Alceste – art festival of a new era
Alceste is an assembly of arts, a modern form of the festival with targeted events around the world that took place consequently throughout the year. The creators and co-producers of the project Egor Zvezdin and Margo Bor invited contemporary artists, musicians and actors to think over the heritage of the Baroque era. The project was shortlisted to Kuryokhin art prize as “The best festival of contemporary art” of 2018.
Baroque, its splendor, picturesqueness and multi-layering symbolize the richness of forms and the triumph of maturity, openness and willingness to have a dialogue with other cultures. Today we use digital technologies and contemporary arts, to revive interest to this majestic era. In Alceste project, the synthesis of heritage and modernity gives contemporaries a chance to percept Baroque in an easy and understandable way.
Egor Zvezdin
Digital barocco
The founders of the project introduced and highlighted the term of digital barocco. All the events of the Assembly are designed to reveal and rethink the values of the Baroque era through the prism of digitalization.
In this terms, the Alcest festival’s ultimate goal is to connect cultural eras and strengthen the cultural ties between cities and countries through well-known images presented in a new technological form.
What is the project about, who is the audience?
The project is about us – inhabitants of modern digital world, a new intelligentsia that needs a new language of art, based at cultural heritage.
Margo Bor
The audience is curious, but due to the intense workload, it is not always ready to devote much time to explore an item. This audience desperately needs a clear way of presentation the idea, adapted for their life rhythm.
Baroque, full of symbolism, multilayers, aesthetics and beauty, attracts attention. But it is too complicated for contemporary audience. We combine two systems, create a kind of time capsule to connect present and past. And this is highly important as this connections were lost due to dramatical XXth century events in our country.
2018. How was that?
In 2018, we had 3 events in St. Petersburg and one in Hamburg:
Time capsule – performance by Alceste Assembly of Arts
Education of Senses – baroque performance in a digital environment
