Salon für Ästhetische Experimente | political drifts

with Tekla Aslanishvili, João Enxuto, Erica Love, moderated by Sybille Neumeyer

What are the flows of material and social infrastructures, political and physical borders and practices of statecraft? What are the economic currents between art institutions and energy companies? 

In this conversation artists and filmmakers Erica Love, João Enxuto and Tekla Aslanishvili will address the potential of artistic media film and animation to capture the complex, spatially and temporally distributed processes involved in making large-scale infrastructures into a cohesive cinematic timeline. Beyond the political, financial, legal frameworks the authors will discuss the historical role of culture in creating an ‘enchanting aura’ around the territories and technologies of extraction, transit, and energy, which fosters collective investment in uncertain futures (see Harvey & Knox, 2012). Finally, the discussion will delve into how these material structures function as organizational tools beyond their intended purposes, shaping the production of knowledge, state borders, and statecraft practices.

Tekla Aslanishvili’s experimental two-channel documentary film examines how hydro-energy infrastructures function as organizational tools in three interconnected areas: knowledge production, the making and unmaking of borders, and statecraft practices. It follows rivers in the South Caucasus, from glaciers to the Black Sea, mapping the material and social infrastructures built around them across seasons. The focus culminates in the EU-Georgia initiative to lay the world’s longest high-voltage power grid under the Black Sea, aiming to reduce the EU’s reliance on Russian energy and positioning Georgia as an energy hub. The documentary weaves together fragmented histories of restructuring labor and life around energy politics, with particular attention to the Upper Svaneti region in North-West Georgia, where unregulated crypto-mining disrupts power infrastructures and planned dam projects threaten local ecosystems. The film features historic and current practices of self-organization to protect common resources and the environment.

// This project has been supported by the Graduate School UdK Berlin, Kommission für künstlerische und wissenschaftliche Vorhaben (KKWV) Berlin, Critical Media Lab Basel

João Enxuto and Erica Love’s A Film for People is built on energy infrastructure. Lumpen figures from a museum diorama are reanimated to draw links and conflicts between industrial workers, climate activists, and artists. The animation is inspired by a decommissioned coal-burning power plant in Lisbon that was converted to a museum complex by EDP, Portugal’s energy monopoly, and a major arts funder. Inside a video game engine, multiple historical time frames, spaces, objects, and actors are collapsed within a single environment emerging from an ashpit.

// This project has been supported by the Graduate School UdK Berlin and an Artist Fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA).

as part ofTeleconnections, curated by Sybille Neumeyer

When? Where?
Saturday 16.11.2024, 4:00 pm - 6:00 pm
D21 Kunstraum Leipzig
Demmeringstraße 21
04177 Leipzig