SYMBIOSIS is a site specific artwork developed as a symbiotic organism on an abandoned, dilapidated building that is all that remains of a residence in the village of Vlahata Sami. The form of the work is reminiscent of an invasive plant that creeps, climbs and spreads, taking up space while following the shape of whatever it embraces. Historical fragments of the building’s origins are assimilated and decontextualized as the flow takes it over.
The work is prompted by the sequence of growth and decline that occurs cyclically in the Vlahata settlement until its eventual abandonment after the great earthquake of 1953. SYMBIOSIS uses the temporal outcome of these alternations as a field of exploration and timeless conceptualization. In this new, ephemeral version, the selected building, as part of a visual artwork, temporarily redirects our gaze. In this way, the state of oblivion in which it has fallen is temporarily interrupted, bringing its history back to the forefront and with it the contemporary history of the area, as their relation is direct.
The work SYMBIOSIS supplies three associative “time-lapses” to the observer: in the first, the ruins and fragments as traces of a past time fuel our imagination of what once existed; in the second, the ephemeral installation creates a symbiotic present where the work develops in the ruins of the building and in the third, perhaps in a future time, everything returns again to the original condition of abandonment and oblivion.
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Photos by: Guram Chachanidze