Connecting people through art 

EXHIBITION

A State in a State

by Tekla Aslanishvili

at MCAD Commons

23 September - 23 October 2023

ARTIST'S TALK

Date and Time: Saturday, 21 October 2023, 3 PM

Location: Orange Project in Art District, Lopue’s Annex Building, Lacson Street, Bacolod City

Registration: bit.ly/TeklaArtistTalk

About: Tekla Aslanishvili will discuss A State in a State, a film on the fragmentation of railroads in the South Caucasus and Caspian region; Scenes from Trial and Error, a film on the failed development of a port and city on the Black Sea shore; and an ongoing project on renewable energy infrastructures in South Caucasus.

We are pleased to extend an invitation to the artist's talk of Tekla Aslanishvili under MCAD Commons at Orange Project in Bacolod City, Philippines, on Saturday, 21 October 3pm, as part of the public program of the exhibition A State in a State. This exhibition marks the last presentation in the frame of the Han Nefkens Foundation – Fundació Antoni Tàpies Video Art Production Grant 2020, in collaboration with Art Jameel, Dubai/Jeddah; Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (MCAD), Manila; NTU CCA, Singapore and WIELS, Brussels.

A State in a State is an experimental documentary film by artist and filmmaker Tekla Aslanishvili, that follows the construction, disruption and fragmentation of railroads in the South Caucasus and Caspian regions. The film looks at railways and considers them as the technical materialization of the fragile political borders that emerged after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Revolving around scenes of delay and waiting that constitute the movement of cargo, the film gives an alternative reading to the optimism presented by narratives of the New Silk Road. Instead, A State in a State, shows how the iron foundations of railway connectivity can be used for exclusion and geopolitical sabotage. As the railway snakes through mountains and towns, stopping at stations for people and materials to get on board and continue their travel, patterns of resistance emerge and a kind of infrastructural consciousness surfaces. Workers along the lines disrupt political violence through various forms of resistance; with the film exploring the potential of the rail system to create a lasting, transnational kinship among the people who live and work around it.

Railway systems in the Philippines were introduced in the 1870s, almost at the tail end of the Spanish colonization. When the Americans took over, they furthered the system across the main island of Luzon and included the Visayas islands. The railroads in the Visayas were put in place in the early 1900s to create both passenger and cargo transportation across the islands. Early rail systems in haciendas were built to support logging, but later became part of the sugarcane mills, when the logging industry collapsed.

The film’s context in Bacolod mirrors the economic and political relevance of railroads on the islands, as those found in the regions of Eastern Europe and West Asia. While railroads in the Philippines do not stretch for kilometers crossing borders as those found in A State in a State, the iron roads in the Visayas are part of a history that speaks to labor practices and cruel monopolies that indentured hundreds of thousands of hacienda laborers, the effects of which continue to the present.

A State in a State is an exhibition under MCAD Commons, conceptualised as a programmed space that is removed from the main gallery space of the museum. Conceived as a project to continue the expanding activities of the museum, MCAD Commons brings MCAD’s singular programming to a larger audience that allows for the engagement with creative development, ideas exchange, and support of the artistic process across the areas of research, art practice, and curatorial discourse.

A series of behind-the-scenes photographs by photographer Nikoloz Tabukashvili is also included in the exhibition.

MCDA: https://www.mcadmanila.org.ph/mcad-commons-a-state-in-a-state/