🗓️September 17-20, 2015
STATE FOREST TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY
📍7, Novorossiyskaya Ul., St. Peterburg 194156 Russia
◆Anna Frants presents “Snowball Fight” at Art Prospect Festival 2015◆
The theme of the fourth ART PROSPEKT was GAMES. The festival invited art collectives as well as individual artists working in the genre of participatory art—a practice that regards the viewer as a co-author and active participant in the creative process. The concept of the game, explored through the lens of contemporary art and collective identity, allowed for a critical examination of interaction both as experience and as practice, raising a number of important questions. What is the historical role of artistic collectives in contemporary Russia and abroad? How is contemporary art connected to the notion of “the collective,” and in what ways can local communities not traditionally involved in the art world be engaged in the creation of artworks?
The festival aimed to find points of connection between the collective and the artistic through contemporary artistic strategies and practices, using the concept of the game as a way to rethink social and aesthetic interaction.
Artists and collectives from St. Petersburg, Izhevsk, Kyrgyzstan, Belarus, Georgia, Italy, and the United States took part in the festival. The works created during the event were installed in Yarky Hostel & Space, the park of the State Forest Technical Academy, and the courtyards of buildings No. 2 and No. 7 on Novorossiyskaya Street.
Snowball Fight by Anna Frants
Snowballs can be made not only from snow, but also from Styrofoam, modeling clay, sugar, or any other white material. For those whose childhood took place in the former USSR, nothing beats cotton and starch — the traditional materials used to make homemade New Year’s ornaments. In this installation, snowballs sculpted using this nearly forgotten technique are enlarged and placed on pedestals, serving as a monument to childhood games. In addition, they act as screens onto which an animated snowball fight is projected (the game is controlled by motion sensors). This work is both a tool and a process — a game in all its forms.