The international art project "Art on Site" that started in April 2008, is running in five Russian cities – Yekaterinburg, Kaliningrad, Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod and St. Petersburg. As part of the project, artists from Germany create new works of art stimulated by a visit to a new city and environment. The realization of the whole program takes 19 months. The project "Art on Site" was initiated by the Goethe-Institut Moscow and the National Centre for Contemporary Arts and is realized with the assistance of the European Union.
The choice of participants was carried out by a curator group from branches of the NCCA: Alisa Prudnikova, Irina Chesnokova, Karina Karaeva, Evgeniya Vdovichenko and Anna Matveeva – and by the coordinator of the program, Irina Gorlova, in the course of their trip to Germany as well as a consultation with German experts in the sphere of actual art. In the autumn of 2008, artistic residences were organized for the invited artists that came to Russia in order to get to know the receiving city, its citizens and cultural environment. On conceiving historical and current cultural peculiarities of the cities and in cooperation with artistic environments of the cities, the guests from Germany are working out and realizing projects that reflect the specificity of a particular place. Resulting works are going to be presented in every receiving city in spring and summer 2009.
The activities of the German artists in the course of two business visits also include meetings with interested Russian members of the public (young artists, students, journalists and connoisseurs of art). The topics of the meetings, workshops and lectures are: personal artistic experience, the use of modern technologies for creation of artistic objects and management in the sphere of culture.
The final stage of the project "Art on Site" in October 2009 is a joint exhibition and a symposium in Moscow. The issue of a catalogue with the documentation gathered in the course of the project, and summary theoretical articles of curators and artists, is planned for the final autumn presentation.
