Lands on the move
Georgia, the Caucasus region
The research project, 2024 – ongoing
LEPL International Education Center of Georgia, Small Grant Project
with Machaidze Elene, Shaishmelashvili Mariam
“Spatial conflict and potentialities of transhumance in the Caucasus: Kvemo-Kartli settlements” is a research project that takes the seasonal sheep movement between lowlands and highlands in Georgia as a crucial experience of landscape. The traditional practice gives a new perspective on ecology, the post-Soviet land use system, and the socio-economic dimension of the territory.
Lands on the Move is a platform that emerged from the winning research proposal of the LEPL International Education Center of Georgia as a small grant project investigating temporal, fluid and dynamic processes of the places. The inquiry primarily focuses on the mobile phone-noumenon of the territory, constantly appearing and disappearing while acting as significant territorial shaping factors.
The spatial understanding of the surroundings can not be merely connected to the metrically measurable and effortlessly visible circumstances. The research observes layered complexities of territory so firmly intertwined with each other and, in the process, elaborates on methodologies to render visible the inevitable social, cultural and spatial consequences.
Due to the operational cyclic rhythm of animal migration practice, its dependence on climate performance is inevitable. This strong connection and relativity render a circumscribed practice embedded within a particular geography and scale, a powerful viewpoint on the global, ongoing climate changes and their consequences.
The navigation logic the shepherds used to follow and pass through different regions and countries, crossing different altimetric distances, has undergone radical adjustments. The winter and summer pastures, functioning as a shared system, became inherited and divided fragments with complex sub-rental policies, leading to the drastic degradation of the land.
Transhumance, as a deeply embedded phenomenon within the landscape, has been practised in the Caucasus for centuries. The consolidated routes and relational dynamics between nature, humans and animals have passed from generation to generation with word of mouth and collective memory of different communities.
The scarcely documented transhumance practice allows the research to ask critical questions and narrate the territory’s different temporal and spatial potentialities while being its continuously moving component.
Lands on the move
Georgia, the Caucasus region
The research project, 2024 – ongoing
LEPL International Education Center of Georgia,
Small Grant Project with Machaidze Elene, Shaishmelashvili Mariam
Lands on the Move is a platform that emerged from the winning research proposal of the LEPL International Education Center of Georgia as a small grant project investigating temporal, fluid and dynamic processes of the places. The inquiry primarily focuses on the mobile phone-noumenon of the territory, constantly appearing and disappearing while acting as significant territorial shaping factors.
The spatial understanding of the surroundings can not be merely connected to the metrically measurable and effortlessly visible circumstances. The research observes layered complexities of territory so firmly intertwined with each other and, in the process, elaborates on methodologies to render visible the inevitable social, cultural and spatial consequences.
“Spatial conflict and potentialities of transhumance in the Caucasus: Kvemo-Kartli settlements” is a research project that takes the seasonal sheep movement between lowlands and highlands in Georgia as a crucial experience of landscape. The traditional practice gives a new perspective on ecology, the post-Soviet land use system, and the socio-economic dimension of the territory.
Due to the operational cyclic rhythm of animal migration practice, its dependence on climate performance is inevitable. This strong connection and relativity render a circumscribed practice embedded within a particular geography and scale, a powerful viewpoint on the global, ongoing climate changes and their consequences.
The navigation logic the shepherds used to follow and pass through different regions and countries, crossing different altimetric distances, has undergone radical adjustments. The winter and summer pastures, functioning as a shared system, became inherited and divided fragments with complex sub-rental policies, leading to the drastic degradation of the land.
Transhumance, as a deeply embedded phenomenon within the landscape, has been practised in the Caucasus for centuries. The consolidated routes and relational dynamics between nature, humans and animals have passed from generation to generation with word of mouth and collective memory of different communities.
The scarcely documented transhumance practice allows the research to ask critical questions and narrate the territory’s different temporal and spatial potentialities while being its continuously moving component.