8 Art Prospect Festival. Katerina Sokolovskaya

www.artprospect.org

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.

The festival’s theme 2021, 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.

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

Joshua Goode (Fort Worth, Texas), Deus ExCavator, North-7 (St. Petersburg, Russia), The Two-Headed Mammoth

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

Marina Karpova (St. Petersburg, Russia), There’s us and there’s the sounds surrounding us. What goes on in between?

Olya Kroytor (Moscow, Russia), Urban Performance Workshop

Elina Kulikova (Moscow, Russia), The Feeling Is Mutual