The cultural symbolism of these plants for South Caucasian communities has been extensively analyzed in the works dedicated to Parajanov’s cinematic legacy, but depictions of the fruits in his films also offer avenues for examining the histories of extractivism in the region. In the lecture, Keto Gorgadze will discuss the colonial underpinnings of climate control in the Russian and Soviet context, the specificity of the project of tropicality in the South Caucasus, and the role of the atmosphere in shaping the extractive (sub)tropical landscapes.

Keto Gorgadze is a researcher and writer of Georgian descent whose work is guided by decolonial and antiracist approaches and focused on the spatial policies of racialization, the history of colonial science, and its environmental legacies.