David Bergé has been invited to GeoAIR residency to participate in the project Tbilisi Chess Palace and develop a Walk Piece specially for this project. 

Since 2008 David Bergé has been making silent Walk Pieces, which for him has been a way to practice photography – photography without the physical apparatus of the camera. In his Walk Pieces he guides small groups of people (max. 6 at a time) for approx. 100 minutes through the urban fabric, in silence. Without him, the photographer narrating this trajectory, the audience is given the opportunity to step outside of quotidian time and its signifiers.

As the title indicates walking is the core activity of his Walk Pieces and through walking getting awareness and becoming more conscious about the city, its hidden layers and public space. It’s an experience in silence, where participants are brought out of their daily routine of rush and put into an already unusual situation where 90 minutes of walk become symbolical meaning of past and current time, time as a trace of history, of life, of changes and possible future. It grants an opportunity to feel the intangibility of time.

Particularly for Tbilisi Walk and Tbilisi Chess Palace project it is interesting to mention that one can “discover” and encounter the above mentioned building only as a pedestrian, as it is situated in a public park cut off from traffic. Thus, on the one hand promoting walking as a neglected activity and through walking experiencing diversity of public space in the city and hidden places are the essential part of Tbilisi Walk.

With Tbilisi Walk by leading to, through and around the building we offer an opportunity to feel the space, experience time and contemplate about different aspects of its life as well as its publicness versus privateness and humans participation in it. While led through precisely choreographed and strictly guided walk and passing the proposed route walkers get conscious about layers of urban texture Tbilisi is consisting of, exposed in diverse architectural styles, and especially in details, moreover that details such as passersby, workers, and similar which are part of rhythm of city life, might change from walk to walk. It’s an experience in silence, which gives a unique opportunity to become an observer, step out of privacy of our daily life and step into public space.

To offer a prolonged livability to the project, for Tbilisi Walk decision has been made to create collaboration with local performing artist – Nadia Tsulukidze, who will be the guide for public walks GeoAIR will be offering in the frame of the Tbilisi Chess Palace project. 

 

David Bergé practices photography in a non-recording and almost immaterial way.

 

His work is concerned with the physicality of urban space, built environment and changing territories. Accordingly, his practice brings forward a variety of non-object oriented formats such as silent Walk Pieces, durational photo installations and slideshows.

It has since 2005 been an attempt to make visible and tangible movement: The movement of bodies in a Walk Piece going through the urban fabric in silence, the movement of re­‐travelling Le Corbusier’s 1911 Voyage d’Orient and now, most recently in his current project Wearing Space, the movement or displacement of artists, architects and artifacts refuging.

His work has been presented at various international art centers including Extra-City kunsthal, Antwerp (2016, 2015); CAC, Vilnius (2015); NETWERK Center for Contemporary Art, Aalst (2015, 2012); Maison Particulière, Brussels (2014); Kunsthaus Muerz, Muerzzuschlag, (2012); The Body Arts Laboratory Gallery, Tokyo (2012); SALT, Istanbul (2011); Goethe Institut New Delhi (2011) and TanzQuartier Wien, Vienna (2010).

 

David Bergé lives and works in Brussels and Athens.