Explore the Renewed Russian Federation Pavilion at the Venice Biennale

The Russian Federation Pavilion Open?, which will be featured at the upcoming 17th International Architecture Exhibition at the Venice Biennale, has been reimagined. It has been architecturally renovated and includes a gamer station, as well as a collection of contributions and perspectives on new ways of thinking and building institutions.

This year, the pavilion considers how we can re-think cultural institutions through multiple perspectives: the transformation of its own physical architecture, the digital environments that we access daily, and the networks of individuals that populate them.

The Russian/Japanese architecture studio KASA is working to renovate the pavilion—under the supervision of 2050.plus—so that it more closely reflects the vision of Alexey Shchusev, who designed it in 1914. The relationship between the building and its surroundings will be re-established, and a large portion of the pavilion’s spaces will be left empty to showcase the renovation itself.

Meanwhile, Russian design collective Electric Red, founded by Svyat Vishnyakov and Nastya Vishnyakova, will develop an interactive flag which will function both as a spatial expedient to highlight the architectural renovation and as a symbol for the institutional renewal. The flag will be installed in the renovated space and will grow incrementally throughout the course of the Biennale.

Public program

Located on the ground floor of the pavilion will be a gamer station which will stage and reflect on digital gaming environments and their social meaning, specifically within the context of Russia.

Visitors will be able to play three Russian video games: Sanatorium Anthropocene Retreat, Chapter II (2021) created by Mikhail Maximov and commissioned by the Russian Pavilion; It’s Winter (2020) by Ilia Mazo; and Yuha’s Nightmares (2021) by Yulia Kozhemyako (aka Supr). The games will be accompanied by theoretical contributions from Alice Bucknell, Federico Campagna, Emanuele Coccia, Cat Goodfellow, Daria Kalugina, Alina Nazmeeva, and Alexander Vetushinsky.

Conversations and live streams on the topics of the games, gamification, and digital space will stream on screens at the gamer station and will feature on pavilionrus.com, which will act as the digital counterpart of the physical pavilion.

Curated by Vladimir Nadein, “Into the Sandbox” film program will explore the intersection of cinematography, game engines, digital environments, and processes of gamification. It will feature contributions from Alice Bucknell, Ismaël Joffroy Chandoutis, Antoine Chapon, Dina Karaman, Lawrence Lek, Benjamin Nuel, Total Refusal, Keiken & George Jasper Stone.

Publication

Meanwhile, Voices (Towards Other Institutions) will feature twenty-eight texts released weekly between May 2020 and May 2021 on pavilionrus.com, commissioned from an interdisciplinary cohort of practitioners and thinkers from Russia and beyond. It is being published by Lenz Press and designed by Lorenzo Mason Studio. Among the contributors are Ramon Amaro, Sepake Angiama, Paola Antonelli, Alessandro Bava, Daniel Blanga-Gubbay, Giovanna Borasi, Francesca Bria, Alice Bucknell, Konstantin Budarin, Ilya Budraitskis, Anna Kamyshan, Adrian Lahoud, Beatrice Leanza, Chus Martínes & Markus Reymann, Timothy Morton, Gabriella Gómez-Mont, Ivan L. Munuera, Alina Nazmeeva, Elise By Olsen, Marina Otero Verzier, Kiril Serebrennikov, Sergei Sitar, Jonas Staal, Léa-Catherine Szacka, Jenna Sutela, Pelin Tan, James Taylor-Foster, and Oxana Timofeeva.

The 2021 Venice Biennale will run from May 22 to November 21. It comes after the biennale was postponed last year, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Russian Federation Pavilion continued as an online editorial project at that time, with the physical pavilion transforming into a virtual platform for exchange between artists, architects, and thinkers.

The 2021 Russian Pavilion is commissioned by Teresa Iarocci Mavica, director of the V-A-C Foundation; curated by Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli in collaboration with the curator team (Erica Petrillo, Giacomo Ardesio, Vladimir Nadein, Liza Dorrer, and Dasha Nasonova); and managed by Anastasia Karneeva of Smart Art.