The newly launched exhibition project In-between Conditions will become the first art platform from Georgia to forge ties with Transmediale, a major annual festival of media art in Berlin, as the German event’s cinema curator Florian Wüst speaks in the Georgian capital next week.
The first collaboration between the two projects will come at the Goethe Institute Georgia, where Wüst will share curatorial practices for cinema in the context of Transmediale and beyond, at an event open to the public.
Organisers view the talk as a “significant event for the development of Georgian media art”, as the latter benefits from the new connections with the festival that hosts around 25,000 artists, activists and students every year.Referred to as a “transformative event on the international scene” by organisers of the Tbilisi talk, Transmediale has held displays, performances, conferences and other activities over its history that now spans more than three decades.
Along with participating artists, media art professionals and the general public, its significance is also recognised by the German government that has included the festival in its support programme for contemporary art and culture.
The Goethe Institute talk, set for 19 February, will also feature a screening of a selection of films from the Transmediale archives, to be followed with a Q&A session with the attending audience.
Wüst, who has worked as a Transmediale curator since 2016, is also an artist and researcher whose work is centred around subjects of social, economic and technological progress in postwar Europe.
He is also a co-founder of Berlin Journals — On the History and Present State of the City and co-initiator of the Haben und Brauchen manifesto.
In-between Conditions was launched in December as a multidisciplinary exhibition project at a new contemporary art space of Tbilisi’s popular KHIDI underground club.
The ongoing display that marked the founding of the project is curated by Khatia Tchokhonelidze, Giorgi Spanderashvili and Vato Urushadze, and supported by the Goethe Institute. It will be on view at KHIDI — Contemporary Art Space through 23 February.