Programme

The projects of the House of Culture are based on the principle of interdisciplinarity: at GES-2, a multitude of artistic practices—art, cinema, theatre, music, dance—intersect and interact. Our public programmes include lectures, meetings, master classes, and other events for adults and children alike.

The GES-2 exhibition programme features projects that connect diverse and varied subjects, phenomena, and authors.

Our exhibitions aim not just to display new works, but to forge meaningful connections between classical and contemporary art, between cultures of different parts of the world and Russia, and between different disciplines and fields of knowledge.

For most of our exhibitions, we especially commission works that offer new interpretations of old themes and develop the artistic language of the present day.

A constant search for new methods of dialogue, architectural forms, and spatial solutions is another important element in the development of the exhibition programme. We see transcending the boundaries between exhibition and public art, theatrical performance and concert as a path to expanding customary forms of experiencing and displaying art.

Our theatre programme is based on the uniqueness of our space and is a constant study of the methods of interaction between “living” performance art and architecture.

The fundamental principle here is openness.

Performances at GES-2 do not compete with the classical drama theatre. We are a space for modern art, and the task of our theatre programme is to create an experimental field for fusing different types of art with one another.

The primary approach of the theatre programme is the “performance installation” genre or format. Here, the contemporary art world’s installation format becomes the backdrop for productions and performances. Among the works that experimented with this approach in 2023 were Insectopedia and 52 Hz.

Our dance programme brings together leading contemporary producers and young choreographers from different regions of Russia and the world, in various new and traditional fields.

Dance is a living performance art that is impossible without the presence and attention of viewers. We approach each of our projects, whether it be a single performance or a major festival, as a basis on which to create a community here and now.

Dance usually takes place in GES-2’s open, public spaces —the Prospekt, the Central Platform. Performances become a situations in which viewers can observe, get involved, express their feelings about what they are seeing, and that they can also return to: many events are part of a series or are repeated fairly regularly.

We are interested in dance that responds to time, that situates itself in a space as a large and living environment, that can reveal itself to viewers in search of new things, in its fragility and persistent belief in the value of empathy and human connections.

The House of Culture’s musical programme includes events taking place on the Prospekt, the Playhouse and other spaces at GES-2.

What can the concert of today be like? In the era of mixed genres, the stage seems to be the last bastion of “pure music.” Is this always so, and where do the boundaries lie today dividing the concert from musical theatre or performance? To answer these questions, the GES-2 musical programme addresses the most varied trends and forms, balancing on the line between the old and new, the secular and spiritual, and individual and collective experience.

The programme is designed for the widest possible audience, and features world premieres of works commissioned by GES-2, as well as concerts that place pieces by composers of the past in a contemporary music context.

GES-2: Music features representatives of the new generation of the Russian and foreign scene, composers and performers who contemplate what the music that is written and performed today may be like, and how it combines tradition and modernity.

Key events of the 2024 programme will be world premieres of new works by Vladimir Rannev, Ivan Bushuev and Valery Voronov, and the Russian premieres of works by Louis Andriessen, Yannis Kyriakides, Johannes Kreidler and Hans Zender, and also concerts to mark the anniversaries of Anton Bruckner and Mikhail Glinka.

The cinema programme is divided into two main sections.

The first section features daily screenings of the most interesting and unusual films of Russian release. At the Playhouse, you can watch new works by renowned auteurs, and original experiments in popular and documentary genres.

The second section, GES-2 Kino, features special curator programmes that broaden viewers’ understanding of cinematography, focusing on specific visionary directors who deserve greater attention and on overlooked phenomena and elements of cinematic language. In these thematic cycles, which partially enter into dialogue with exhibitions and other events in the GES-2 public programme, the familiar canon of cinema history is reconsidered through the juxtaposition of films from different eras and countries: classical and modern, works by well-known directors and films by independent and avant-garde artists.

In 2024, the GES-2 Kino special programmes will include “To the South Through the Soviet East,” which will focus on the Tashkent Festival of African, Asian and Latin American countries, which changed the landscape of world cinema in the 1960s–1980s . “Home Album” will consider consider directors who included events and moments from their personal lives in their films , while the “A Brief Course of Ex-Centric Life” programme will enable the viewers to find out what Jean-Luc Godard and Georgiy Daneliya have in common.