Georgia, Ever?

"The institutions and cultures of liberal democracies are sufficiently complex, supple, and decentered so as to allow the expression of difference without fracturing the identity of the body politic or subverting existing forms of political sovereignty."

From the brilliant Seyla Benhabib (1996).

Between Exhibit and Talk

The reception for Holiday Moments was a success! Like a big party in which one can both be and watch the wallflowers, an exhibition reception is a public experience with intellectual aspirations. But if I could have shadowed each visitor to find out what their true thoughts were on each photograph, I would have. Alas, I was needed to explain the show and to acknowledge the many friends, old and new, who arrived to show their support.

I took the time to return to the exhibition space a few days later and looked at photo essays with a more sober eye. I can honestly say that this was an original endeavor for Georgians. Students here either pursue art and photography where they can produce visual works based on their aesthetic merit or they specialize in culture or social analysis through the medium of this or that social science. But my project aimed to combine the two and I can confidently say that these students excelled in their charge. In various degrees and through different approaches, each essay and its accompanying text sought to explain the relationship between images as vivid recollections of a moment and the knowledge that anchors these images in the certain social and cultural reality.

I was particularly impressed with the creativity of Kristine Bebia, who in her quiet steadfast way refused to take my advice and limit her "capture" metaphor to two installed items.

Instead she presented each of her stunning photographs (one is to Qvara Guledani's credit) as caught through some form of human intervention, be it a fishing hook, netting, mouse trap, cage, or butterfly net.

The explanation in her accompanying written text was a poetic exegesis on the ambiguity of the private self who cannot escape the gaze of the observer. Bravo to Kristine whom you see in the photograph on the right.

There were many Georgian journalists taking interviews and a solid crowd peaking at about 70 people. Academics, friends, family, and the merely curious were all present. I will talk about the project within the greater context of my dissertation on Tuesday, February 2nd (5:30) at the offices of Caucasus Research Resource Centers (CRRC) at 16 Zandukeli Street in Tbilisi. This event is co-sponsored by the American Research Institute of the South Caucasus (ARISC) which also partially funded my exhibition.

Poster for Show

This is the poster for my upcoming show of photographic essays and installations by Tbilisi State University students from the Humanities Faculty. I'm very excited to be curating a show and as far as I know it is the first time that visual anthropological methods have been used in a conscientious way in Georgia. This image is hot off the press so I welcome your comments. It is a slightly adapted version of a photograph by Nino Chkhutiashvili. These are female members of a Jewish dance group, one of many different ethnic performances during the city festival of Tbilisoba.

So, in case you might happen to be in Tbilisi on the 21st of January, the show is hosted by the Georgian National Museum at the illustrious "Karvasla" or Ioseb Grishashvili Tbilisi History Museum at 5:00. It is next to Sioni Church in the old district (8 Sioni Street), a great location near Chardin, where "cafe/bar life" is defined in Tbilisi. The exhibit will continue until February 1st.

Kafdagh

A short and belated note on the title of this blog... A reoccurring and always interesting debate in Anthropology concerns the tension between the universal and the particular and I use language here as an illustration. As you see by the title of the blog, there is more than one way to refer to the geographical area in which I presently reside, the Caucasus. I'm sure one could find even more ways if one were to conduct a search, as these mountains have figured largely in the lives of many societies and populations. Mt. Elbruz, for example, is just one example. It has passed down to us through the mythical world of the Greeks, as a backdrop for the famous torture of Prometheus, the human who was too wily for his own good.

But the one reference of which I am familiar is Kafdagh (or Kafdagi). In a way, it neatly indexes the wider relationship between peoples and histories that forms the backdrop of my interest in anthropology. I came to understand the connection between "Kafdagi" - a mythical mountain to which my mother would refer as a place of mischief - and the Caucasus much later. For me it was merely a quirky reference of my mother's, a way to make light of something ridiculous, as in "Surely you quip? or "It must come from Kafdagi." Here is where lay the beauty of place names. The individuals using the terms often have no idea that theirs is not the only way to refer to a place, but merely an illustration of this or that societies' particular relationship to the land. Adding more interest to the Turkish case is that an actual term exists for the geographical area, the "Kafkas" mountains. And so the mythical reference exists in addition and, for most purposes separately, from the political reference which indexes a real place. In both cases, "kaf" or what in ancient Turkish referred to the "whiteness" links them to their common reference of the snow-capped mountains (with dagh or dag merely meaning mountain).

Place names thus are the link that discloses history and the meetings of peoples, who sometimes accurately and sometimes not come to "name" places and people in their own ways. Language is a muse for all who wonder about the world's peoples, about their differences yet links to eachother. I am quite sure that in Turkish story-telling "Kafdagi" came to be passed down from generation to generation as a borrowed idea, a land where monsters and mischief occurred. This is probably what real-life Caucasians were telling their Turkish neighbors or new family members, as many Caucasians were brought into the Turkish fold as young servants, wives, or military conscripts. Over the course of time, their own myths, of Narts and other giants, merged and were translated into a general idea of a mountain in which the unimaginable could happen. That these were for thousands of years impenetrable mountains, unparalleled in height but for the Alps and the Himalayas, added to this impression of awe and mystery. Thus how geography has come to tie Turks and Caucasians not just as a space of social and political confrontation, but through shared symbols, ideas, story-telling, and the general processes of social conviviality.

I implied how language could perhaps clarify the debate between the universal and particular. Communication experts have always been curious about finding a universal language, hence the great efforts that had been put forth to create Esperanto, that universal language with its supposed democratic features. This is why I could not decide on just one reference to the Caucasus for this blog, but opted them all, mythical and real. They are all true and all real, for this is a unique place in the world and meaningful for all who behold it, each in his or her own way. I believe that comprehending this diversity will reveal the overlapping and common interests that often pave these meetings.