Zura Jishkariani (Georgia)

Writer, poet and game designer was born in 1985 in Sukhumi. Currently works on his first book, writes blogs for “National Geographic Georgia” and magazines “Liberali”, ”XXII”, ”Indigo”. Involved with numerous projects including: Online Iliauni -- interactive online university, first free Georgian MOOC; “Interactive Library” Project. Chat Bot of Georgian “king of the poets” Galaktion Tabidze, currently working on Virtual Reality museum, with Ministry of Culture of Georgia - author of idea, project coordinator, narrative designer. He was also running the project Street Academy at online television Artarea, series of street lectures (2014-2015) and the video blog on contemporary art and avant-garde technologies SpacePunk (2012-13, 2016).

 

Spontaneous Unedited Thanks
(Hakim’s Paean of Praise)
(extract)
 
Salam! My name is Hakim, the son of Zurab, and the things I love most are when I am being unreasonable, when policemen are being slaughtered on Youtube and my country, my country, most of all.
Before, I thought that I didn’t love her. Oh, how mistaken I was!
It is somehow similar to hating high school and upon finishing it, suddenly having ambiguous emotions.
To tell the truth, we, the majority of the youth hate our country- our mother, or our father?
We were taught that Iberia is our Mother, but perhaps Iberia is our Father. Like the god of the Old Testament, Jehovah, he is jealous out of love and furious. With peculiar methods of parenting.
I have realized that I love every blind alley of these battered towns, the smell of the apartment buildings that are sprung from asphalt like flowers, every government which comes and goes “like unstable morning visions, or unstable lovers”, metro drivers, lovable stupid celebrities, refugee districts… You have probably seen refugee districts, haven’t you?
Postapocalyptic urban design, with bewildering external extensions, antennas made of beer cans– Where else can you see something like this?
 
translated by Giorgi Tskhadaia