
Presenter: Ketevan Gurchiani
Title of the work: Urban space as an entanglement of nature, mythology, and infrastructure
Association for Slavic, East European, & Eurasian Studies 52nd Annual ASEEES Convention Anxiety & Rebellion
Virtual Convention Nov. 5-8 • Nov. 14-15, 2020
Infrastructure as a product of modernity is not solely confined to the boundaries of technologies. The times of crisis show how the non-human structures become embodiments of entanglement between human, natural, and superhuman/religious. The infrastructural projects conceived as the breach from the old world of religious beliefs and projects of rational, Soviet atheist modernity, emerge as sites where nature, technologies, and beliefs meet. Ideally, the relations between humans and nonhumans should be entangled in harmonious ways. If it is not the case the infrastructure is a threat. In her talk, Ketevan Gurchiani analyzed the complex entanglement of humans and non-human on the example of river Vere during the past 100 years.