In Sergei Parajanov’s Caucasian Trilogy (Sayat-Nova, Ashik Kerib, and The Legend of the Suram Fortress), West Asian fruits take the central stage. 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. From the late 19th century and throughout the Soviet era, the South Caucasus was set to be transformed into a lush, picturesque (sub)tropical landscape to enable the introduction, cultivation, and mass production of tropical plants. The humid and dry (sub)tropics of the Georgian Black Sea coast, Armenia, and Azerbaijan were climatically calibrated towards creating a spatiotemporal regime of tropicality in the region, framing it as a source of imperial enrichment. Thermal imaginaries and atmospheric control played a crucial role in the tropical project as the region was envisioned as an ideal environment for establishing the system of tropical agriculture. 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.