com
www.linkedin.com www.livejournal.com and
many other social networks,
blogs
and web 3.0) and at the same time every member has his/her personal
blog. They are quite
famous
in Georgian art-space; however they still manage not to assimilate
with mainstream
culture
and are devoted to their “unique” art code."
Esma Berikishvili
--
to be Continued..
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