The CYFEST-13 International Media Art Festival was organized in St Petersburg on November 11-28, 2021. The festival theme in 2021 was Cosmos and Chaos.

Every style in art has strived to give birth to its own cosmos — an aesthetic structure and a formal solution. But what is taking place when the aesthetic and formal lose their meaning in the process of determining what art is? Abyss gives birth to abyss? What could be engendered by the “immeasurableness” of information? Or soon the new technologies will completely engulf the aesthetical and our old cosmos of meanings will be of absolutely no interest to a new generation of artists?
Elena Gubanova, curator

Five graduates of the School for Young Artists program presented their four art projects at the festival. 

ALINA KUGUSH
LABORATORY X video installation
AIR — Art.ITMO.Residency, St Petersburg, Russia
The project is supported by the PRO ARTE Foundation and the CYLAND Media Art Lab

Any conspiracy theory arises from the desire to explain the complexity of the world in a simplified way. As an artistic gesture, Alina Kugush takes this logic to an absurd conclusion, by “thinking in categories” — visual ones, in this case. 

The project features several screens combined with a static collage. This “visual cloud” also includes a laboratory table with screens mounted in it. Several of the screen are placed at the bottom of glass tubes. The animation of the screens moves at different speeds — from 3 to 9 frames per minute. The visual refrain: domestic objects resembling microbes under a microscope replace one another. The unpredictability of elements that perform the role of “microbes” cause a comic effect. 

Alina Kugush is a graduate of the PRO ARTE’s School for Young Artists (2021). She works with watercolor graphics, GIF animation, installation, performance and art mediation. Collects a work as a system of links from one meaning to another, uses wordplay, collage, placing familiar objects in an unfamiliar environment, refers to carnival and play. Participant of exhibitions and interdisciplinary projects in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Bishkek. She studied at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the Russian State Pedagogical University (2012-2014) and at the Faculty of Graphics of the St. Petersburg State Academic Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture (Art Academy, 2014-2018). Lives and works in St. Petersburg. 

MARIA KAROL and EVGENY KORELIN
PATHND (Past actions that have not been done) installation
Annenkirche, St Petersburg, Russia
The project is supported by the PRO ARTE Foundation and the CYLAND Media Art Lab 

PATHND stands for “past actions that have not been done”. The project began in 2020, and gradually changed before reaching its current form. It now addresses the meeting point of anxiety and fear, while the authors are mainly guided by the emotional nuances of the words. Fear has become an animal feeling, natural and useful, worthy of respect, while anxiety is a sticky organism that is constantly nearby. Anxiety awaits you around every corner in the hope that you will take some action, so that the web of probabilities and deviations from plans grows even larger. Anxiety is the horseman of chaos and unpredictability, but it is from chaos that everything in this world is born. 

Maria Karol works with installation, video and graphics. Addresses themes of memory and cognitive distortion. Graduated from the School for Young Artists of the PRO ARTE Foundation (2021) and the Faculty of Contemporary Art of the Education Environment online school (2020). Lives and works in St. Petersburg. 

Evgeny Korelin works with graphics, painting, sound art and street art. Graduate of the Department of Monumental and Decorative Painting of the St. Petersburg Stieglitz Art Academy (2015) and the School for Young Artists of the PRO ARTE Foundation (2021). Lives and works in St. Petersburg. 

IRINA HEINZ
Celestial Bodies audiovisual installation
Museum of Applied Arts, Stieglitz Art Academy, St Petersburg, Russia
The project is supported by the PRO ARTE Foundation and the CYLAND Media Art Lab 

Garbage dumps seem like great works of the collective unconscious: they hypnotize and amaze us with their enormous size. But all these tons of garbage eat away at the body of the Earth like cancerous tumors. They must be eliminated. Irina Geints’ great-grandmother was a healer and cast spells to drive out illnesses and heal people’s bodies. Can a celestial body — our planet — also be healed in this way? Perhaps we simply need a spell on a cosmic scale. What if we send this disease to the center of our gallery — to the Sagittarius A black hole? 

Irina Heinz works with photography, text, sculpture and video. Investigates themes of memory, relations with non-human subjects, recording and comprehending everyday life by post-documentary means. Graduated from the School for Young Artists of the PRO ARTE Foundation (2021) and the Photographic Academy of Documentary and Art Photography (2021). Graduated from the Russian State Pedagogical University with a degree in Literature and Literary Editing (2014) and the Master's program at the Faculty of Philology, St. Petersburg State University (2016). Lives and works in St. Petersburg. 

KARINA DRACHEVA
Universe media installation
Museum of Applied Arts, Stieglitz Art Academy, St Petersburg, Russia
The project is supported by the PRO ARTE Foundation and the CYLAND Media Art Lab 

The artist addresses the philosophical issue of the relationship between the human being and the universe. Although celestial bodies in the cosmos move at enormous speeds, human beings cannot detect these changes, as our lives are too short. There is a theory that nothing in the world takes place without consequences. Does the brief moment of a human life leave a trace in the universe? If so, what kind? Does it annoy the universe, causing chaos to the ordered structure of existence? 

Karina Dracheva is a graduate of the School for Young Artists of the PRO ARTE Foundation (2021). Works with graphics and new media. She is interested in the topic of human interaction with the surrounding reality at the emotional-figurative level, contemplation of objects and dialogue with them. Graduated from the St. Petersburg Stieglitz Art Academy, specialized in ceramics and glass (2017) and artistic metal processing (2019). Lives and works in St. Petersburg.