2,5 sq meters
Omalo. First and second summer days. Findings.
42° 22' 4" N 45° 38' 23''E
The Tushetian nature here is strong and intense. To understand this place, I decided to focus on the small things. What if you choose just 2.5 square meters of this land and try to explore it? Perhaps limiting to a few meters of ground would give me a better understanding of the area. I deliberately chose this restriction because I want to concentrate on something physical, something specific. Another reason, why I am doing it: I need to have my personal piece of land, my territory, my place. After losing access to my native land due to the war, feeling a physical ground under my body became extremely important. These 2.5 meters of Tusheti land have become my “personal island”. Realizing that I was just a guest on it, I decided that I would explore it with the utmost care, I have no right to harm it.
I created a temporary hedge and began to inspect and photograph everything that lay on the surface carefully. My task was to take "samples" without killing them. The camera was the ideal tool for this. I came to my 2.5 sq meters at different times of the day, for two days, and each time I noticed there something new. This experiment could be continued for a year, and maybe more. It's amazing how rich nature is, how many stories it has and how selective my vision and attention is. From all captured findings, I created a digital collection of various alive and non-living objects that belonged to this place on June 1st and 2nd, 2022. Also, I did a soil recording.
42° 22' 4" N 45° 38' 23''E
The Tushetian nature here is strong and intense. To understand this place, I decided to focus on the small things. What if you choose just 2.5 square meters of this land and try to explore it? Perhaps limiting to a few meters of ground would give me a better understanding of the area. I deliberately chose this restriction because I want to concentrate on something physical, something specific. Another reason, why I am doing it: I need to have my personal piece of land, my territory, my place. After losing access to my native land due to the war, feeling a physical ground under my body became extremely important. These 2.5 meters of Tusheti land have become my “personal island”. Realizing that I was just a guest on it, I decided that I would explore it with the utmost care, I have no right to harm it.
I created a temporary hedge and began to inspect and photograph everything that lay on the surface carefully. My task was to take "samples" without killing them. The camera was the ideal tool for this. I came to my 2.5 sq meters at different times of the day, for two days, and each time I noticed there something new. This experiment could be continued for a year, and maybe more. It's amazing how rich nature is, how many stories it has and how selective my vision and attention is. From all captured findings, I created a digital collection of various alive and non-living objects that belonged to this place on June 1st and 2nd, 2022. Also, I did a soil recording.
Of course, the experiment could be continued for weeks and even years. I am sure that every day new finds would appear at this place. But this time, I was limited in time. Perhaps I will return to this place someday. I will find it by exact geographic coordinates, and I will return here more than once in my dreams. In the meantime, I will always have a small collection of finds from my 2.5 square meters of Tushetia land, the first days of summer 2022, with me.
Digital collage,
Sound recording
Photography
The project was made during the "Wilderness as an archive" program in Aq Tusheti artistic Residence, Georgia.
2022
Sound recording
Photography
The project was made during the "Wilderness as an archive" program in Aq Tusheti artistic Residence, Georgia.
2022
