Curated By Teona Gogichaishvili

Experience and knowledge of the sacred liquid, shared during collective feasts in Tusheti, is closely linked to German culture. Tusheti is a high mountain region of Georgia, where you have to pass one of the most difficult roads in the world. The place, which is not equipped with electricity, natural gas, mobile or internet networks, is isolated from modern infrastructure and still preserves extensive sacred knowledge.

Tusheti’s alleged connection with the oldest civilizations is attested by the signs carved in stones, the depiction and interpretation of which were once the privilege of priests. To this day, the symbolic significance of these pictograms has not been researched. These hidden signs, on the edge of disappearing, are layered as archetypes in our collective subconscious. The information engraved in stone is vanishing as new constructions and brutal changes to unique buildings take place. Heavy interventions destroy the authentic infrastructure of Tusheti, where natural materials in the villages are increasingly replaced by concrete and other modern synthetic construction materials.

The Tushetian gods inhabited a vertical model of the universe composed of three parts: the underland (Qveskneli), the land (Skneli) and the upperland (Zeskneli). After the Christianization of Tusheti, the names of the gods were replaced by Christian saints, but the unique symbiosis of pagan and Christian cultures preserved ancient Tushetian customs and rituals almost unchanged. In the strictest climatic conditions, the sun was one of the main deities for mountain people, dependent on its warmth and the harvest. It is the solar cult—as the source of warmth, light, and the symbol of eternal rotation—that is linked to the sacred drink of Tusheti, Aludi. Its ingredients and method of preparation have undergone centuries of transformation and desacralization.

Upper East Icons

11:17’

video Künstlerhaus FAKTOR

Hamburg, Germany

2019