Uta Bekaia: Eau de Cologne began when four of us, Giga Gulverdashvili, Natuta Bagrationi, Dato Koridze and I, came together to create a party series. We wanted to create a space where people could freely express their sexuality, gender and identity. The strict door policy and dress code create a sense of equality on the dance floor: once inside, everyone is on the same level. We came from different creative backgrounds, which became one of the project’s strengths. Today, we are slowly growing our community in Georgia and internationally, with residents including Cormac, MVHY and GeorgiシooOoOOoO, alongside co-founders Citizen Union and Natuta.

UB: The underground scene has played an important role in the development of the Georgian queer movement. It has created protected spaces where self-expression can exist more freely than in many other parts of public life. On the dance floor, the limitations of everyday life are temporarily suspended, allowing a strong, self-defined culture to grow. It is not simply an imported idea of queerness, but something rooted in our own experiences, bodies, aesthetics, friendships and histories. The underground has therefore been more than nightlife. It has been a space for experimentation, community and survival.

UB: It allows us to build an entire artistic world. In Tbilisi, there are still very few spaces where queer art can be presented openly, so Eau De Cologne creates a temporary environment where artists can work without censoring themselves or separating their identity from their practice. Bringing together music, performance, costume, photography, installation and visual art allows us to tell a more complete story. Artists including Levan Mindiashvili, David Apakidze, Fagatta and Raffaella Toxicana are documenting Georgian queer self-expression in real time, and we are happy to bring that work to KREUZWERK.

UB: I think it is, but celebration has a very different meaning in a repressed country like Georgia than it might in Berlin. Simply occupying space openly as a queer person can become a political act. Dancing, being visible, touching another person, wearing something extravagant or expressing your gender freely can all become forms of resistance. For us, self-expression and dancing are political and social acts, even when we are not consciously making a political statement. At the same time, I wish we had the privilege of romanticising it less. We would much rather live in a situation where queer joy could simply be celebration.

UB: It is extremely important. The Georgian queer movement is still relatively young and constantly searching for its own language. We do not want to simply reproduce models developed elsewhere. We need to understand queerness through our own history, symbols, rituals and cultural references. Artists have an important role in that process because there is no preexisting manual telling us what our culture is supposed to look like. We are making it as we go. Reinterpreting tradition allows us to challenge the idea that it belongs only to one group or political ideology. Tradition can be questioned, transformed and reimagined.

UB: It is almost impossible for an artist to completely separate their personal life from their artistic practice, especially within marginalised communities. When your identity is something you constantly have to negotiate with your family, community, institutions or the state, the personal inevitably becomes political. For us, finding a way to live authentically is not only an individual process. We are collectively trying to make a path for ourselves and those who come after us. The personal therefore becomes collective, and a private act of self-expression can become part of a larger cultural movement.

UB: Documentation allows us to preserve what is happening above and below the surface. Without it, the histories we are creating can disappear. Future generations need evidence that these lives existed and that these spaces were created. Photography can therefore function as collective memory. Dato’s work is not simply documenting parties, protest and everyday life. It is documenting a particular period of Georgian social history through a queer gaze. Without those images, we might know that something happened, but it would be much harder to understand what it felt like to live through it.

UB: We want the Berlin queer community to see how we live, what we create and what our world looks and feels like. It is also important to show what could potentially be lost. At a moment when queer rights and visibility are under increasing pressure, we want to make visible the rawness, vitality and complexity of underground life. That is why we use different artistic media. Each can communicate something the others cannot. Rather than giving the audience one fixed interpretation, we want them to make their own connections. The party becomes a form of storytelling, fragmented, emotional, symbolic and collective.

Kuko: For me, CATHARSIS is the journey through your own feelings, from melancholy, pain and anger to joy and complete ecstasy. It’s a short escape from normal life. A moment to breathe, let go and simply be. The darkness doesn’t disappear, but you learn to accept it and carry it differently.

Kuko: Yes, but I don’t only connect catharsis with negative emotions. During my sets, I see people crying, smiling, screaming and completely losing themselves. For that moment, they don’t have to think about everyday life. They can just feel whatever is there. We go through it together, and I think realizing that you’re not alone with those feelings can be very powerful.

Kuko: “Nur Wegen Dir” was probably the most vulnerable one. It’s my own voice, and the track comes from very personal feelings around attachment, obsession and the mark another person can leave on you. Playing it live was one thing, but officially releasing it meant that part of me would exist forever and belong to everyone. That was scary, but it also showed me how many people recognized themselves in it.

Kuko: Very normal things. Sleeping whenever I can, working out and spending time with my friends. Music is still my biggest hobby, so even working on a track during a flight can calm me down. Being home in Cologne and having quiet time with people close to me brings me back to myself.

Kuko: It means everything. Cologne shaped me because so many different sounds, cultures and personalities exist next to each other here. Unreal is also family to me, so a sold-out hometown headline doesn’t feel like just another big show. It feels like everyone who was part of the journey coming together in the place where it started.

Kuko:

I don’t want to leave CATHARSIS behind as soon as the album is released. The album is the beginning. The next step is bringing it fully into the live show and continuing the story through CATHARSIS. There are new collaborations in motion, but I don’t want to announce names too early. The direction will become broader, more emotional and more cinematic, but it won’t become softer. The core will always stay hard.

Dahi:

The title is an ode to my younger self. The album represents my youth and how I view the world, bringing light to what was truthful to my childhood. At the end of the day, I consider myself a kid at heart, and creatively I’m always pulling from that source of inspiration or viewpoint, because I feel like as a child you’re not tainted by the world. You just feel things and make it what it is. So, yeah, it was paying homage to my younger self.

D:

At the end of the day, it’s about who you really are. Are you the same person you were as a child? What do you actually represent, and what do you stand for as a human being? What are you willing to sacrifice in life? What are the things that weigh you down that are sometimes tragic and heavy, and how are you able to fight through that to get through life? Overall, I’d say self-identity, self-reflection, and perseverance. 

D:

To be honest, I felt it was the same in terms of putting the records together. I know how to make an album, so using that experience was pretty fluid throughout the process. I think the only difference was trying to identify my voice in the music and making it more prominent—that was just an adjustment. Overall, it felt natural and on par with how I make records in general, whether writing melodies, lyrics, or performing. It felt like a natural part of my identity as an artist.

D:

I was really excited for people to hear it. But also, I was excited because it was something that felt very personal and connected to the narrative I’ve been trying to tell in my music—the things I’m proud of and what I want to represent. Now that the album is out, it feels like a sense of relief. I feel a bit removed from it, as I finished the album two years ago, so bringing those memories back is interesting now that it feels new to other people. It’s about reconnecting with these moments in a new space, which has been cool. It helps me understand what art is—that it can be timeless. It doesn’t necessarily have to feel new; if you made something 5 or 10 years ago and it still resonates, that’s the most important thing. Overall, I’m just happy it’s out. It’s definitely timestamped in my mind as living in the moment of making it, but also having other people listen to it.

D:

A lot of things changed—going through the pandemic, having kids, dealing with family drama, and personal highs and lows. Overall, life becomes more apparent in how bleak it is. So much of what we do every day is just getting through today, pushing through, and trying to live for the now. But sometimes I think you’re trying, at least for me, to bring understanding to the ‘why.’

And over time, the ‘why’ becomes a little clearer in what I’m supposed to do or what feels natural. Having clarity in the message is what time gave me; it made it more present in how this relates to other people and how they feel connected to who they are. Overall, I’m just growing up. That’s the main thing I’ve taken away in these last few years.

D:

It wasn’t really a choice; I didn’t intentionally set out to have this many features on the album. I think it just came naturally, given the way I work with so many artists, and these are my friends. I really love collaboration as a tool to make something better than what I expected or what I could have done by myself. Overall, it was natural to bring these artists and people into my world. The main thing I wanted to establish was that these songs aren’t necessarily for their own albums. I wanted to build a world they could come to play in—a treat for their own craft and artistry. When you hear the album, it becomes apparent that even though they do other things, these songs fit a certain unification and a sound that feels unique to the project.

D:

A lot of it was just people in my head that I thought I could work well with, or people I’ve been fans of, or whose voices I admire. Overall, I think these are people who live in the alternative world in their own way or perspective. Knowing that about each of these artists made it easier to pitch them the ideas that I had for songs. It really boiled down to what each of these songs means to me personally and how we could make something special, given their perspective and what they’ve gone through. Each song feels like a different voice compared to what they’ve done on their own projects, but I feel like they could take these songs and perform them in their own shows or play them for their friends and feel proud of what they contributed to the album.

D:

The process was really fluid. There wasn’t a master plan or a ‘big board’ of things we wanted to do. A lot of it was just starting from jam sessions where I’d bring starter ideas that felt cool, and then everyone would get on the mic to pitch an idea or play a line, and we’d all react to it. It felt very much like a band; everyone involved just stacked on someone else’s idea and kept building from there. It was like a Lego set—it felt like a blank canvas. If something felt right, you just went with it. That’s what made the album fun. Once you have that idea, you can figure out how to structure it in a way that people understand, invoking the feelings we were aiming for in a short amount of time.

D:

To be honest, the sound of that era is still prominent in what I became a fan of. Everything felt more regional back then—whether you were from the West Coast, the South, New York, Detroit, or Miami—and that made it special because everyone in those spaces was making music true to their culture. Artists were collaborating and jumping into sessions, and that idea of collaboration was much more acceptable. Now, when I go into sessions, I know how special those rooms are. If you have the right room and bring people together, you can create something dope. That was happening a lot during that time; it felt fluid, and there wasn’t a lot of ego involved because everyone was just trying to make great stuff and put it on the internet to see what happened. I’m still a fan of those feelings when making music.

D:

For me personally, I strive for a balance in the projects I choose to be part of. At the end of the day, you have to be proactive in managing your finances and how you want to move creatively. I never want money to dictate the projects I take on, or feel the desperation of needing a hit record just to pay bills or escape financial debt. Overall, I create a balance in my life that allows me to work on what feels right. It has helped me have a longer career than most, simply because of my approach—I never feel like I’m chasing anything that feels unnatural. I’m always trying to find things that feel the best, whether indie or otherwise, and I usually find myself working on something that feels cool or unique for the times.

D: I don’t like to answer that question because I’m going to work with who I need to work with. I’m a fan of a lot of people, and there’s a lot of incredible art out there, but I live by spontaneity—knowing that what you think you want may not be what you actually want, and what you didn’t expect often comes to pass. So, I just let God be the choice, and Lord willing, it feels like the right move.