Open

The outbreak of COVID-19 has shaken our daily routines and priorities – our relationship to families, friends and co-workers, our approach to work, and the way we experience and navigate the world. The roles and actions of governments, companies, institutions and individual people all matter in this global pandemic. Open!, the Russian Federation’s contribution to this year’s Biennale, functions as a testing ground to investigate the public meaning of institutions, and to experiment with possible modes of coexistence. In face of the pandemic, the Pavilion will therefore progressively release its contents online, manifesting itself as a digital platform in anticipation of the new opening date of the Biennale. With a virtual opening, it will kick-start a dialogue on the functions and values of (cultural) institutions.

Starting now and developing over the course of the next few months, the Pavilion’s website and its social media channels will be populated by the various contributions that have been announced on February 17. It will feature work by the architectural studio KASA (Kovaleva and Sato Architects), the multidisciplinary collective Lion & Unicorn, curator and co-founder of the Moscow International Experimental Film Festival Vladimir Nadein, artist and game designer Mikhail Maximov, sound artist Pavel Milyakov - aka Buttechno, and composer Vladmir Rannev, and all the other actors that are involved in the process of reconstruction of the Russian Pavilion.