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Home , Batumi, Colchis, Mikheil Saakashvili, Rose Revolution, Statue of Medea

STARTED HERE

“The first myth through which became a part of European consciousness is the story of the .” —president saakashvili

In the aftermath of the peaceful 2003 Rose in post-Soviet Georgia, the reformist government of introduced a new national branding slogan: “Europe Started Here.”1 The phrase brought together geographic proximity with historic legacy, cleverly playing on Georgia’s longstanding historical-cultural affinities with Europe and its location as an eastern frontier. Following independence, Georgia suffered a decade of deterioration and headed towards failed statehood. The country struggled to establish a stable political environment amidst corruption, absent state infrastructures, and the loss of control over its autonomous regions. The post- Saakashvili government was therefore determined to reform the country, ridding it of its Soviet past and selectively reasserting Georgia’s historical “Europeaness.”2 New architecture and urban regeneration schemes were fundamental to the process. What followed under this government was a decade of rapid construction and national myth promotion in Georgia between 2003 and 2013. While the government employed various historic narratives to bolster its connection to Europe, one specific ancient myth—that of the third-century bce epic Greek poem of —featured heavily in the urban transformation of the county’s Western city of in the region. Formerly a regional beach destination, Batumi’s built environment underwent significant redevelopment in the post- Revolution years, turning into one of the ’s leading five-star leisure destinations. Here, alongside national myth endorsement, government-commissioned architecture served the political purposes of neoliberal market reforms, promotion, and modernization targeted toward eu and membership. Batumi’s transformed built environment thus speaks to Georgia’s broader desires to establish its place within the new world order.

1. For further reading see: Nino Patsuria, "Georgia Changes its Tourist Image," Georgian Journal, July 7, 2011, accessed March 20, 2016, http://www.georgianjournal.ge/business/5390-georgia-changes-its-tourist-image-.html; and Melissa Aronczyk, Branding the Nation: The Global Business of National Identity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). 2. For further reading see: Donnacha Ó Beacháin and Frederik Coene, "Go West: Georgia's European Identity and its Role in Domestic Politics and Foreign Policy Objectives," Nationalities Papers 42, no. 6 (2014): 923-941.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/THLD_a_00011 by guest on 27 September 2021 GEORGIA’S SELECTIVE In a bid to further distance Georgia from the hegemony of neighboring a decade after independence, the young, charismatic and Western-oriented President Saakashvili began developing closer social, cultural, and militaristic alignments with Europe. Such ties were justified as historically natural by the president in-part through his references to Argonautica, the classic Greek poem that describes the voyage of and the Argonauts from Greece to the ancient city of . Arriving on the eastern shores of the Black Sea, the Argonauts docked at what is considered proximate to present-day Batumi. Jason is assisted by the local Colchian princess and sorceress, , who helps him acquire the mythical object of the , required for Jason to claim the throne back home. Out of this ancient myth, the Saakashvili government redeclared an integral link between Europe and Georgia via Colchis as a core site of shared “European” history. According to Saakashvili, “the first myth through which Georgia became a part of European consciousness is the story of the Argonauts.”3 While a coherent investigation into the historic use of this myth in Georgia has not been conducted, government officials have drawn upon the myth’s legacy for political purposes numerous times over the past century. Prior to its utilization by the Saakashvili government, the Argonauts tale carried a Soviet-era legacy, from when it was utilized in the folk ritual of Colkhoba in the neighboring Georgian border village of Sarpi, some 18km away from Batumi. Sarpi is a place also claiming to be a key location within ancient Colchis. The instrumentalization of the tale during the late 1970s under socialism was seen as working toward the Soviet goal of abolishing “harmful traditions and customs”— typically religious in content—and supplanting them with more secular historic practices.4 In the earlier Soviet rendition of the myth, no connection to Europe was drawn. The entire purpose of the resurrected folk ritual was to keep local civilian groups placated inside the Iron Curtain. Through Colkhoba, Sarpians took pride in their ability to participate in the larger network of Soviet folk festivals across the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic and, as a result of the event, were further disassociated from their Turkish Laz counterparts immediately across the border. The Soviet rendition thus foregrounded the idea of Sarpi’s minority Laz community becoming more connected to their

3. President Saakashvili underscored this connection in a speech delivered at the opening of the , retrieved from the official web site of the Press Office of the Administration of the Georgian President, accessed 10 August, 2011. As further described in Tamta Khalvashi, Peripheral Affects: Shame, Publics, and Performance on the Margins of the Republic of Georgia (Ph.D. diss., University of , 2015). 4. Mathijs Pelkmans, Defending the Border: Identity, Religion and Modernity in the Republic of Georgia, (Ithaca: Cornell Unviersity Press, 2006).

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fellow . The Soviets grounded their introduction of Colkhoba in purported claims by village elders that celebrations of Colchis dated back to pagan times and were likely to have been handed down from the Colchians themselves, affording the myth a sense of historic legitimacy. In Soviet Sarpi, the tale of the Argonauts was reflected in maps, images, and the naming of restaurants on the coast such things as “The Golden Fleece” and “.”5 In 1988, the last Soviet rendition of Colkhoba took place. After Georgian independence in 1991, the Adjara region fell under the control of despot ruler Aslan , and the myth of Jason and the Argonauts ceased to be officially commemorated in the region. During the Abashidze era, the notion of Georgia as being characteristically European began to take its contemporary form through manipulations of the built environment. This was particularly exemplified through a focus by Abashidze on new architecture that followed European design standards and aesthetics, an approach that would continue (and be dramatically amplified) in the Saakashvili era of the 2000s. By utilizing the epic Greek poem of Argonautica without references to the Soviet celebration of Colkhoba, the Saakashvili government was able to bypass the complications of the country’s Soviet past. Here, the government selectively framed the ancient myth in a manner that validated Georgia’s European connection without mentioning its historic connections to Europe by way of Imperial Russia. In the nineteenth century, Batumi was known as a tariff-free port, or porto franco, within the and was a key destination for foreign trade. As the political administrative centre of , Georgia absorbed various architectural styles from Russian cities, such as and St. Petersburg. These surfaced in Batumi via European architects practicing their trade within the broader Russian empire. During the Soviet period, this influence continued, with European architects designing large portions of Batumi. Thus, a connection to Imperial Russia is integral to Georgia’s contemporary “European” narrative. Yet, since such ties to Russia have come to be entwined with negative memories of foreign occupation and Soviet oppression, in the government’s newly branded image of European Georgia, the narrative was selectively censored. Indeed, Georgia’s choreographed remembrance also overlooked the historic legacy of Russia’s own assertions of Europeanness over the centuries, which linked back to Moscow as the “Third ,” Peter the Great’s “window on Europe,” and claims of St. Petersburg as the “Venice of the North.” The complex ways through which Georgia has resurrected and

5. Ibid.

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recreated the myth of the Argonauts over the decades can be understood in relation to what historian Eric Hobsbawm calls “invented traditions.” Hobsbawm identifies three overlapping types of invented traditions, all of which can be seen within contemporary Georgia:

a) those establishing or symbolizing social cohesion or the membership of groups, real or artificial communities, b) those establishing or legitimizing institutions, status or relations of authority, and c) those whose main purpose was socialization, the inculcation of beliefs, value systems and conventions of behaviour.6

Related to Hobsbawm’s first two points, Georgia’s post-Revolution transformation not only entailed the establishment of a new government authority in need of official legitimization, but also required the promotion of social cohesion amongst minority groups, including both and Laz. Tied to Hobsbawm’s third point, solidifying the transition from communism to capitalism further meant that the new value systems of a global neoliberal market would need to be imbued within society. The ideals of neoliberalism expressed an alternative world of free markets, consumption, and individualism that ran counter to Soviet ideology.

MYTH CREATION IN BATUMI’S BUILT FORM The prevalence of the myth of Jason and the Argonauts throughout the urban iconography of Batumi surged during the city’s post-revolutionary development after 2003, appearing in street art, souvenir shop windows, building design narratives, and in a statue of Medea in the central Europe Square. Designed by Georgian Architect, Davit Khmaladze, Medea towers over the square and replaces the former bronze eagle statue that symbolized Abashidze. The communication of invented traditions for such purposes through architecture can also be read prominently in the design of Batumi’s tallest building, the Technical University Building, since renamed Batumi Tower. Under the supervision of President Saakashvili, the tower’s design took the form of the Argonaut’s ship as its inspiration. Some twenty-three centuries after the mythical Argos’ original purported departure, the ship thus again washed upon the eastern Black Sea shore in 2010 in the form of this dramatic 35-story tapered glass skyscraper. The architecture of Batumi Tower signifies a connection to Europe in two fashions: first via a connection to ancient Europe through the design narrative of the Argonauts; and second, through a link to modern Europe via the project’s sophisticated skyscraper form, construction techniques, and attention to Western building standards.

6. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

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Map overlay of the Black Sea in Late Antiquity and today, showing Batumi relative to Colchis. (Image by Author)

The work of American philosopher Nelson Goodman has shown how such symbolic architecture not only contributes to the conveyance of existing meaning, but also is further constitutive of meaning itself, in an ontological sense.7 Since any domain that adds to our collective sense of understanding through the creation of symbols, including architecture, is also adding to the creation of a way of conceiving the world, it becomes a form of worldmaking. The government’s selective curation of Argonauts symbolism in Batumi is indicative of Goodman’s concept of worldmaking, wherein existent symbols of European history were not merely acknowledged and celebrated, but such symbols were actively manipulated in order to inflate the specific desired historic connection. The tower signifies the ship in a number of key ways; first, the bow of the ship is represented in the tip of the skyscraper. Second, a disproportionately small and rigid ornamental sail bridges between the main mass of the building and its narrower upper extension. Third, a more stylized representation of randomized blue and white glass patterning is used to convey the turbulent waves of water surrounding the ship. Finally, an eight-cart, gold-coloured, fully-functioning Ferris

7. Nelson Goodman, Ways of Worldmaking, (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1978).

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wheel with nautical embellishment protrudes from the 27th floor, completing the design by denoting the ship’s glorious helm. The orientation of the “ship” is also instructive, as it faces the sea, ready to depart for Europe at any given moment. Despite attempts at literal translation of the myth into the form of Batumi Tower by the joint Georgian-German design group, gipn ltd, the project surprisingly resembles little of the curvilinear character of the actual Argonaut’s ship. Beyond tangential reference to the technological sophistication of the elevated Ferris Wheel, the tower is further wholly disconnected from its intended programmatic use. There are no purpose-built lab facilities, and a technological university partner was not present at the time of the project’s conception. That the building was unable to effectively accommodate its core program is thus telling in and of itself. The priorities of the project for the government were political, not programmatic. As the tallest building on the Black Sea, Batumi Tower’s primary purposes were to announce a connection to Europe while elevating the city on the global stage, turning Batumi into a new world-class destination.

THE DEVELOPMENT MYTH: LEGITIMIZING THE STATE THROUGH A SURGE IN CONSTRUCTION In her analysis of the global race of major cities to attain world-class status via greater levels of spectacle in their built form, anthropologist Aihwa Ong explores the relationship between postmodern globalization and national sovereign self-determination.8 For Ong, state promotions of architectural spectacle and hyper-building are not just about world market forces, but also serve particular nationalistic ambitions. Thus, Ong adds a more nuanced understanding to commentary on how cities are being overtaken by the cultural hegemony of corporations, showing that a national particularity remains key in the production and marketing of such cities. A similar argument has been made by Koch and Valiyev in specific reference to the post-Soviet cities of , Astana, and Ashgabat. Such arguments are compelling in relation to Batumi because they help situate the Saakashvili government’s drive for European status and world-class internationalism within a post-Soviet economic context and relative to the propagandistic political power that this type of development can afford emerging nations. In line with this, the rapid development of Batumi through projects like Batumi Tower is symptomatic of the neoliberal construction booms that have taken place across the world’s developing nations over the

8. Aihwa Ong and Ananya Roy, eds., Worlding Cities: Asian Experiments and the Art of Being Global (West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011). 9. See “Georgia: Saakashvili Says Switzerland Will Meet Singapore in ,” EurasiaNet, March 9, 2010, accessed , 2015, http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/news/articles/eav031010.shtml.

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past half-century. As the fever for emulating the Asian miracle spread into post-revolutionary Georgia, beyond mimicries of Europe, copying the success of cities such as Singapore, Taiwan, and Dubai became an obsession for President Saakashvili.9 Eager to see Georgia emerge as a new global actor, the president utilized rapid construction as a tool for generating new investment and appearances of prosperity, all while boosting the authority and legitimization of his own government. This was also in keeping with the government’s post-Revolution neoliberal reforms and mass privatization efforts. Therefore, despite the protracted vacancy of Batumi Tower upon its completion, the project has still effectively contributed to the reconceptualization of Georgia’s new global capitalist-oriented identity. The production of the city’s skyline image was integral to the process of creating Batumi as a paradigmatic global city. Images of Batumi Tower appear in any number of announcing the resounding success and potential for foreign investment—from local postcards to the Ministry of Tourism’s official website. These documents selectively reproduce the city’s salient features of development and modernity, and served as image-making devices that afforded a form of currency far beyond that of the city’s physical leasable space. In this regard, Batumi Tower exemplifies aspects of the quintessential global city through its international-style skyscraper design, materiality of glass and metal, and its spectacular vertical form. As the tallest object on not only Batumi’s skyline but also on the Black Sea’s, the building can be visually consumed as an integral part of the city’s success.

POLITICIZING BATUMI’S MEDIATED SKYLINE The myth of development success communicated through Batumi’s impressive skyline has also extended into local Georgian geopolitics. In comparison to the northern Black Sea city of Sokhumi in the breakaway Republic of , the vertical and illuminated skyline of Batumi operates as a direct reminder of Georgia’s superior progress. For decades, Sokhumi had been the preferred holiday destination on account of its sandier beaches and greater amounts of sunshine. As part of the territory of the unrecognized de facto state of Abkhazia (which unilaterally seceded from Georgia in 1992), Sokhumi lost its position as it deteriorated after independence. Put into direct juxtaposition in various ad campaigns and online memes, the state-of-the-art world of spectacle in Batumi was shown in stark contrast to Sokhumi’s deterioration. It is even rumored that the Saakashvili government’s strategic choice of Batumi for regional development was done in order to geopolitically entice Abkhazia back within Georgia’s sovereign control; seeing the prosperity of Batumi, the unrecognized statelet would ultimately choose to reconnect its territory

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CONCLUSION Since the 2003 brought the Saakashvili government to power in Georgia, dramatic transformations have taken place in the built environment of the country. The focus of this government on displaying the Western city of Batumi as a developed European city was facilitated through architecture: by combining design narratives of reinvented ancient myths with modern high-rise construction techniques. Whereas the past architects of Georgia’s Soviet and Imperial Russia eras exported their European aesthetic to the shores of Batumi in a colonial fashion (designed to ensure the continuation of comfort for European expats), the Saakashvili government can be seen as importing European prestige in an effort to elevate the status of the city to the level of its Western European counterparts. Although this process has overwhelmingly transformed the character of the city, it has yet to yield concrete foreign policy transformations. As of 2016, Georgia is still seeking full and nato membership. As the Saakashvili government left office in2013 , its successor government party, Georgia Dream, offered a period of pause in the country’s rapid construction fervor. Many of the projects commenced between 2003 and 2013 were put on hold or cancelled—some due to the imprudence of their design and others as a distancing mechanism, disassociating the new ruling party from its predecessor. In 2014, Batumi Tower was sold to a Georgian real estate developer and is now being converted into a five-star hotel and resort complex operated by Le Meridien.5 Georgia Dream’s billionaire founder, , offered up millions of dollars from his personal charity to support the construction of a new Technical University Building on an alternate site. As the specific myths of European prosperity propounded by the2003 Revolution fade out and begin to be replaced with a new round of reactionary politics, the country still aspires to be considered European, patiently awaiting the day when the Argonauts ship will finally take sail,

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reconnecting Georgia with Europe.

5. Although here politics were also at play, since it is rumoured that the replacing government sought to intentionally keep the building vacant, in order to further mar the reputation of the previous government. For Le Meridien announcement, see: “Starwood Hotels & Resorts Expands Presence in with Le Meridien Batumi,” (2015, September 2). Retrieved March 3, 2016, from http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20150902005922/en/Starwood- Hotels-Resorts-Expands-Presence-Eastern-Europe.Top: Batumi Tower, with its golden sail and 8-cart Ferris wheel helm. (Photo by author) Bottom: Detail of Batumi Tower’s 8-cart golden Ferris wheel. (Photo by author)

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Top: View of Batumi’s skyline. (Image credit: Uwe Brodrecht) Bottom: Image of Maria Ave. in Batumi, showing its Imperial Russia European architecture (N. Kvachadze, A Trip to Old Batumi). Following page left: View of the statue of Medea at Europe Square in Batumi, with Batumi Tower in the background. (Photo by author). Following page right: Statue of Medea in Europe Square, Batumi (Photo by author).

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