ST. PETERSBURG.- After many months of planning MANIFESTA 10 finally opened to the public on Saturday, 28 June 2014, in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Some considered the choice of St. Petersburg controversial, however Manifesta believes that engaging with Russia at this time is important and necessary. Over the coming 125 days, MANIFESTA 10 will present the art of our times, featuring some of the world’s most renowned contemporary artists, across several venues in the Hermitage Museum and at locations within the city of St. Petersburg. More than 500,000 people are expected to attend.

MANIFESTA 10 includes newly commissioned works for various public spaces throughout the city of St. Petersburg. Participating artists include Pavel Braila (Moldova/Germany), Lado Darakhvelidze (Georgia/Netherlands), and Alevtina Kakhidze (Ukraine). MANIFESTA 10 critically responds to the current social- political circumstances, its conflicts and complexities in Russia and Ukraine. A series of time-based projects will intervene in the city of St. Petersburg and its cultural, historical, and social complexity with context-responsive commissions and debates, events, pop-up shows, and discursive platforms as an integral part of the exhibition. The public program is curated by Joanna Warsza.

MANIFESTA 10 features Unlooped—Kino: a film program devised by Nathalie Hoyos and Rainald Schumacher from Office for Art (Berlin) offering a survey of time-based media, film, and video by contemporary artists. From performative works of the 1960s and visual storytelling to digital animation, the program positions artists working in time-based media in their own social and political contexts. The films are taken from private and public collections: Bilge & Haro Cumbusyan Collection, Zürich; Goetz Collection, Munich; Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Collection, Torino; Julia Stoschek Collection, Düsseldorf; Tansa Mermerci Eksioglu Collection, Istanbul; Garage Center for Contemporary Culture, Moscow; Videoforum at Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlin. This year’s parallel program includes more than 250 artists, mainly Russian or from countries in Eastern Europe, at sites across St. Petersburg.

Since autumn 2013, the education program devised by Sepake Angiama has been exploring the social framework of spaces where the people of St. Petersburg come together to learn through initiating a program of MANIFESTA 10 Dialogues in universities and Art Laboratory in schools. Participating St. Petersburg-based artists have included Pavel Brat, Alexander Efremov, Olga Jitlina and Evgenia Golant. The program continues with ‘Please Mine the Gap,’ a Summer School developed in partnership with the State St. Petersburg University Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences (Smolny College) and the Zürich University of the Arts (ZHdK) which will explore artistic enquiry and engagement of space led by experimental filmmaker, curator and writer Maria Godovannaya. More than 2,000 people have participated in the pre-Biennial program and a further 10,000 students have already pre- booked for programs to take place during MANIFESTA 10.

Extending beyond the State Hermitage Museum, the Manifesta Dacha is a mobile platform designed by Dutch Bureau Ira Koers and Studio Roelof Mulder. The Manifesta Dacha program includes Cyland Media Art Lab, Yuri Shtapakov and Peter Berezin, who will trigger conversations with the public through interventions, workshops and discussions in the city of St. Petersburg.