Tuesday, September 1, 2015

Veronika Barnaš, born 1978, lives and works as a freelance artist, curator and artistic project developer in Vienna, as well as is an Assistant at the University of Arts and Design, Linz (A), at the department of Art and Education, Artistic Practice (Prof. Hubert Lobnig).

The mode of her artistic work largely involves research, crosses genres and is space-specific. Visual art, literature and theater form a productive relationship in this. The works range from staging and stage sets to installations all the way to mappings of complex (especially spatial, historical and biographical) conjunctions, whereby space in all its most diverse meanings and dimensions represents the overall context. Eg. „Subjective Cartographies from Isreael“ – in progress. Numerous independent productions (eg. unORTnung I-VI) as well as at the „Volkstheater Vienna“.

 

Walking&Talking Tbilisi 

The artistic-research project Walking&Talking Tbilisi is an investigation of the public space of Tbilisi through individual narratives. The method of the research was to accompany inhabitants of various parts of Tbilisi during their everyday ways through the city. Their paths were the initial points for talking about their routes and routines of life within Tbilisi.

The talking articulates the consequences of urban transformation processes during the last decades (on bases of political and socio-economic chances) and their effects to the vita of the inhabitants. The transformation of the city generates the transformation of the subjects living in it and changes the relation between subject and city.

“Subjective Cartographies” were produced of the walks/talks which show the individual way of each person, as well as the stories they told and references. They were presented and provided in public space and can be used as alternative guides through the city apart from commercial/tourist guidebooks. They can extend the radius of knowledge as well as the physical movement within the city. Further communicate the knowledge of the inhabitants and give an impression of the “hidden” town of everyday life conditions, which normally is not readable for visitors. But the “Subjective Cartographies” might be a tool for the inhabitants as well: to get new perspectives on Tbilisi, to inspire them to walk different ways through their town and rediscover it anew and to see and articulate possibilities for appropriation.