Events
Posted:
1 year ago
TAB Presents Installation "Protected Lands"
Tbilisi Architecture Biennale presents Checkpoint "Protected Lands". The authors of the installation are Anna Dobrova, Iryna Miroshnykova, Anastasia Zhuravel, and Oleksiy Petrov.
"Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, essential routes were equipped with defensive fortificationsーcheckpoints. All of them were built hastily from locally available materialsーconcrete, metal, wood, earth, or sand.
A checkpoint provides movement control and defense and can be part of a more extensive fortification system with surveillance, cover, and fire functions. The most effective protection of defensive structures is provided when they are combined with natural obstacles, mountains and ravines, rivers and swamps, and impenetrable forests. People have long settled where the landscape can protect them. The sharper the relief, the older the woods, the greater the chances for survival and development.
In the current russian attack on Ukraine, we saw with our own eyes how the landscape works: wet river valleys and swamps slowed down the advance on Kyiv, and the enemy was defeated there. At the same time, the southern regions, where once there was a steppe and now agricultural fields, were captured in the first weeks.
Since the reign of the russian empire and the soviet union, the natural wealth of Ukraine has been exploited to strengthen the military potential of our enemy: forests have been combed in search of centuries-old "ship pines," and millennial swamps have been drained to turn them into collective farm fields. But even now, mining continues: old forests, swampy peat, and water from rivers and lakes are not an inexhaustible resource. For the land to protect us from attacks and climate change, we must defend it, including our excessive activities.
Forests, swamps, rivers, ravines, and mountains have been formed over hundreds, thousands, and millions of years. We collect checkpoints in a matter of hours. How long will we need new checkpoints? We do not know, but we are doing everything, so they become history, overgrown with herbs, mosses, and mushrooms, lost among the landscapes.
Our installation and discussion are about protecting the land before, during, and after the war. About working on new projects with an understanding of our environmental impact. About interacting with nature instead of dominating it."
The event will be held in front of the Sports Palace, bus stop. The project is realized by Pavilion Kultury Architecture, Ukraine, ФОРМА and supported by the Ukrainian Emergency Art Fund (UEAF), within the "Cultural Emergency Response" programme of the Prince Claus Fund For Culture and Development.