The 8th Art Prospect International Public Art Festival will take place in St. Petersburg September 23–26, transforming the familiar urban landscape and filling streets, courtyards, parks, and other public spaces with works of contemporary art. For the second year in a row, it will be hosted at House of Culture Creative Cluster, which will display works by over 20 artists and artist collectives from Russia, Finland, Switzerland, and the US. Events will take place in a hybrid online-offline format, allowing viewers to experience works by artists from around the world despite current pandemic-related restrictions. Remote projects by artists from outside St. Petersburg, as well as interviews and discussions with them, will be available on Art Prospect’s website and mobile app. The app is available for download in the Russian Google Play Store and App Store.
The festival’s theme this year, Forms of Unity, comes out of the experience of life during a pandemic. As the last year has demonstrated, the challenges faced by humanity cannot be overcome in isolation; the individualism valued by the market economy does not meet the challenges of our time. As in other watershed moments, now is the time to unite, come together, and listen to each other.
In addition to searching for new ways of relating, festival artists will explore the phenomenon of ‘houses of culture’ and their role in local communities. Through their artistic practices, artists will try to discover how houses of culture’s operations have changed since Soviet times, and how these organizations bring people together and provide support for them today.
Art Prospect Festival Public Discussion
September 22 19:00 EST
“Forms of Collaboration: Cross-cultural projects in the 8th Art Prospect Festival”
Moderator: Rita Kuleva
Participants: Clarinda Mac Low, Natasha Tikhonova, Anna Harsanyi, Anna Tereshkina, Anastasia Makarenko, Luisa Caldwell, Sasha Braulov, Joshua Goode, Deus Excavators, North 7
GLOBAL REMOTE PROJECTS SCHEDULE
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House of Culture, St. Petersburg, Russia:
Alexandra Abakshina/Pistoletova (St. Petersburg, Russia), When Self-care is Not Enough
Peter Belyi (St. Petersburg, Russia), Russian Eden
Luisa Caldwell (Brooklyn, NY), Sasha Braulov (St. Petersburg, Russia), The Lost Half
Gorod Ustinov Microterritory (Izhevsk, Russia), Untitled/Guest Banner
Misha Gudvin (Moscow, Russia), New Pennant
Anna Harsanyi (USA), Anna Tereshkina, Anastasia Makarenko (St. Petersburg, Russia), ZAAGS
Kendal Henry (New York, NY), Public Art Workshop
Olya Kroytor (Moscow, Russia), Urban Performance Workshop
Elina Kulikova (Moscow, Russia), The Feeling Is Mutual
Clarinda Mac Low (New York, NY), Natalia Tikhonova (St. Petersburg, Russia), Mutual Education School
No Excuse (Omsk, Russia), Burlesque Harvest Festival at the Palace of Labor
Yeliz Palak (Berlin, Germany), Su gibi git su gibi gel
PARAZIT group (St. Petersburg, Russia), Transgaza
Anu Pennanen (Helsinki, Finland), IN RELIEF #2
Yan Posadsky (Voronezh, Russia), Halo
Igor Sanolet (Moscow, Russia), Reconstruction
Alexander Shishkin-Hokusai (St. Petersburg, Russia), You She-wolf, Barbara!, Invisible Glam
Masha Shprayzer (Moscow, Russia), At Some Point of Invisibility
Techno Poetry (St. Petersburg, Russia), (un)Happy Hoods, An outdoor documentary rap musical
Anastasia Vepreva (St. Petersburg, Russia), The Night Shift
Augmented Reality in the House of Culture, St. Petersburg, Russia:
Dagnini (Moscow, Russia), Attention Choir
Deus ExCavator (Kerim Ragimov and Petr Shvetsov, St. Petersburg), John Silver
Dmitri Kavka (Moscow, Russia), Tautobot (from the Greek ταὐτός, “the same” + bot)
Anna Martynenko (St. Petersburg, Russia), The Parrots of DK Gaza
Remote Projects
Brazil
Chris Tigra (Belo Horizonte, Brazil), Home, Sweet Home
Georgia
Bouillon Group (Tbilisi, Georgia), Condition, performance
Kazakhstan
Pasha Cas (Almaty, Kazakhstan), The Embassy of the World
Maryam Talibdjanova, NadinTalibdjanova (Almaty, Kazakhstan), Good neighbors in Bukhar Zhirau
Nigeria
Ver Mr Artist (Ver Ikeseh) (Abuja, Nigeria), Colored Orphanage
Russia
HK “BUSINKI” (Krasnodar, Russia), Cafeteria
Gosha Elaev (Tyumen, Russia), River Dwellers
Olesya Illenok (Yekaterinburg, Russia), Urban Surveillance Garden
Michael Meier, Christoph Franz (Zurich, Switzerland), Pressed in Iron Screws
Alexandra Melnikova (Tyumen, Russia), Our Future Houses of Culture
Nikita Spiridonov (Moscow, Russia), Dots, Lines, and Zigzags
Singapore
Joey Chin (Bukit Batok, Singapore), Dear Dearest...:Public Letter Writer
South Africa
Unusual Bones (Cape Town, South Africa), reach
USA
Lena Chen (Pittsburgh, PA), Journey of the Hungry Ghost
Nicolás Dumit Estévez (Bronx, NY), Growing a Green Heart
Ernesto Estrella (New York, NY), For Those Arriving to New York
Peter Kalivas (San Diego, CA), Deeply Rooted
Jill Miller, Nassirah Nelson (Berkeley, CA), Food and Art Bank (FAB)
NOoSPHERE Arts (Brooklyn, NY), WE ARE NATURE Rooftop Series
Uzbekistan
Vahid Kazimov (Tashkent, Uzbekistan), Tashkent and Seattle: New Possibilities as Sister Cities
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About Art Prospect Festival
Art Prospect is an annual public art festival founded in 2012 by the nonprofit CEC ArtsLink. To date, it has featured more than 250 artists from 20 different countries and welcomed more than 30,000 visitors from St. Petersburg’s various neighborhoods. The festival has also been hosted in Bishkek (Kyrgyzstan), Baku (Azerbaijan), Tbilisi (Georgia), and Kyiv (Ukraine). In 2020, the festival took an online-offline form, bringing together artists and viewers from 13 countries.
The festival’s mission is to develop new forms of creative interaction, offering artists and local residents the opportunity to explore the urban environment and to determine and reimagine its aesthetic, historical, cultural, and social ingredients.
Art Prospect 2021 is supported by the Ivan Gaza House of Culture, the Trust for Mutual Understanding, Pro Helvetia Moscow, OCA, FRAME, Kettering Family Foundation, and the U.S. Embassy in Moscow.
About House of Culture Creative Cluster
The Ivan Gaza House of Culture was originally built in the 1930s as a cultural and educational center for the workers of the Kirov Factory, which held political and economic significance for the whole country. Throughout the Soviet period, houses of culture educated and entertained citizens, hosting various theater, music, and dance ensembles, as well as art classes, clubs, and movie theaters.
This landmark building is now home to House of Culture Creative Cluster, which continues to play the important role of a neighborhood cultural cluster that brings together various art studios and classes, allowing local residents to continue their educations and shape culture. The cluster provides space for festivals, contemporary art exhibitions, cafes, restaurants, and design show rooms.
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