I_Residency: Projects created by female artists duos during isolation

"DORMIVEGLIA"

Photographs: Mano Svanidze
Text: Nini Eliashvili



***

Our sleeps are disturbed

We who changed everything

Remained the same

We whose sleeps were disturbed

And who see the dark nightmares throughout semisomnolence

Are singing and that is not a tragedy at all

I am imagining the naked back of the woman

And then how it is caressed

I am imagining several pills and vodka

I have no alternative to sleep for years now

An when we were notified

That we should wear the masks and keep the distance

I am laughing I want to sit on the raft and with total strangers on Mtkvari

Have in front of me glass of vodka glass of wine and one pill

And drink them just as my mood tells me

And somebody tries to chat me up

To save these dreams

Somebody is still caressing my shoulders

Somebody the same some stranger someone small

Is going around my dreams and sometimes wishes to kill me

I can bear this long enough

I am psychopathically calm and since I am not

And the torn soul and torn noise and torn swallow

Nests

Need to drink a glass of vodka every day

I still hope that somebody will come and change something

We were born as undermined nests

Maybe you will forgive me for the last time

That I am tired

***

Everything almost petrified and obscured

All the faces and the environment is so distorted

It arranges objects but exhausts my body

What I gotta do to pass the time to pass the time the time

What can change the Moon or what can change the record at least

When you are lying and neither are you dead and even if you were

Who would know that your heart has flown out like the bird

This is only a dream and only its

Fellow travelers feel like your guests

And together with them you listen to the venomous hiss of the night

Although you cannot say that you are bored of this long journey

Or that you miss the coffee served by mom

In the morning you don’t think even being alone

What you gotta do to pass the time the time will pass

And throw you away somewhere

You will get up pick the blurred face

You’ll get back to the fear and shame looking into the mirror

Look smiling over ramble of the masked people

Just like you know one more thing than they do

And you can leave your house even during the curfew

And if they challenge you – you burst of laughter

Some stupid will explain you that there’s a quarantine

How could they have known that you haven’t slept in five days

 

***

From the last drawer of black-and-white universe

And thanks to the last black-and-white shots

You have no other way than to find

Something in common with the locals

You should listen to birds singing

At the dawn and enjoy it

While they’re still sleeping like neighbours

You are sick and tired of their clean masks

You can tell them by heart

They cannot die – neither were they born

Yet because humans do not dive

Into such fear and unrest

And their flat or their morgue

How these poison them and contaminate

You can even see the dream

Though the dreams themselves became stricter

And neither in the dreams do people come

And you’re not pleased and just like before

Their real faces became visible

 

From the last door of the black-and-white universe

In accordance with this locked-down existence

There was the evening and you escaped

And never returned home then

 

***

What has remained of our dreams our dreams

Are just shadow fear of standing in the sun sizzling

Sometimes you just lay down and cherish the evil thoughts in you

Until they come and shake you and wake you up

And you open your eyes not in a hostile way not like mad

You smile or in the other words you find false kindness in yourself

***

We should have run through this spring

The most beautiful season

We’ve been observing from our windows

The empty yards

 

This spring was like a dream

And the rain did not even stop

What I have remembered from my drowsiness –

No one ever opened up their hearts

 

This spring was the masquerade

With thousands of beautiful masks

All of us resembled each other

And washed our hands frequently

 

When I woke up I could not recognize anybody

Nobody looked like old themselves

Their fear appeared to be stronger than love

And I wished to gain the love

 

I_Residency (inside, isolation residency) project was created in partnership with the Tbilisi Photography and MultimediaMuseum and Tbilisi Photo Festival with support of the UNDP and the Governmentof Sweden through the UN Joint Project for Gender Equality. 

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