Violent Infrastructure: Ecologies of Decay and Displacement in Georgia’s Abandoned Soviet Spas

In this talk, Dr. Otruba will discuss her research and traveling photovoice exhibition, Violent Infrastructure: Ecologies of Decay and Displacement. This exhibition features a curated sample of photographs taken by ten internally displaced persons (IDPs), who were forced to flee the 1992-1993 Georgian-Abkhaz war. The pictures capture these IDPs' three-decade-long experience living under abject and decaying "temporary '' housing conditions in the former Soviet spa resort of Tskaltubo, Republic of Georgia. The photographs were collected as part of a feminist visual ethnography project studying the emotional impact of housing infrastructure quality on IDPs' sense of identity, dignity, personhood, agency, and sense of futurity. During a period of unprecedented numbers of forcibly displaced people worldwide, the exhibit brings visibility to the slow violence of urban displacement and war's capacity to harm over an elongated time horizon. In doing so, it seeks to inspire a critical reimagining of more caring and just spatial futures for displaced populations in Georgia and beyond.