[about]
ESG consists of following programs:
Program Experimental Sound Gallery (ESG 21)
Live-concerts on Mondays, Tuesdays, Fridays and Saturdays. Electronic, noise and other non-commercial music, experimental projects of well-known musicians and young artists. Places and discussions for musicians and audience in atmosphere of underground. Curator S. Busov.
Program Cyber-Femin Club
Meetings, seminars, exhibitions and concerts for all those interested in feminism. Curator I. Aktuganova.
Project of FFC (Factory of Found Clothes) and of Cyber-Femin Club: “A Girls World”
The workshop’s purpose is to show audience what it is to be a girl. FFC is dealing in genre of performance with unique new made old clothes. N. Pershina-Jakumanskaya.
Program “NEWS”
Program was created for the purpose of introducing different kinds of subcultural artist groups to each other and to give the present underground a space and a possibility for publicity. Curators I. Aktuganova and L. Ponamarchuk.
Program “Art-Buffet”
Atmosphere and heroes of St. Petersburg underground, open discussions, videos, music, food, tee, coffee. Permanents themes: “Topography, Ethnography and Anthropology of underground”. Curators I. Aktuganova and E. Klobukova.
On Saturdays Art-Buffet works as Philosophic café
For all who are interested. It follows the traditions of European Philosophic cafés: open
discussions on different subjects. Curators A. Vlasov, and A. Mitrofanova.
Program “Art-Club”
Thematic artistic evening-party. Presentations of groups of artists and projects, which are developing contemporary culture and art in St. Petersburg. Curators I. Aktuganova and L. Ponamarchuk.
Program “Free University”
Special seminars and lectures by the leaders of today’s cultural life in St. Petersburg. Curator
Xlobystin.
Film program “For those who look up” («Для глядящих вверх»)
Consists of Russian, European and American underground films and video art of XX century.
Curator C. Vjazankin.
Art-Center “Pushkinskaya 10”
Art-Center Pushkinskaya 10 is the biggest non-commercial and non-governmental center of contemporary art in Russia. It has premises of 4500 m2 in the citycenter of St. Petersburg.
The history of St. Petersburg's Cultural Center “Pushkinskaya 10” began in 1989 when independent artists, musicians and other creative cultural workers occupied an uninhabited building on Pushkinskaya Street. They soon joined together to form the Foundation for Free Culture - a non-governmental, noncommercial, independent organization, now converted into the “Free Culture” Society (FCS). The FCS operates as a creative union, asserting its right for the artists to continue to work in this building. Now it is a world-famous center of contemporary art-the Cultural Center “Pushkinskaya 10”. In Russian cultural history, it is a unique occurrence, when creative individuals, known during Soviet times as "unofficial" artists, initiated and realized a plan of having "their own place in the Motherland."
The “Free Culture” Society promotes contemporary art as an essential part of cultural politics of a democratic state. Its creative activities take place within the basic subsections of the Cultural Center “Pushkinskaya 10”:
Museum of Nonconformist Art, Gallery 103, Gallery “NAVICULA ARTIS”, Gallery “FОTОimage”, St. Petersburg Archive and Library of Independent Art, Gallery of Experimental Sound (GES-21), Museum of “The Academy of Fine Art”, Studio of Experimental Art, John Lennon Temple of Love, Peace and Music, Music Club-Café “FISH FABRIQUE”, Center of Dance Alternative and Experimental Music “BAZA”, the art publishing houses “Petropol” and “DEAN”, the design studio Art-Press, Gallery “Bridge Over the Styx” and also over forty individual studios of artists, painters, photographers and musicians. In the art-center “Pushkinskaya 10” are working such artists as V. Andreev, L. Borisov, L. Chezhin, A. Chistyakov, L. Dolinsky, E. Figurina, B. Gadaeva, V. Gerasimenko, A. Goncharuk, B. Hazard, M. Kaverzina, S. Kovalsky, M. Koldobskaya, O. Kotelnikov, B. Koshelokhov, V. Kuznetsov (“Giper-Puper”), R. Kurnosov, A. Lotsman, G. Manzhaev, O. Maslov, Yu. Nikiforov, T. Novikov, V. Ovchinnikov, I. Olasyuk, E. Orlov, I. Orlov, D. Pilikin, A. Podobed, A. Rets, Yu. Rybakov, R. Shalamberidze, E. Tykotsky, A. Uyanaev, V. Voinov, O. Zaika, M. Isaev and P. Semchenko and such well-known musicians as B. Grebenshchikov ("Aquarium"), Yu. Shevchuk ("DDT"), V. Butusov, group DEADUSHKI" and “The Russian Engineering Theater” Group "ACHE". Works by many painters from the “Free Culture” Society are in the collections of Russian, European and American Museums.
For the last ten years Pushkinskaya 10 has consistently represented the integration of Russian contemporary art and new world culture at numerous international exhibitions and festivals: 1995 in Vienna, Austria; 1996 in New York, USA, and Copenhagen, Denmark; 1997 in Warsaw, Poland; 1998 in Weimar, Germany; 2000 in Helsinki, Finland, Eisberg, Denmark, and Lund, Sweden, 2000-2003 in Vienna-Copenhagen-Ljubljana-Helsinki-St. Petersburg.
Since1995 the “Free Culture” Society has been a member of such international organizations as "Trans Europe Halles" and "Res Artis".
In 1994 in Pushkinskaya 10 was founded Techno-Art-Center, one of the pioneer organizations in Russia, which is dealing with the new media (internet-art, media-performances, seminaries concerning culture and art).