Events

Dedicated to the Centenary of the Georgian Futurist Group H2SO4

9-11 October 2024, Ilia State University, Tbilisi, Georgia

Historical avant-garde contains forgotten moments and scenes that still need to be rediscovered or reconnected with other, central or peripheral scenes of the European avant-garde. Avant-garde moments would not occur in different national cultures without the strong desire to connected with the wider web of aesthetic searches and experimentation, happening in various European cultural loci. However, due to historical changes, some moments/scenes were disconnected from the web, staying unrecalled for decades. 

One such forgotten moment was that of the Tbilisi modernism/avant-garde (1917-1918) and the Futurist group H2SO4 (1920s), which has been erased from the Georgian cultural memory by the Soviet power while the country was disconnected from European cultural context. In the post-Soviet decades, Georgia had to reclaim this legacy. The present centenary of the Futurist group and journal H2SO4 (1924) is a good reason for discussing different, though often comparable avant-garde cultural experiences.

Understanding Avant-Garde as a constellation of different moments we will examine the specificity of each locality in their transcultural entanglement. To reconstruct these scenes, the conference will elaborate on networks, relationships, groups, and collaborations, on their coming together, forming, evaporating, and diverging again. What is the transformational power of Avant-Garde alliances, past and present, within the artistic and the societal field?

A particular focus of ours will be the question of gender dynamics within these local and transcultural webs. How have ways and forms of life been shaped throughout the Avant-Gardes? What are the gendered social and spatial structures, in which groups test and create forms of community through their artistic practices? The aim here will be to render visible realities of those groups and alliances that have not yet been acknowledged, due to geographical, institutional and/or political conditions.

 Speakers are invited to elaborate on one or more of the following aspects:

• Networks, cooperation, groups and alliances and their transcultural entanglements
• Questions of gender and social structuring of spaces in the arts
• Practices of the avant-gardes
• Various narratives of modernism/avant-garde
• The transformative power of avant-garde and the challenges of the quest for cultural renewal
• Avant-garde and national cultures

Please send abstracts no more than 250 words for a 20-minute paper, and your short Bio to: complit@iliauni.edu.ge

Deadline: 15 July 2024.

There is no registration fee. Coffee breaks and lunches are free for conference participants.

The conference is organised by the Institute of Comparative Literature and the Centre for Advanced Studies, Ilia State University, in cooperation with the Institute of Philosophy and Art History, Leuphana University of Lüneburg, Germany.

Organising committee: Bela Tsipuria, Levan Gelashvili (Institute of Comparative Literature, Iliauni); Giga Zedania, Tamar Tolordava (Centre for Advanced Studies, Iliauni); Katharina Tchelidze (Leuphana University of Lüneburg).

2024