Charles Goldman / New York
Norene Leddy / New York
The Center for Tactical Magic:Aaron Gach / San Francisco
GANGART: Simonetta Ferfoglia, Heinrich Pichler / Vienna
Ingeborg Strobl & Tatia Skhirtladze / Vienna, Tbilisi
Tigran Khachatryan / Yerevan
Lado Darakhvelidze & Rosell Heijmen/ Tbilisi, Arnhem
Helena Bryant, Charlie Fox, Mark McGowan, David Collins, Rachael House, Jo David / London
Elena Vorobyeva, Viktor Vorobyev / Alma-Ata
Flavio Favelli / Venice
Sara Rajaei / Tehran, Amsterdam
Iced Architects: Ilya Voznesensky, Aleksey Kononenko, Igor Buryi / Moscow
Andrei Rudjev, Petr Belyi / St Petersburg
IRWIN: Dusan Mandic, Miran Mohar, Andrej Savski, Roman Uranjek, Borut Vogelnik / Ljubljana
Ali Hasanov, Saabina Shiklinskaya / Baku

The tendency of advancement of the Modern Art, encompassing the entire world, politely passes around such dormant countries as Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and some others situated remotely from the center of developments. Those occasional, if any, absolutely unrelated bursts/attempts of organizing public cultural events in the field of contemporary art fade away, usually, without any trace, leaving some pleasant, or not so much, memories for the artists participating in the particular one.

These, and other numerous reasons, mothered the idea of Project One Stop, born not so much to change the world, but rather to pull together neighboring countries and open up the undoubtedly therein existing potential to the rest of the world with the singly prospect of defining own, personal path within the Modern Art.

The choice of venue was made with aforementioned in mind, to please the local conservative public – the street, more so, the main street. The core of life in the southern cities, as Tbilisi is, lies in the streets, among myriad of enthusiasts or bystanders. Rustaveli Avenue or, more specifically, the area between the two subway stops – Rustaveli and Freedom Square – was picked specifically because of that.

The entire spring and summer 2007 was dedicated to communicating to the participating artists, sending all sorts of information, discussing future artworks. The Participating artists were tasked according to the dominating principle of the Project to incorporate into their artwork the historic, cultural and social features of this street and the city in its entirety, and, to the maximum extent possible, contribute one’s own individuality into the existing urban arrangement.

At the end, fifteen projects have been chosen from so different countries as Georgia, the Netherlands, Iran, the United States, Azerbaijan, the Great Britain, Armenia, Austria, Kazakhstan, Italy, the Russian Federation, and Slovenia.

As usually in every project, especially the art one, the most of original artworks underwent transformation at the site. Some of the works have been completely changed by artists – e.g. the Vorobiovs, upon on-site visit to Tbilisi, have abandoned the original idea and embarked on a new, more appropriate project – “Photo Session with Street Cleaners”, “Orange Evolution”.

In light of ever increasing number of fountains in Georgia, the need for creating one more by Charles Goldman – “The Grand Font” – has outdated itself and was replaced by “PARAFONTs” – kind of parasitic fountains inviting mixed opinions from different social and political strata.

Sara Radjaei, who planned a project in McDonalds, situated in the heart of Rustaveli Square – a type of promotion of Georgian classic author Shota Rustaveli, with literature club meeting and posting fliers with the excerpts from poet’s creation, rejected the idea after McDonalds refused to offer the space at the very last moment. In the end, Sara reflected on T-shirts “Reverse Side” of her project – hurriedly printed invitation with original spelling errors, which, according to author, is inalienable part of such projects.

Some confusion among several official agencies was caused by the project Freezing of Architects, in reality an Afghan carpet that was presented by the authors as a flying carpet dragged by the same through all the openings, laid down only to sit on it and drink wine, confining themselves within its boundaries.

Success followed the project of artist from St. Petersburg Andrei Rudjev and Peter Belyi – “New Rust”, reinventing the underpass, preserving on the walls multi-color heritage of various kiosk.

Apparently, the most massive was the project by the British artists at the Pushkin Park on the Freedom Square. They were handing out free tea to everybody, organized performances, collected photos for the “Memory Bus”, made sketches of local dogs to exchange with British ones, swept streets and entrances of the apartment buildings leaving behind cards with the inscription: “I am a British tourist. I cleaned your entrance. Thank you!”

And, of course, the classics of the contemporary art – the IRWINs with their new performance: phrase “WAS IST KUNST” created using 100 soldiers.

Some invited artists could not participate due to various reasons and they were replaced by others – the fact that affected the event not necessarily positively, though there definitely were some successes. In particular, the video project by Ali Khasanov “HAMAM” was well received, though the setting was inappropriate. Also, interesting project by Norene Leddy “Aphrodite”, replacing at the very last moment Sasha Chavchavadze’s “Museum of Matches”, was not entirely fitting in.

There was unfortunate occasion involved, as well – the project by Flavio Favelli had to be dropped as a result of bureaucratic problems.

Another unfortunate fact was that due to short stay of Aaron Gatch and Tigran Khachatryan, their interesting projects “Time Machine” and “Glory to the Labor”, respectively, did not enjoy much attention.

Separately standing, but completely following the spirit of the Project, were works by Ingeborg Schtrobl and Tatia Skhirtladze “Songs to Buildings” and by the group GANGART ‘Yellow Pages”, with the latter undergoing modifications due to, once again, local bureaucracy.

To summarize the results of the Project One Stop, with all Yays and Nays associated with it, despite misinterpretation by official institutions, media and general public, the latter being, in fact, demonstrating the genuine interest to the events, we can claim one thing: the process has started, the ball got rolling, no matter how banal this may sound.

It still has to be acknowledged that the Project came to reality due to crucial assistance of some state institutions and technical assistants.

I do believe that success of each and every endeavor, more so of such a nature, if not entirely that to the large degree depends on the way it is presented to the public – something imposed, brutal is equally forcefully rejected and forgotten. Therefore, in such a delicate area as art, moreover, a contemporary art, everything has to happen undetected, subtly, until one day you wake up in the morning and understand that it is everywhere, around you, and you can’t live without it.

Ana Riaboshenko