LINA Symposium at Tbilisi Architecture Biennial

The event was held within the frames of the 2022 Tbilisi Architecture Biennial (TAB), a large-scale event during which the culture goers, Tbilisian residents, professionals, and international guests witnessed a three-week program of various workshops, sightseeing, lectures, talks and exhibitions, among them – the symposium, a one-day forum dedicated to discussions, talks, lectures and knowledge exchange with a larger audience.

It was the symposium which hosted LINA founders and members. Under the title “Temporality and Space,” tied to the central theme of the 2022 biennial (“What’s Next?”), the panel was moderated by Otar Nemsadze, one of the founders of TAB and presented six member organizations that elaborated on how their activities and organizations operate and plan their practices in temporality and uncertainty: political turbulences, climate change, war, natural disasters, migration, and other factors that are not (?) man-made. the LINA initiative was introduced by the Slovenian architect and the head of the program Matevž Čelik (Faculty of Architecture of the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia), who spoke about how learning, interacting, and networking can create new agents of change – the main idea behind the program.

Irhana Sehović and Dunja Krvavac presented “LIFT/ Days of Architecture” (Bosnia and Herzegovina) while Ethel Baraona Pohl (Spain) spoke about the power of books and written word through dpr- Barcelona’s initiatives. Triin Ojari, the director of the Estonian Museum of Architecture, Tallinn, discussed the specifics of museum programs and public outreach. Martynas Germanavičius spoke about the projects of Architecturas Fondas in Vilnius. The LINA members engaged with the rest of the symposium, where scholars, activists, educators and culture professionals from the U.K., Ukraine, Germany, Georgia, Switzerland, Montenegro, Bosnia & Herzegovina, and Poland invited the audience for a discussion within the wide range of topics of architecture, sustainability and temporality: Spaces and monuments of conflict; Spatial memory and memorials; War architecture and the mutual aid during the times of armed conflicts; Gender, culture communication, military policies and decolonization; Post-socialist migrations, refugee spaces and policies. The Audience was also very active during the symposium – which generated new possibilities for networking and exchanging information, opening new topics around the issues above. Many potential future activities, professional friendships and exciting discussions were formed due to LINA’s participation in the biennial. 

During the talk, Q & A sessions, the presence of members at various off-space events and community happenings of the biennial, a new, mutual understanding was formed around how societies cope with temporalities, what are its preliminary signs and the outcomes, what differences arise in various cultural contexts and most importantly, how does this reflect on space, buildings, and spatial behaviors of people.