Half State: Tolia Astakhishvili With Jacksun Bein and Livia Polanyi

Unites architectural drawings, autobiographical fragments, and transoceanic correspondence into a single conceptual structure.

The trifold powers of architecture, its inhabitants, and their languages are in a mutually dependent relationship of forces. These forces are reconstructed in this volume of the KONTEXT series. In drawings of architectural plans, Tolia Astakhishvili depicts buildings composed entirely of escape paths. In a memoir-style text of fragments by Jacksun Bein, the life of a child who refused to fully exit the womb is charted from conception to death. Through a transoceanic correspondence with the Astakhishvili, Livia Polanyi explores how memory lives on between time and language.