Interwiev with magazine ZEGAVLENA
Interwiev with art historic Mariam Sergelashvili
Secretive sharing and a critical voice that often protrude into the perception of the viewer in a radical form. Who is Andro Dadiani? Mystification? Character? Person? Who?
Thinking about this resembles a train window from which the landscape keeps escaping. If you take a photo, the shot will be incomplete and blurry. The answer to your question will be similar – fragmented and incomplete: After May 17, 2013, I lost my vital energy and then in 2016, like Mario, I started reliving as Andro Dadiani again. Back then, he was a person who needed to cover his face to speak; The last three years were taken over by the destruction of my ten-year long cohabitation with my other half, which burned me out so much that I lost my whole body, I think. If before Andro Dadiani was faceless, now he is also bodyless. In the past, Andro often had different bodies, though, even in those cases, the mind was the main organism and not the body; Just like in good music the primary musical sonority is the soul of the artist and not the instrument, here too, the primary energy can exist by itself, bodyless, as a thought, conception, non-physically.
Art as a space for thought. Share with us your artistic practices and trajectory from this perspective, with the help of which Andro Dadiani develops his vision in different mediums.
I do not have professional education in my current occupation and, to be honest, I do not even know where or what I could have learned for this. Do they teach how to catch a black cat in a dark room anywhere? For me the most important work is thinking, which may not even develop into a conception, but life is increasing your taste and chasing and catching up to it. Suppressing this stream with a genre is difficult, and this is why I perceive mediums as conditional. In the natural process the content, form and manner are not divisible, this is what I ask myself too unless the imbalance is a premeditated form. A pitcher example – its existence is derived from thirst, this essence creates its shape, which, in itself, is a manner (of form and of how its contents pour out of it) and creates the organic and original manner of user interaction is generated.
Poetry, pain, play, how did performance and the body medium become an important artistic form for you?
What is important is not the performance itself, but the thought that becomes embodied into performance, or, sometimes, other mediums, since the medium is also a form and the content extracted from the form is a turbulent trajectory of the rivers, I feel. With the personal pains of the past year, I brought myself to clinical depression. Depression brought me to heavy psychotropics. Excessive mediation led to stomach illness, which completely absorbed me, all my physical and spiritual energy was diverted there, my gaze was turned to my stomach; like an ingrown nail, I was just staring into my sore stomach and that was all I was. Then, I went to Andro Machavariani, got treatment and lost my stomach. Now, I ask myself where I have this organ and I still cannot say for sure; I am not a biologist, I do not know where it is and it does not remind me of its existence. I cannot see it, I do not encounter it, therefore, it does not exist. – I will highlight two aspects from these thoughts – “Pain” and “My self”. Pain is how objects prove their existence and importance to me. Second underlined as “My self” – who is the commentator who uses the proper pronoun – “me”? – No one can answer this, no one can see and no one can point him out, but I know with sense and feeling that this is Andro Dadiani. “Self”-organism belonging to me, which I take care of every day like my dog; I clean it, feed it, take it on walks, to theater, I satisfy its biological needs, like the sore stomach I just treated… Such disassociation with my body gets me closer to it as a performance instrument. With such disassociation I can subject my body to rough preparation, loss of baroque, carved thought and its complete disappearance. This can lead this commentator, the user of the proper pronoun “me” to express himself and speak. This expressor is the only thing that hurst me now and this pain is the only thing proving existence. In my faith, this is poetry that the world needs and it is not even necessary to be dispersed into poems.
On the verge of personal and impersonal. This is the topic that interests me in general and, I think, this layer is frequent in your works – personal search and generalized “talk”. Elaborate on this based on your creative example.
If I continue with the abovementioned “my self” concept, the energy of the one saying “my” is so inseparable from the one, that I cannot even comprehend what is impersonal. With this technique of thinking, I can perceive the inner, inevitable spiritual need as a social service, because there is no “they” and “other” in this content. When the thought is pained with a large inner truth, it belongs to the universe and blurs the lines between success and failure around it. Sometimes even the line between expression and suppression of such thoughts even disappears, due to its vibration in life. However, art is an area of material expression and it can be expressed in different ways…
Does art require courage? What is the importance of freedom in this sense?
Our main inspiration is being cast out. The first person gets cast out from the harmonious entrails and since then, we are trying to rebuild something resembling what we have lost; the womb is also a Garden of Eden, one of these days mother lets us out of her safe and sound entrails, then helps us get on our feet like a goddess, but there is still risk and courage in every step. To speak of freedom is also courage, while its opposite is that which is not even in existence yet in the world. Only from freedom can you be born; you cannot expand boundaries by thinking in a box. Freedom is both the result and the process. Everything ages and dies over time, even our work will expire, the only thing that remains is the slightly expanded ability of thought, there will be a space for fantasy on which you can live and think more broadly, perhaps.
A crucial work for you
For me the process is not divided into separate works, labor is great and infinite in its wholeness, like an exalted and exhilarating prayer. Finding techniques, delving into the content, choosing the right language, material, solidity of form and dialogue with the content, mobilizing physical energy, thinking about all the nuances of organic polyphony forbids me to sleep; this happens in all big or small works and I love this process. I will not put up a machine of non-excitement. Years ago, I was working on a series “The Psalms of David”. I was living and breathing in that language, that manner. Tato Changelia told me a story of two boys getting beat up by a police officer and said I should write a poem about this. I took this as a challenge and wrote a poem which, people say, is a good work. However, I was not overwhelmed by the creation process, I constructed it absolutely technically, and that was my last poem with this technique. I did not write for 6-7 months so I would not repeat this. I realized that if I got used to turning on the machine, holding the button with my finger and making good poems like ice cream, it would no longer be art for me. When I see that I have mastered something and my taste takes the product of this “machine” as a successful work, I make two or three samples and then I forget about that manner. I am afraid of the fear of assembling new “machines” and being able to work with the same tools constantly.
The subject of the search you are currently gripped by
Solitude and silence taught me to stare at objects. Things are the immediate and impeccable performers of their function, the true Atlanteans, who, as much as they can, play their part, their role, until they are crushed. They stand in silence and await us to impose something on them, with their silence they have a selfish commentator pulled back and it is very exciting to watch it. I am trying to share these qualities from them now. I am also trying to find a language that expresses the bodyless performer and his utterances, it is an interesting challenge to see what comes out.