Thomas: Hi Giga, you and I know each other from when you were a master’s student at the design program at HDK-Valand in Gothenburg, Sweden. For those who don’t know you, where are you in life right now—both geographically and mentally?
Giga: Hi Thomas, thank you for a seemingly simple yet thought-provoking question, which helps me to contemplate and become more aware of my current place in the ever-shifting world we find ourselves in.
Currently, I’m based in Tbilisi, and indeed, this geography influences the main part of my mental state. In general, Tbilisi is an active city—at times chaotic—with a confluence of energy, events, distractions, attractions, hopes, and sometimes significant disappointments as well. Current political and social processes make these patterns even more visible and radicalised, which affects daily life. All this makes it challenging to briefly capture the current situation in language, and perhaps equally difficult to articulate it with ease, instead of with the deeper, sometimes darker, reflections it seems to demand.
However, it’s also this geography to which I felt a deep sense of belonging, even while I was in Gothenburg. That strong feeling of connection was a key motivator for my master’s thesis at HDK-Valand, Two Rivers, Three Geographies, which explored Georgia’s Mtkvari in parallel with Sweden’s Göta älv. Rivers here are becoming—or perhaps have always been, and I’ve only recently become more attuned to it—extremely active entities, both on the public stage and within my own inner experience. While the Georgian government has recently announced 217 new dam construction projects to be built by 2031, in parallel with significant resistance and environmental activism from local communities, I also find myself thinking a lot about a neighbouring watery ghost—the seasonal river—behind the land near Tbilisi where I plan to live in the future, and the complex nature of our possible kinship.
Possibilities of more-than-human kinships are themes omnipresent and integral to my professional life and personal thinking, as they relationally affect us—ourselves watery beings and fluid subjects. These are also themes that take on unique forms in the local Georgian context, whether I’m communicating with students, researching, talking with friends, walking, or engaging in other forms of living and making.
Thomas: 217 new dam constructions sound alarming, but then, who am I to say something about this, speaking from a country (Sweden) that has abused and tamed more or less all flowing waterbodies who exist within the nation borders, many of them actually belonging to Sápmi, and having grown up with the sweet benefits of cheap and stable electricity?
The watery ghost, the seasonal river, makes me curious. Can you elaborate on that a bit?
Giga: Perhaps, “river” isn’t the right word. It’s more of an ephemeral watercourse, really—one that flows only in direct response to heavy rain or snowmelt in the mountains. This is why it can remain dry for an entire year, and yet, there’s always the possibility of a sudden flood.
Because of this, my relationship with its active state is always post-facto; it’s difficult to witness the water actually flowing. Two years ago, a brief but powerful flood revealed its latent force as it cut away a large section of land behind our old house and introduced itself as a complex neighbour. This recent event, together with its traces over deep time, is clearly visible in the landscape, which bears the imprints of its path and the deposits of sand and water-polished stones.
All this makes me think about its past, what it went through. What was it like before? If it has always been this fleeting, how long did it take to shape such a landscape around its path? Millions of years? Billions? Will it remain the same in the future? Was the sudden flood I mentioned, which left an unusual mark on the terrain, part of its inherent nature, or is it something new?
These reflections come like a daydream whenever I visit the area, about a presence I have never actually seen. This is why I call it a watery ghost.
Thomas: I see. That’s very interesting, not least in relation to climate change. I can also sense that your relationship with this ghostly body of water is tinged with your posthumanist insights. On that theme, are you now in contexts where other human beings are also interested in these transformative ideas? For instance, you teach at the School of Visual Art and Design in Tbilisi, Georgia—are your colleagues and students open for these kinds of ideas?
Giga: That’s an important question. I believe the sensibility to perceive something like the “ghostly body of water” is innate to humans, yet it’s also a way of knowing that has been culturally suppressed by different instrumental logics—logics that are visible in the Georgian context as well.
Despite a region like Georgia being highly vulnerable to hegemonic forces—such as capitalist extractivism and colonial logics that often involve labour exploitation—this context reveals a striking paradox. I was quite surprised by the students’ level of critical engagement with the political dimension of ecological thinking and with counter-hegemonic ideas like ecofeminism, posthumanism, and new materialism. This was surprising because the discourse of “pragmatism” and “real politics” often co-opts or constrains even the language of its critics, making any thought and imagining of the world outside this framework, an act of bravery. It demands a willingness to search in the dark, embracing significant uncertainty and accepting a vulnerability to affects and new perspectives. It is this vulnerability that makes such thinking a target for marginalisation by the dominant logic.
This relational sensibility extends beyond students. One can detect a similar awareness in the language of local communities, especially those protecting their land from corporate extractivism. This extractivism, often backed by the government, serves the short-term interests of business elites while causing long-term devastation to a landscape formed over geological time and making it unlivable for humans.
Moreover, even without institutional support, a diverse group of activists, whom I consider as my colleagues, is defending the unique assemblages of rivers, mountains, and lands. It is now crucial to enrich these activisms—a process that is already happening organically—with insights that move beyond the colonial language of “resources” and “property.” This is because the problem is not just the language of extraction, but the very impulse behind it. The rush to “act,” to “fix,” and to “solve” is itself a symptom of the same (neo)modern, neocolonial logic that produced the crisis in the first place.
Thomas: Thank you so much for your insightful replies, Giga! And the way you describe Georgia, “being highly vulnerable to hegemonic forces”, I’m not sure if you find this saddening or consoling, but that could be a description of any geography today. In the Swedish political landscape, for instance, all but one party claim that they “love mines”, and the EU is currently running a programme intended to speed up the process of setting up new mines. It is also so true that the problem “is not just the language of extraction, but the very impulse behind it.” Perhaps this is one reason why we have been drawn to posthumanist thinking and want to spread it and put it into action: because this way of thinking helps us identify and challenge the impulse itself.
Giga, I wish you a wonderful summer, and I now hand over the needle to you so that you can keep stitching!
Giga: Thank you, Thomas. Wishing you a wonderful summer as well. I’ll gladly take the needle and continue stitching.