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Episode #12 of ‘Incidents (of Travel)’ – Dispatch by Nino Kvrivishvili and Tara McDowell from Tbilisi

Thu, Jun 25 2020

Browser view of episode 12 of Incidents (of Travel) from Tbilisi.

A new episode of ‘Incidents (of Travel)’ from Tbilisi is now live! It is the latest edition of the online project produced by KADIST and edited by Latitudes exploring the chartered itinerary as a format of artistic encounter, an extended offline conversation between curator/s and artist/s.

The 12th episode sets a different tone in the online series as it was programmed to take place in late May, during the COVID-19 global pandemic. The itinerary set by Tbilisi-based artist Nino Kvrivishvili to lead Melbourne-based Associate Professor Tara McDowell became a WhatsApp video tour/conversation around Nino's artistic practice and the Georgian silk industry — a production that began in Tbilisi in the 5th century and continued until the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s.

Nino led Tara to a former silk industry building, locations of former fabric shops on Rustaveli Avenue (Tbilisi’s central artery), introduced her to Aleksandre Utmazyan's unique textile shop, visited the State Silk Museum where she exhibited in 2016, and virtually followed the smell of Aleko's freshly baked Shotis Puri (the distinctive canoe-shaped Georgian flatbreads) before ending in Nino's studio in the Saburtalo district. Here they “talk about the women who came before us, who worked in these industries, under desperately hard conditions, and whose lives remain hidden, their stories untold.”

Incidents (of Travel) site presents one continuous immersive read interwoven with vertical videos and images in a new mobile-friendly format. Tap, swipe and scroll!

‘Incidents (of Travel)’ was conceived in 2012 when Latitudes commissioned 5 day-long artist-led tours around Mexico City in the framework of a short residency at Casa del Lago. The project had sequels in 2013 in Hong Kong with online dispatches published live via social media, including soundscapes (archived on Soundcloud), and in 2015 in San Francisco with daily posts as part of Kadist's Instagram take over “Artist Not In The Studio Curator Not At The Office”.

A year later, Kadist and Latitudes partnered in a new ‘distributed’ phase of ‘Incidents (of Travel)’ extending the invitation to curators and artists working around the world and publishing their dispatches as an Online Project.

Since 2016 conversations have taken place in Tbilisi (Georgia), Panama City (Panama), Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), Reykjavík (Iceland), Buenos Aires (Argentina), Hobart (Tasmania), Yerevan (Armenia), Terengganu (Malaysia), Lisbon (Portugal), Suzhou (China), Jinja (Uganda) and Chicago (US).

http://incidents.kadist.org/chicago

The first dispatch launched in April 2016 with an itinerary by curator Yesomi Umolu and artist Harold Mendez from Chicago – a day photographed by Nabiha Khan.

http://incidents.kadist.org/jinja

The second dispatch came from Jinja in Uganda, where curator Moses Serubiri invited photographer Mohsen Taha to explore Jinja's Indian architectural legacy and Idi Amin's notorious expulsion of Uganda's Asian minority in 1972.

http://incidents.kadist.org/suzhou

The third episode took place while curator Yu Ji and poet Xiao Kaiyu hiked on Dong Shan (East Mountain), 130 km west of Shanghai, on a peninsula stretching into Tai Hu lake near the city of Suzhou, China.

http://incidents.kadist.org/lisbon

The fourth dispatch came from Lisbon, where Galician curator Pedro de Llano visited key locations that marked the life and work of Luisa Cunha.

http://incidents.kadist.org/terengganu

The fifth episode took place in April 2016, when curator Simon Soon and artist chi too visited the Malaysian North Eastern state of Terengganu, where chi spent some time in 2013, surrounded by "men and women who work(ed) multiple jobs as fishermen, housebuilders, boat builders, farmers, coconut pickers, food producers, and everything else that matters."

http://incidents.kadist.org/yerevan

The sixth episode narrates a walking itinerary conducted by curator Marianna Hovhannisyan with Vardan Kilichyan, Gohar Hosyan, and Anaida Verdyan in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, documenting the transformed, disappeared, or permanently-closed art institutions in the city centre.

http://incidents.kadist.org/hobart

The seventh episode comes from Hobart, capital of Tasmania. It is narrated by curator Camila Marambio, following an itinerary devised by artist Lucy Bleach. They spent the day "encircling the outer limits of human understanding by visiting the histories, both past, and present, of attempts to reach beyond our sensory capacities through governance, technology, and reverie", and ended the day cooking at Lucy's home-sharing their mutual love for quinces.

http://incidents.kadist.org/buenosaires

In the eighth 'Incidents (of Travel' dispatch Móvil co-founder and curator Alejandra Aguado followed the itinerary devised by the artist Diego Bianchi around Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Their exploration took them from the self-regulated community Velatropa to the buzzing commercial area of Once, identifying human and non-human flows and interactions. This became an entry point for discussing Bianchi's interests in how, as consumers, we define a particular zeitgeist and appropriate trends that enable us to affirm our identities.

http://incidents.kadist.org/reyjkavik

In the ninth dispatch, Canadian curator Becky Forsythe and Icelandic artist Þorgerður Ólafsdóttir navigate Reykjavík's surroundings considering Þorgerður's “current interest in Icelandic Spar (a form of transparent calcite), its double refraction and light-polarizing properties. In a race with daylight, they travel between sites collecting moments and considering the ways in which geologic time surfaces in the context of human time.”

http://incidents.kadist.org/rio

The tenth dispatch begins with an itinerary proposed by Barcelona-born, Rio de Janeiro-based artist Daniel Steegmann Mangrané and is followed by images and videos recording a day roaming Rio's natural and artistic landscapes with Bogotá-born, Mexico City-based curator Catalina Lozano, who narrates their day spent together.

http://incidents.kadist.org/panama

In the 11th episode, Swiss curator Sandino Scheidegger (Random Institute) visits Panama City in preparation for a solo exhibition by Donna Conlon and Jonathan Harker at Casa Santa Ana in 2021. Conlon and Harker collaboration since 2006 (while also pursuing their own individual art practices) has resulted in seventeen video works to date. The places Sandino, Donna and Jonathan visited together pointed to the origin of some of their video works, the ideas behind them, or simply served as stages in their pieces, turning into “an exercise in sneaking through fences to reach former recycling plants, imagining how things looked before the skyscrapers took over, and navigating the complex social fabric of Panama City — all while getting a taste of local food between every stop.”

→ RELATED CONTENT:

Episode #11 of ‘Incidents (of Travel)’ – Dispatch by Sandino Scheidegger and Donna Conlon & Jonathan Harker from Panama City
9 April 2020
https://www.lttds.org/longitudes/index.php?id=4425215029591365006/11-episode-of-incidents-of-travel

Tenth episode of ‘Incidents (of Travel)’ – Dispatch by Catalina Lozano and Daniel Steegmann Mangrané from Rio de Janeiro
29 January 2020
https://www.lttds.org/longitudes/index.php?id=144735152408473327/tenth-episode-of-incidents-of-travel

The ninth episode of ‘Incidents (of Travel)’ – Dispatch by Becky Forsythe and Þorgerður Ólafsdóttir, 8 February 2019
https://www.lttds.org/longitudes/index.php?id=6371927610418460689

The eighth episode of ‘Incidents (of Travel)’ – Dispatch by Alejandra Aguado and Diego Bianchi, 6 September 2019
https://www.lttds.org/longitudes/index.php?id=8721104601538735691

Seventh episode of ‘Incidents (of Travel)’ – Dispatch by Camila Marambio and Lucy Bleach from Hobart, Tasmania, 28 June 2018
https://www.lttds.org/longitudes/index.php?id=1055853895543348027

The sixth episode of ‘Incidents (of Travel)’ – Dispatch by Marianna Hovhannisyan and students from the National Center of Aesthetics from Yerevan, Armenia, 1 March 2018
http://www.lttds.org/blog/blog.php?id=5887133486742947361

The fifth episode of 'Incidents (of Travel)' – Dispatch by Simon Soon and chi too from Terengganu, Malaysia, 26 April 2017
http://www.lttds.org/blog/blog.php?id=4083951540089486920

The fourth episode of 'Incidents (of Travel)' – Dispatch by Pedro de Llano and Luisa Cunha from Lisbon, Portugal, 2 March 2017
http://www.lttds.org/blog/blog.php?id=4185860148466062617

The third episode of 'Incidents (of Travel)' – Dispatch by Yu JI and Xiao Kaiyu reporting from Suzhou, China, 6 September 2016
http://www.lttds.org/blog/blog.php?id=1437935620149738144

Second 'Incidents (of Travel)' dispatch by Moses Serubiri and Mohsen Taha reporting from Jinja, Uganda, 30 June 2016
https://www.lttds.org/longitudes/index.php?id=2504250800654900933

Kadist and Latitudes present 'Incidents (Of Travel)' online 31 May 2016
http://www.lttds.org/blog/blog.php?id=1076947282278624159

2020, Incidents of Travel, industry, Kadist, Nino Kvrivishvili, out of the studio, Tara McDowell, tour, writing