Kamikaze Renovation: Parasitical Forms Of Renovation

Renovation, understood as a desire to transform, improve, or restore to working condition, takes on a particular meaning in former Eastern Bloc countries. The fall of the Soviet Union ushered in a permanent construction zone. Part transition and part transformation, this renovation, like a vast construction site that opens the right to self-determination, asserts itself as both a wager on the future and a wish to break with the past. In this context, artists have often questioned the vocabulary that has evolved to describe its qualities: “Sighnaghization,”1 1  - Refers to inadequate urban renovations or the transformation of historic city centres into business or tourist districts at the expense of urban vitality, typical of the city of Sighnaghi, for instance. “Brusselization,” “Dubaization,” “Euroremont.” Such neologisms refer to urbanization policies that attempt to radically modernize the living environment, often at the expense of existing urban structures and their inhabitants. Georgians and Armenians speak of Euroremont (Euro-renovation) to denote a process that consists of blindly renovating a living environment according to European — that is, Western — standards.2 2  - It may consist, for example, of replacing wooden windows with plastic ones. Under cover of renovating, of erasing the years of the Soviet Union and its characteristic architecture, current leaders are also interested in historic neighbourhoods — ones that survived the Soviet era intact — for their touristic potential. The issue of urban renovation lies at the heart of Westernization policies in Georgia.

Artists, too, are caught between the desire to sweep away the vestiges of communism and the need to be part of modernity; thus, many of them find themselves occupying the renovation field.³ 3 - Curator Joanna Warsza has organized numerous action-exhibitions that question this notion of renovation in the context of countries of the former Soviet Union or Eastern Bloc. The Bouillon Group⁴ 4 - An art collective composed of Vasil Macharadze, Zura Kikvadze, Temo Kartlelishvili, Katya Ketsbaia, Koka Kitiashvili, Lado Khartishvili, and Natuka Vatsadze. has focused on Tbilisi’s medieval district, Betlemi, long abandoned and now the object of an urban revitalization project.⁵ 5 - Tbilisi, Kala Betlemi Quarter Revitalisation Programme Report, 2000-2010, accessed September 10, 2013, http://icomos.org.ge/pdf/betlemi_project_report.pdf. Betlemi is a prime example of a neighbourhood that hasn’t yet entered a process of Brusselization. Its main characteristic is that it is largely self-governed, from both an architectural and economic point of view. The art project Betlemi Mikro Raioni (2009)⁶ 6 - Organized by Art-Zone Poland/Tbilisi, 2009. as a whole seemed to embody Jean-Luc Godard’s watchword: “Change nothing so that everything will be different.”⁷ 7 - Jean-Luc Godard, “Toutes les histoires”, Histoire(s) du cinéma, 1988, France, Gaumont, (DVD), 51 min. The collective endeavoured to map and highlight a district that hadn’t been stigmatized by Soviet microraions⁸ 8 - Urban architecture typical of the Soviet era. or transformed by gentrification. In the same vein, the Bouillon Group’s three-day collective performance-action, Apartment 4, envisaged the participatory demolition of a typical communist-era apartment to which everyone could contribute: initially furnished with objects identified with the Soviet period, the apartment and its contents were reduced to a pile of rubble. The action was meant as a metaphor for the ineluctable demolition of Georgian heritage.⁹ 9 - Lali Pertenava, “Domestic Resistance of Bouillon Group,” in Kamikaze Loggia (Tbilisi: Ministry of Culture and Monument Protection of Georgia, 2013), 39 – 42. This performance may be seen as a call for a “DIY” approach and a rejection of Euro-renovation (Euroremont) and its standardization of historical heritage, which entails taking apart, or destroying, in order to better “rebuild”; to propose a remont, to borrow the Soviet term, or to designate a “redecoration” that follows neither European nor Soviet models.