Zura Jishkariani

A writer, musician, multimedia artist, chat-bot designer and a self-proclaimed mayor of Sokhumi, the Abkhazian city he was born in, now occupied by Russia. After the military conflict he lived in Georgian seaside ghettos under the refugee status. 

In the early 2000s Z. Jishkariani gave up studying sociology at university and launched several music projects. Later he founded a local art-guild Eurasian Laboratory, a union of young poets and performers. 

Among his most successful projects is a Georgian chat-bot Cyber-Galaktion which is a linguistic simulation of the most prominent Georgian poet Galaktion Tabidze. 

Firmly believing that chat-bots are the future of storytelling, Zura Jishkariani is actively involved in their personality design process. He is interested in how sadness, trust, joy and other emotions in people are created by algorithms and logical codes. 

In his fictional and non-fictional texts Zura Jishkariani reflects on the medieval Georgian poetry and hagiography mixed with the current junkie slang and advertising slogans. With such a linguistic innovation he stands as a unique voice in contemporary Georgian literature.