What’s Next?

Set against the backdrop of war across the region, the third edition of the Tbilisi Architecture Biennial is a visceral reckoning with the uncertainty—and openness—of the present. Organized by Tinatin Gurgendize, Gigi Shukakidze, and Otar Nemsadze, What’s Next? compels with site-specific interventions and installations scattered across the Georgian capital and beyond. I encountered these impressive works within the biennial’s ambit, where I also made sure to sample from the extensive list of complementary programs ranging from satellite exhibitions and symposia to tours and film screenings. Taken as a whole, the biennial had the feeling of a big festival, exuding both urgency and ambition.

Four projects are at the heart of the biennial: Shorisdebuli, a pencil tower of scaffolding situated in between two buildings in the center of the city that highlights the legacies of outdated planning systems; Tumbleweed Rodeo, a performative reflection on the plant’s tendency to break boundaries by bringing it back to where it originally came from—Caucasia—and letting it roll; Threshold Landscape, a meditative installation in a dry lake that formally evokes the foundation piles of real estate developments to come; and Totem of Temporality, a material intervention into the municipal dump and landfill that speaks about the transitory nature and value of waste.

Also worthy of note were a symposium and exhibition at Sanatorium Kartli, a dilapidated building on Tbilisi’s outskirts that has been occupied for nearly thirty years by internally displaced people (IDPs) from the Abkhazian war. Members and researchers of the Georgian IDP community delivered moving presentations. In its keynote, MetaLab details its work adaptations of abandoned buildings in and around Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine, to provide residence and community to people fleeing war. The solidarity between the two countries was further asserted by Checkpoint ‘Protected Lands’, which, through a precise and haunting assemblage of concrete defensive fortifications, emphasizes the familiarity and proximity of the war in Ukraine. It served as an uncomfortable reminder that the same could happen here at any moment.