Andropov’s Ears

A modernist monument in Tbilisi nicknamed Andropov’s Ears (after the then-head of the KGB, Yuri Andropov) has recently been demolished by the neoliberal Georgian government to be replaced by the symbol of capitalist prosperity: a shopping mall. Medoidze, who is based in London, opts out of this double negativity by filming both the remnants of Brutalist architecture in London and her sculpture of the missing monument. A voiceover reads from Medoidze’s fictional story about a couple who, in an unprecedented event in Soviet Georgia, occupy the Ears monument. Medoidze avoids direct historicisation by focusing on the interchangeability of real and imaginary references.