Ministry of Highways: A Guide to the Performative Architecture of Tbilisi (Sternberg Press)

Once described as “Italy gone Marxist,” Georgia, located in both an advantageous and vulnerable geopolitical position between the Black Sea, Russia, Central Asia, and the Middle East, enjoys a Mediterranean climate and viniculture in combination with a community-oriented and self-determined spirit. Its informal, vernacular, and palimpsestic architecture—reflected in the stunning former Ministry of Highways erected in 1975—reveals the uncanny anticipatory and progressive potential of a place where the past is neither monumentalized nor destroyed, but built upon. Taking the exhibition “Frozen Moments: Architecture Speaks Back” (2010) as its starting point, this guidebook maps the social, urban, and art discourses of the country's post-Soviet years as seen from its hilly capital of Tbilisi.

The publication accompanies the exhibition of the Georgian Pavilion at the 55th International Art Exhibition—la Biennale di Venezia titled “Kamikaze Loggia,” curated by Joanna Warsza.

Copublished by the Other Space Foundation and Casco—Office for Art, Design and Theory

Contributors
Ei Arakawa, Ruben Arevshatyan, Levan Asabashvili, Bouillon Group, George Chakhava, Thea Djordjadze, Didier Faustino, Yona Friedman, Nana Kipiani, Nikoloz Lutidze, Marion von Osten, Nini Palavandishvili, Gela Patashuri, Lali Pertenava, Marjetica Potrč, Richard Reynolds, Slavs and Tatars, Gio Sumbadze, Sophia Tabatadze, Éric Troussicot, Jan Verwoert, Aleksandra Wasilkowska, et al.

Joanna Warsza is a curator in the fields of visual and performing arts and architecture. She was an artistic director of Public Art Munich from 2016 to 2018 and since 2014 she has led the curatorial program CuratorLab at Konstfack University in Stockholm.