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Abstract<\/strong>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n This PhD research project examines contemporary avant-garde practices in the South Caucasus (Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan) as forms of post-imperial aesthetic self-positioning. It focuses on strategies of language and performativity, transcultural networks, and queer and feminist aesthetic practices through which artists develop alternative forms of community, identity, and future. These practices build upon a tradition of decolonial avant-garde interventions and consciously position themselves beyond imperial discursive orders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The work understands \u2018avant-garde\u2019 not as a closed historical movement, but as a recurring practice of radical intervention \u201cfrom below\u201d: as a horizontal, experimental, and performative strategy that aims to destabilize hegemonic power relations, linguistic norms, and cultural attributions. It explores the continuities and transformations of avant-garde strategies in the post-Soviet context.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The aim of the project is to illuminate the South Caucasus as an independent, epistemically productive space of avant-garde cultural production. The region is understood as a site of specific aesthetic and political knowledge production within the tension between post-imperial reorganization, exoticization, and self-determined cultural positioning. The research thus contributes to the expansion of Slavic, post-Soviet, and postcolonial avant-garde research and shifts the focus from center-periphery models to transcultural perspectives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Bio:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Philomena Grassl studied International Development and Slavistics with a focus on Russian language at the University of Vienna and completed her Master\u2019s degree in Eastern European Cultures at Humboldt University in Berlin. Her master\u2019s thesis examined Ilia Zdanevich, one of the key figures of the Tbilisi avant-garde during the Democratic Republic of Georgia, with a particular focus on the postcolonial dimensions of his transrational Zaum language.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Since 2015, she has been living and working in Tbilisi, including at the Goethe-Institut, where she managed the EU4Dialogue project dedicated to artistic exchange and cultural approaches to conflict transformation in the South Caucasus and Moldova. She is currently a member of the queer-feminist art organisation Untitled Tbilisi. From summer 2026, she will begin her PhD studies at Humboldt University in Berlin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n The event will take place in English via Zoom. Registration is required.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To register please follow this link<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/soccult.iliauni.edu.ge\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Picture1.jpg\")
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