INTERNATIONAL CONTEMPORARY ART FESTIVAL “ART-ZAVOD 2009”

🗓️August 27–30, 2009

FORMER SVERDLOVSK WORSTED PLANT
📍2, Novinskaya St., Yekaterinburg,  620024 Russia

Frants Gallery Space participates in International Contemporary Art Festival “ART-ZAVOD 2009” Festival Theme: “Strength of Materials: Material Effects”

The ART-ZAVOD 2009 Festival explores the interaction between contemporary art and industry, offering an artistic reinterpretation of factory environments and industrial realities. This project by the Yekaterinburg Branch of the National Center for Contemporary Arts (NCCA) continues the tradition established by the 2008 ART-ZAVOD laboratory festival, “Emergency Melting,” and is expected to evolve into the Ural Industrial Biennale of Contemporary Art. The festival is part of the NCCA’s program “Ural Factories: The Industry of Meanings.”

The festival will take place on the grounds of an active worsted factory, the former Sverdlovsk Worsted Plant (now the N-2.ru business portal) at 2 Novinskaya Street. For four days, contemporary artists will showcase their conceptual works in the vacant workshops, featuring interactive sound art installations, exhibitions, film screenings, and audiovisual performances. Heavy machinery will be replaced by ephemeral elements—light, sound, and scent—allowing the audience to experience the environment in new, transformative ways.

The factory is a zone of creation and experimentation, forming the basis of technological progress. The artist’s task is to reveal the meaning of invisible material properties, to give voice and color to industrial formulas. Materials rise up, expressing their inherent qualities through new forms, far removed from practical purposes. To appreciate the “effects of material,” the audience is immersed in direct contact with the industrial environment and its dynamics.