Tekla Aslanishvili

TB2023 cinema program

Tekla Aslanishvili is an artist, filmmaker, and essayist based between Berlin and Tbilisi working at the intersection of infrastructural design, history, and geopolitics. Her experimental documentary film A State in a State (2022) follows the design of railroads in the South Caucasus and Caspian region, tracing their role in delineating different sides in ongoing wars and conflicts, as well as the fragile political borders that reemerged after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The film extrapolates from this context to meditate on transportation infrastructures more generally as crucial lifelines whose power to move resources makes them a resource of their own. But with such enormous power comes enormous dependency and vulnerability, since the pervasiveness of railways also makes their iron foundation of connectivity a convenient weapon of exclusion and geopolitical sabotage. As fragile as railroad infrastructure can be, the workers who service them, operate them, and know them most intimately hold the real power. They can coordinate in solidarity with other railroad workers transnationally across the same transportation lines to divert their use as a tool for political violence, or assist in weaponizing them when necessary. A State in a State explores historic and current practices of resistance surrounding railroads as a form of life and intimacy with industrial development, but also as a foundation for a different consciousness of cross-border kinship for the people who live and work around international infrastructure.