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Open video in playerCYBERFEST is the first and only annual Russian International Media Arts festival founded in 2007 by artists and curators Anna Frants and Marina Koldobskaya.
Since 2007 the festival is held in Saint-Petersburg (Russia) on the basis of Media Art Laboratory CYLAND.
The festival's partners include the leading art institutions and museums, such as the Hermitage Youth Education Center, Saint-Petersburg State University, the Association of Contemporary Art Galleries, Creative Space TKACHI and others.
Marlene Dietrich, playing the role of a woman sentenced to death by a firing squad, stunned the public with a practical question: “And where does a person fall when being shot at – forwards or backwards?”
How does the gate of heaven open? With squeaks, with a turn of the handle or by pressing it up? Does it even exist? Or do we somehow end up in heaven without realizing it?
By reexamining our experience, that which we have seen, we are trying to get ahead of time, to imagine that which does not exist, to figure out the inexplicable, to explain that which cannot happen. However, we should not forget that “devil is in the details”.
Anna Frants,
Festival Curator, St. Petersburg Arts Project Director
This is not about the end of the world that was, yet again, almost in earnest awaited this year.
It has nothing to do with protest songs or with sad movies.
This is about the fact that each day we knock on some doors.
Knock and they will open. Ask and they will give. This is really so, tried and true.
The question is what is in there, behind the door. Shall we be better off if we enter? Shall we be happier if we receive?
If one is to see some meaning in art, it is precisely in this: go-I-don’t-know-where, bring-me-I-don’t-know-what.
Behind the waterfall, in a cave filled with gold, there are either the dragon’s bones or the dragon itself, either the live-giving water of the death-giving one. Everything is arranged differently there, and we are different there. He who has not been there – consider him not to have been at all.
The artist sets on his quest in order to get to that country – from whose bourn, admittedly, he hopes to return. And to bring something along. This is not a paradise – this is rather the stalkers’ zone. This is the place where one keeps going – up to a certain point, of course, and subjecting himself to irreversible changes while doing that. To find the toys there that he doesn’t understand himself and that will irreversibly change something here.
Perhaps, those toys will improve life, make it more affluent, beautiful and convenient. Ultimately, longer. Let’s leave these discourses to advertising. We go there because our feet take us there. So that later on we would tell fairytales, sing heavenly songs and show magic pictures.
About the magic country that we fixed up for ourselves.
Today, that country behind the waterfall, beyond the heaven’s door, past the gateless gate is created with the help of MacBooks, iPhones, speakers, sensors and other hard- and software. It’s not important what it is made of. What’s important is that people could be allowed in there by pushing a cell phone’s button, connecting to the internet or turning on a projector.
Today, this is not a question of whether we should knock on the door or sneak in, whether enter upon permission or break in, whether only good people are allowed in or each and everyone. Perhaps, there is nobody to ask, in fact; perhaps, we are the only ones in there; perhaps, there, behind the door, everything is ours as well.
If we build it.
Marina Koldobskaya,
Festival Curator, CYLAND Media Art Lab Curator