皇家华人

In Soviet times, when all social life was dominated by official ideology, birzha - a physical place of gathering in the neighborhood - often played the role of an informal public sphere, where not only events of daily life were discussed, but also popular political and social attitudes, tastes and new knowledge were formed. Sometimes birzhas were the only places where 鈥渃ommon sense鈥� could be found.聽In our effort to contribute to the creation of new knowledge, we will address maybe the most important question of our politics 鈥� whether we can change 30-year-long paradigm of neoliberal dictatorship.聽

Throughout October PPV will be looking at 'Birzhastation' - inspired by the Georgian practice of聽产颈谤锄丑补,听a type of informal gathering in public space -聽interrogates neo-liberal ideologies of architectural transparency in the post-socialist world (and in the global 鈥渨ild capitalist鈥� reality of the 21st century). Named in a fiddly, imaginative cocktail of Georgian, Russian and 聽English, Birzhastation provides an archi-ethnographic exploration of the possibilities and pitfalls of fine ideas (transparency, openness, horizontality, togetherness, the commonness) in a time of an ideological crisis, amid a global rise of the new types of militarized police regimes. While in many countries of the world we are still naively enamored by architectural transparency as a metaphor of political openness and economic honesty, in Tbilisi (in part, perhaps, as a result of former President Saakashvili's failed attempt to combat police corruption and brutality by decreeing the construction all-glass police stations) people are equipped with a more cautious mindset.聽