Curated by Human Rights Education and Monitoring Center (EMC, Georgia)

Panel I: Cameras Raids Agents - Policing the City

Moderated by Guram Imnadze (Georgia)

Participants: Tornike Gerliani and Tamar Gvasalia (Georgia)

Modern urban networks of surveillance and policing include new technology, mobilization of varied actors and evolving practices. With its increasing complexity, understanding and regulating the modern police apparatus becomes ever more convoluted. Questions of democracy, oversight, justice and power are raised anew. The pandemic, which created conditions and states of legal, practical and technical exception, complicates the picture even further. Speakers on this panel reflected on legal and political ramifications of modern policing practices and contextualize them within ongoing debates around democracy, transparency and social justice.

Panel II: Work, Life and Leisure in Contested Urban Spaces

Moderated by Kote Eristavi (Georgia)

Participants: Tamuna Qeburia, Giorgi Tsintsadze and Gvantsa Nikolaishvili (Georgia)

Modern Georgian cities are an agglomeration of contested spaces, where different economic and political actors tussle for ideological supremacy, privilege and profit. Apartments, as well as spaces between them are constructed, physically and ideologically, in response to conflicting interests and alternative visions of urban life. This panel focused on housing policy, outdoor vendors and public parks to illuminate these conflicts and the way they play out in the current political context.