Site Location: Chiatura, Georgia
Exhibition:
1st Tbilisi Triennial: Offside Effect. Center for Contemporary Art, Tbilisi, October 2012
Publication:
Ground Up Journal: Grit Issue
Metropolis M Books: Offside Effect
Chiatura is the site and subject of a series of workshops introducing techniques of landscape research, analysis, interpretation, and design through intensive site exploration and artistic production. The first phase of the workshop focused on how land use and social spaces are stratified in relation to elevation. Participants created visual records of their interactions and observations along the vertical spans between the area's mountaintop mines, city center, villages, and river valley.
The second phase, presented here, poetically captures the grit of the site - the physical, material, and textural elements that define the aesthetic character of Chiatura. A third phase will synthesize.
The two previous courses were integrated into a design proposal for a remediation program within the city and the Kvirila gorge. Manganese is mined at upper elevations of the Kvirila gorge. The ore is processed and then transferred to railcars at the river bottom. One system of ropeways (cable cars) conveys ore from the mines to processing facilities on each side of the river. A second set transports people from the river bottom to the upper levels of the gorge and from village to village. Black sediments from mining operations foul the Kvirila River from Chiatura southward. Half of the operations are in ruins - a linear landscape of black drifts of ore and piles of crumbling concrete. The other half continues to employ nearly 3,000 citizens of Chiatura. In the months between our visits, these workers were on strike for a livable wage, safer working conditions, and proper protective clothing, including gloves and boots without holes.
In this workshop's two-day exercise, participants explored Chiatura's physical and metaphorical grit through its landscapes. On the first day, three sites were investigated: a concrete plant in Darkveti near the start of the gorge, an abandoned ore washing plant, and the Itkhvisi-Zodi ropeway. Resilient vines, grasses, and ruderal species grew over skeletons of machines and broken walls. A fishing net made from a lace curtain hung near the river. In a grove of trees, men pulled rebar from concrete blocks with their bare hands to sell for scrap. The rusted ropeway car crossed safely over the gorge.
Workshop participants created drawings interpreting their observations at these sites. Soils, mining surplus, vegetation, architectural and industrial artifacts, and water are represented in this visual vocabulary. The drawings serve as reference points that will guide aesthetic and material decision-making for continued projects in Chiatura.
These drawings interpret the material and aesthetic conditions of the Kvirila River gorge in Chiatura, Republic of Georgia. Chiatura was chosen as an investigative site due to the records of change and devastation in the landscape since mining began in 1879. The place and the problems are gritty - socially, aesthetically, and ecologically.