Art Weekend: Hidden in the Woods Exhibition

ITMO’s Art & Science students will present a tech art exhibition – Hidden in the Woods – as part of the Art Weekend cultural and educational event, organized by the North-Western branch of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts.

Art.ITMO.Residency will open its doors to everyone wishing to enjoy the exhibition on November 11-22, 2020.

The pandemic has taught us that the safest way is to look for the unknown in the long-familiar. That’s why we decided to turn to trees that have existed on this planet for four hundred and seven million years. To see what is hidden, you need to start searching. The Perfect Garden VR project (New Media Lab at the New Stage of Alexandrinsky Theater) creates space for St. Petersburg’s greens in an airship hovering above Ploshchad Vosstaniya metro station.

Today's coexistence of humans and trees is based on flat ontology. Its approaches equally cover – trees, animals, plants, technical objects, and humans. The equality means to balance the hands of a sensual clock: compare the temperature (Razzle-dazzle/What am I still waiting for by Stas Bags), understand what sound means (Eco-location by Anastasiia Yatsei), explain the fire of the neural network (Scorched ground by Kseniia Bakhtina), compare the influence of the electromagnetic field (Dancing forest by Evgenii Khlopotov).

Technical objects have a communicative nature: they can turn living infrastructures (To be the wind for the tree by Natalia Fedorova) into a network or create non-existent connections and forms of living agents (Herbarium by Ekaterina Prianishnikova and Aleksander Serechenko), experience the influence of people on the forest (Digital forest by Tony Shanikhin), and discern the specific connection between folk myth-making and birches (Weeping birch by Daniil Logvinenko).

The exhibition includes a wide range of online and offline events.

Event program:

November 11

• 7 – 8 pm the exhibition’s opening ceremony

November 13

• 7 – 7.30 pm the opening of Let’s Art & Science! student club
• 7.30 – 8.30 pm Infochemistry and Dissipative Structures – Prediction and Inspiration lecture by Ekaterina Skorb. Conducting a chemical experiment.

November 14

• 1 – 1.30 pm Digital forest artist talk by Tony Shanikhin
• 1.30 – 2 pm Eco-location artist talk by Anastasiia Yatsei
• 2 – 2.30 pm Dancing forest artist talk by Evgenii Khlopotov
• 2.30 – 3 pm Scorched ground artist talk by Kseniia Bakhtina
• 4 – 4.30 pm Razzle-dazzle/What am I still waiting for artist talk by Stas Bags
• 4.30 – 5 pm School of life for trees artist talk by Daria Okhrimenko-Kesler
• 5 – 5.30 pm Herbarium artist talk by Ekaterina Prianishnikova and Aleksander Serechenko

November 15

• 1 – 2.30 pm Generating trees workshop by Daniil Logvinenko
• 3 – 4 pm What if you want to plant a tree in St. Petersburg? lecture by Nikifor Antsulevich
• 4 – 4.45 pm  Screening of Intelligent trees documentary film, directed by Julia Dordel and Guido Telke. Language: English + English subtitles

November 21

• 7 – 8 pm Green Labs MLA+ lecture
• 8 – 9 pm Presentation of the Perfect garden project, New Media Lab

November 22

• 5 – 6.30 pm EDEN artist talk by Olga Kisseleva
• 7 – 9 pm Screening and discussion of World Brain film, directed by Gwenola Wagon and Stephane Degoutin. Language: French + English subtitles.

The organizers are Natalia Fedorova and Evgenii Khlopotov.