SberSpasibo – partner of EverArt Weekend 2021: Game of Art

EverArt Weekend, and international contemporary art festival, will be held on July 2-4. Organized by Everal with support from the SberSpasibo loyalty program, it is dedicated to The Game of Art, giving a glance at the game art phenomenon to a wide audience. This is the third year the fest is being held. Its venues will be open to visitors in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and online.

Offline guests can enjoy the fest projects of Russian and foreign artists in 40 galleries across Moscow and St. Petersburg, as well as public art in parks, take hiking art routes, master classes, listen to lectures, and meet artists in-person. For online visitors, there are virtual exhibits, streams, and EverArt Journey, a digital game with real gallery exhibits embedded into an immersive wondering game that is a guide to contemporary art. This way the virtual and the material worlds will intertwine into an ultimate gaming venue, EverArt Weekend.

Most of the events will be free. A special program has been put together for children.

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EverArt Weekend 2021 will gather the works of 300 artists from inside and outside of Russia, including Russian pavilion participants at the 17^th Venice Architecture Biennale (Yulia Kozhemyako, Ilya Mazo, and Alexander Ignatov), members of Ars Electronica 2020 held in Austria (Mexican nationals Laura Rodriguez and Ethan Avila), the number one game designer in France Gaël Bourhis, as well as authors from the U.S. (Carson Lynn), the Netherlands (Georgy Winstra), and more. Over 40 galleries in Moscow and St. Petersburg will host their expositions.

Most recently, we have launched a collaboration with trendy and popular designers and found that audiences are very responsive to and interested in modern art. On top of that, we know gaming from A to Z - for some years now we have been offering our clients great deals through reward points and letting them win these points in gamification projects like Spasibomania, Spasibo Empire, and Battle Ships. It's an opportunity to show that banking loyalty can be relevant and up-to-date, that it can interact with engaged audiences of trendsetters and support projects developing taste and setting trends.

Dmitry Zavisha

Marketing Director, SberSpasibo loyalty program

The mission of our project is to make contemporary art open and understandable, and a game is probably the best way to get involved, understand, immerse, or just have a good time.

Lucy Vinograd,

EverArt Weekend organizer and founder of the Everal art agency

Game junction, an exhibition at Moscow's Khodynka Exhibition Hall, will be the key event of the festival where you will have a chance to immerse into the spaces of original video games and interactive objects and interact with them. The concept, plot, visual and technical components of the gaming content are of particular interest.

It's Winter, a poetic game by Ilya Mazo and Alexandra Ignatova, is dedicated to loneliness and Russian toska (despair). The game takes place in a khrushchyovka, a low-cost apartment building built during the Khrushchev era. At first, the viewer feels strange, but once they start 'living' in the space, turning the oven on and off, picking the kettle up, and moving plates around, they start to feel at home and like this life is their own.

Mexican Art & Science artist Laura Rodriguez and interdisciplinary artist and cinematographer Ethan Avila will present their virtual game The Fruits of Consciousness. In the installation, a digital apple tree grows in a digital garden. Robots care for the apple tree and protect the garden from unwanted guests. The robots are called Adam and Eve, and the digital apple tree is an allusion to the Tree of Knowledge. Attempting to pick an apple from the tree, viewers will be able to contemplate their own consciousness, accountability, and life as a whole.

American artist Carson Lynn's short machinima film Dear Eidolon immerses the viewer in the world of popular video games. Together, the author and viewer attempt to understand how the gamer's physical and gamespace bodies are interconnected.

The art game will continue in the two capitals' parks and public spaces. During the festival, artists will activate sculpture installations and murals through performances. They will organize marches (Sasha Frolova), a game of Tetris on a Moscow building façade (Vladimir Abikh), a public talk in which people can participate (Dmitri Aske), and more. Special city tours will be designed for public art routes.

In St. Petersburg, the festival will be hosted by the Museum of Street Art, with a new exhibition project, and Sevkabel Port, which will present a large-scale installation. Game-themed tours and special projects will take place in over 10 galleries, including Myth Gallery, One's Mind Gallery, DiDi Gallery, Kz gallery, and the Sergey Kuryokhin Contemporary Art Center.

The online program will unfold on the website in the form of a meditative wandering game titled EverArt Journey. Together with collector from the future Ever, the participants will go on a virtual walk around the main festival spaces. You will be able to start your walk on the festival website and at the participating gallery spaces using a QR code. The game was created by a huge team of creative volunteers and the project will continue to be developed and expand geographically after the festival wraps up.

The festival website will also feature a market selling pieces of work by the artists presented in the digital game and the offline exhibitions.

Guests will be able to exchange SberSpasibo reward points for tickets to attend the offline part of the festival.

Information about the participants, events, and exhibitions at this year's festival will be updated on the event websiteeverart-weekend.ru and on the project's Facebook and Instagram accounts.

Images for publication are available at the link.