2024, GES-2 House of Culture
Curators: Katerina Chuchalina, Anna Ilchenko, Artem Timonov
Authors: Lucas Bambozzi, Li Binyuan, Zhenya Chaika, Filipa César, Camila Freitas, Zhenya Gavrilov, Gentle Women Group (Alexandra Artamonova and Evgenia Lapteva), Olga Grotova, Patricio Guzmán, Haris Epaminonda, Ben Rivers, Deborah Stratman, Anocha Suwichakornpong, Ana Vaz, Zhao Liang, Yorgos Zois

Yosso: Permafrost:
Authors: Archetype Group (Alexei Abramov, Lyudmila Fedorova, Natalia Khristoforova, Nadezhda Komissarova, Sofia Makarova, Alexandra Neustroeva, Ustinya Prokopyeva, Anna Savvina, Sargylana Skryabina, Elena Vasilieva), Alina Fedotova, Irina Filatova, Viktor Gaiman, Roman Grigoriev, Grigory Kabalov, Maia Kust, Alfred Mayevich, Sergei Novikov, Boris Osipov, Viktor Shelepen, Maxim Sher, Dmitry Sivtsev (Suorun Omollon), Egor Sleptsov, Mikhail Starostin, Ien Suhr, Nina Velmina, Klaus Vetter
Curators: Laboratory of Geocultural Research (Elena Vasilieva, Dmitry Zamyatin) with the participation of the Arctic Institute of Culture and Arts and the Institute for Humanities and Indigenous Studies of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences

Architect: Sasha Kim
Light: Ksenia Kosaya
Producers: Sasha Chistova, Maria Kalinina, Yana Romashkina
Technical production: Andrei Belov, Artem Kanifatov, Artem Marenkov, Konstantin Petruk
Art logistics and registration: Daria Krivtsova, Ekaterina Narkizova
Accessibility and inclusion curators: Vlad Kolesnikov, Vera Zamyslova
Media specialist: Anna Kolpakova
Photographer: Daniel Annenkov
Сommissioned and produced by GES-2 House of Culture

The “Similarity Index” is a major international exhibition that reflects on Earth and its soil from personal, scientific and environmental perspectives. Its design reinvents established exhibition practice and follows the idea of upcycling, using materials from the previous show as a core for all new architectural elements.

The upcycling approach to design coexists with technologically advanced works of art. As they are mainly in video format, the audience is offered a special device with headphones to dive into visual sequence. To emphasize the intimacy of this interaction, the projection screens are positioned at different angles and dispersed in a seamless black gallery space. Avoiding any intersection with each other or with the path of viewer's gaze, the projects form a multilayered abstract composition.

Once the visitors enter an improvised cinema zone, the individual exhibition experience is switched to a collective one. The cinema shows films on schedule and without headphones, allowing the viewers to share both the artwork and the actual space. The cinema is marked by a fireproof silica fabric, though its screen is used as a partition and seen from all sides in line with other pieces of video art. Different parts of exhibition are also linked by commonly used monoblock chairs placed in various gallery zones.

The installation “Yosso: Permafrost” by Yakut artists and curators required a unique architectural solution. The curatorial idea conceptualizes the difference between zero, minus and plus, or in other words, the levels of Earth’s surface, lakes and swelling hillocks. This difference is recreated in the multilevel podium and its satellites in the shape of an archaeological excavation contour.