PLAY, 2015
PLAY was a creation for the Tbilisi Triennial 2015. For several months, I worked for the inhabitants of the Georgian village of Machkhaani in order to perform at the disused theatre there and reintegrate it in village life. The project set out from memories of the inhabitants. Together, we gathered stories about the village, the theatre and the inhabitants and translated them into installations. The theatre was redesigned with the villagers according to their ideas and then reopened. In addition, together with school pupils, I developed an immersive stage play about their lives in Machkhaani, freely adapted from “Romeo and Julia”, which led spectators around the whole village and ended in the theatre.
What have you taken home from this project for your artistic activities?
The project forms the beginning of my further work in the field of artistic interventions in cultural education. The long period of activities at local level showed me the importance of time-intensive working to enable something to develop together and allow work at eye-level. I have learnt to harmonise my own position as an artist with the needs of the participants, reassess them again and again and adopt an open-minded approach in working. I see myself as a mediator looking for aspects to take up, bringing along different material and providing an aesthetic framework.