Mziuri Mediateque and Gallery - a New Project with Ten Years History

Mziuri Mediateque and Gallery - a New Project with Ten Years History Link of the article: https://at.ge/2020/04/30/mziuri-mediateka-1991/

Author: Nika Nadirashvili In the framework of limited support from the government and private sector, independent team of initiators in Georgia have to fight a lot in order to implement different projects. The situation gets complex when the project involves developing creative space, which is stateowned.

This is the difficult path that Mziuri Mediatheka and Contemporary Art Gallery project have to go through: in 2011, the idea of transforming the reception of old cableway, which was active before 1990-ies, into a creative multifunctional space was borne, and the idea was invented by contemporary artists Koka Vashakidze and Vasil Macharadze. In the following years, film expert Anuka Lomidze together with the founder of New Mziuri Ana Goguadze joined the team too.

The project was developing during many years and in June, 2018 the team of initiators decided to make the information public: in an open letter they were calling the government and private sector for cooperation, so everyone would become involved in the implementation of the team’s initiative. According to the project, the plan is to have culture and art mediatheka on zero level, and the underground level will transform into minimalistic exhibition gallery (to watch 3D visualization click on the link: http://wasso.de/mziuri/).

Tbilisi Municipality was interested with the project and expressed its readiness to collaborate.

On 9th of November, 2018 Mayor of Tbilisi Mr. Kakha Kaladze held the presentation of New Mziuri project and besides other projects he mentioned Mediatheka-Gallery project too; Project visuals (3D renders) prepared by the team of initiators were intensively shown in the presentation materials. The Minister of Infrastructure Ms. Maya Tskitishvili, who was also participating in the event, announced, that the date of commencing the project would be at the end of 2019/beginning of 2020 followed by the rehabilitation works.

In order to maintain the sustainability of the project, Tbilisi Municipality and the team of initiators agreed that Mziuri Mediatheka-Gallery should become part of the Union of Tbilisi Municipality Multifunctional Libraries. Anuka Lomidze mentioned in the conversation that “from a legal point of view, becoming a part of the Union of Tbilisi Municipality Multifunctional Libraries might be quite effective, however, since the idea of recreating the abandoned building belongs to us and our content vision is offered to the Government, we have to finalize the working process on strategy and complete the projects.

According to the director of the Union of Tbilisi Municipality Multifunctional Libraries Ms. Ninia Macharashvili the manager of creative space will be appointed based on the competition though the first communication will be established with the team of initiators.

On 27th January, the Foundation of Municipal Development announced the tender with the amount of 30 500.00 Gel. In the framework of this grant, the winning organization should proceed with research on cableway reception and supervision works, also prepare the projectexpenditure documentation. There were two companies that took part in the tender, and the winner was “Union of Cultural Heritage Protection – Amkari”.

“Amkari” should have started its works already and had to finish in 37 weeks, though another participant of the tender Ltd “T-Architects” accused the jury of incompetence and appealed the result. "Amkari's work process has been suspended until the dispute is resolved." – said the Municipal Development Fund Project Manager Lasha Chichinadze.

Project visuals – T-Architects & Tsanava-Maisuradze There’s a tab to the tender documentation – “In case if the relevant expertize concludes that the building is subject to dismantling due to its technical-economic indicators, it is advisable for the supplier to use the existing building forms for inspiration”, which means that if the building is found to be unsustainable, it should be demolished and replaced with a similar one. This possible decision is not supported by either the members of the team of initiators or the Union of the libraries, as the goal of the project initiative was to "regenerate" the building.

Resolution of court dispute is unknown yet, what will be the conclusion of winning company expertize - will the building become subject to dismantling or rehabilitation. It is also difficult to determine what impact the state of emergency created in response to the spread of Covid19 will have on the intensity of the work, which, as a rule, should not be affected by the emergency as far as it is the infrastructure project.

In result, sooner or later, society will have another creative space and in case if the project authors maintain the authority over the project and will be able to manage it, this will be one of the successful examples of public-private sector collaboration in the field of culture; Otherwise, distrust of similar cooperation format will increase.

The article has been prepared in the framework of EU/UNESCO supported project Designing a Creative Cluster Ecosystem. Throughout the project, we will submit analytical articles about the theme, which will define creative cluster development-support in Georgia and generally, existing challenges in the sector.