Anna Makharadze

Kaleidoscope
Imagine yourself walking in a long and narrow hall , the floor, walls and ceiling,
everything surrounded with blue, almost unrealistic light. And rooms across the whole
hall, without doors, so you can enter any of them. And the images of people and
landscape, beautiful shapes and details around you, floating in the air, hanging on the
walls, catching your eyes and mind. And the electronic beats of the music in the air
makes you wonder if it’s parallel dimension, or a dream, where time and space have
lost their function.

But you would never think that you were walking in a rooms of an old tea factory.,
would you?

The concept of turning old, already useless building into something absolutely new , to
give to it a meaning different from its original function, was an idea of several friends,
who live in Tbilisi, Georgia. They are ordinary people, with ordinary lives, some of them
have family and children, some not. Some of them are mangers, some architects, some
work in bank , some are housewives and so on. But they have one common passion-
photography. And this passion pushed them to organize a photo exhibition, in which the
focus would not be only photos, but to transform the exhibition space and make one
harmonious installation.

‘’-None of us, who participated in creating the project, are professional

photographers and not because the quality of our work is not professional enough,
but because photography is not our profession and it’s not source of our income’’
Tatia Shavgulidze, one of the organizer of project.

The project was named as Kaleidoscope. As another organizer of this project Nika
Mchedlidze, says, this name perfectly describes the concept of it.

- ‘We all were different people with different views and mindset, we take photos in
different genres and manner. So we somehow connected our diversity to
Kaleidoscopic vision and named the project Kaleidoscope”.

The author of idea is Giorgi Mirzikashvili, Mirza-as friends call him. He is banker and
spends most of his daytime at work.

-‘’When you spend twelve hours at work you have desire to somehow escape daily
routine and realize your ideas and hobbies in life, convert them into interesting projects.
The first and the second exhibitions of Kaleidoscope was one of such projects. The main
focus was our passion to photography and plus, we adjusted our projects to the concept of
renewing old buildings in Tbilisi , give them new life , because, I think those old building
have something common to us , they have unseen potential as we do, and suddenly,
boom(ეს რამდენად გასაგებია არვიცი) and we managed to make them interesting
again”.

The very first building transformed into Kaleidoscope exhibition was Tbilisi old
funiculear, built in 1960th. Because of the tragic accident,(დეტალურად უნდა უფრო რა
ტრაგიკული შემთხვევაც იყო, თუ ეს საკმარისია?) in 1990 the funicular was closed
and people have forgotten about this place. Located between Rustaveli Avenue and
Mount Mtatsminda this is one of the most loaded places in town. An old building was
hidden and lost in a noisy and busy city atmosphere.

Nika Mchedlidze, who’s profession is architect , was mainly involved in choosing the
alternative place for photo exhibition:

-‘’ The building is very interesting, with its closed ramp and the lower floor of the
funiculear. After finding the proper building, we started to think, how could we adjust this
exhibition to it , so we would create united installation, interesting from as conceptual, as
well as visual side, so we used beautiful Dome of the building and set photo projections on
it, and also we managed to choose very nice music”

The exhibition lasted only two days, as the finances were not enough. Because, they
didn’t have any sponsors, nine members of first Kaleidoscope themselves financed the
whole event. As Niika says, besides money they’ve spent a lot of time and energy.

-‘’We were doing everything ourselves. Beginning from marketing, designing,

working with building materials, constructing, setting light and choosing music, absolutely
everything. Giorgi for example, was organizing everything from in financial and
management part. Others were using their professional and non-professional skills to do
something’’.

And finally after sleepless nights, problems and tension, they got the desired result and
realized their idea into life.

- ‘’We did not expect that so many people would come to see our exhibition, because
before we had never made any project like this, it was almost unbelievable”-Tatia.

The second Kaleidoscope was held six months after the first one had finished. This one
was different from the previous in many aspects. First of all, it was not an independent
project, but participant of festival ‘’Qolga”(eng. Umbrella). Because the first Kaleidoscope
was successful, the organizers of this festival suggested Kaleidoscope member to
participate in their event, and that’s how the second Kaleidoscope started.

The financial part was also not a problem because different sponsors of event helped to
solve this problem.

Another difference is that , on the second project, Kaleidoscope team became larger - five
new members included in it:

- We were united not because of our friendship, but because of idea to make
Kaleidoscope. On the second Kaleidoscope, not all the members of our team were
our long time friends, but Just people who like us, were interested in photography
and wanted to do something new and different from their daily lives”-Tatia.

Because the first exhibition was successful, the members of Kaleidoscope, wanted to make
the second one even better.that’s why preparation which included, finding new place and
working on idea took two months. And finally they found Georgian old tea factory, built
in 1930th. The challenge was to make this space appropriate for exhibition.

- ‘’It took three weeks to clean the building and take out all garbage, the planning of
building had been changed, for example the doors were not functioning, they were
filled and there was no connect ion between rooms. We were covered with white
dust all the time, sometimes couldn’t recognize each other”.

That’s how, step by step, the space and rooms which before were only filled with soviet
office style furniture, , with documents and papers on the shelves and tables, and with the
whole soviet bureocracy atmosphere, was transformed in an incredible space full of
interesting images, sounds, light and installations.

Its logical to ask where does all the photos go, when the exhibition is over? Well,
different from the first Kaleidoscope project, on the second one, the visitors were able to
buy photos for their cost price. (თვითღირებულება იმედი მაქვს ესე ითარგმნება).

The money, as the members of project say, is being saved for the next Kaleidoscopes,
which won’t be held very soon, but is planned to .

-‘’ Besides the fact, that organizing such project is a really hard work-says Giorgi- ‘' I
think unintentionally, we became more responsible, because several times we suggested
something good and with enough quality to people, now we feel responsible for the next
project, to if not better, at least as good as previous one.’’

So, there are perspectives of new Kaleidoscopes, not very soon, but still. Some day we
may see another old and forgotten building in Tbilisi transformed in unrecognizable way.