Educational program NUR x Dzen

Every year there are thousands of applications, and only a fraction of them make it into the programme. For the first time, curators and organisers of renowned festivals and art events speak openly about this: how the selection process works, what they are looking for, and why a good piece of work is sometimes not enough.

Physics does not explain beauty; it reveals it. Alexander Smykov works in a field of science where form and function are inseparable, and he knows: ugly planes don’t fly. A conversation about how scientists and artists seek the same thing, just using different methods.

Most artists control every element of their work. Daria Fedorova handed control over to a living organism and built a career, a brand and her own artistic language on this. A lecture on how a style that cannot be copied is born from the most unexpected material.

There was no plan, no strategy, no right moment. There was just the next step. Nijat Huseynov went from his first characters to collaborations with brands without a roadmap, and it is precisely this logic of movement that he will discuss.

SETAP, Radugadesign, KBDYUK — three teams with different backgrounds working in the same field. A discussion on how one’s career path shapes their language, and what multimedia must become to move forward.

Millions saw their work at the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony. But for THE SWAY, scale has never been the goal, only a tool. A talk by the artist about light as sculpture and how the environment changes a person’s perception within it.

There are things an artist learns too late: when they’ve already spent time, money and energy on something that didn’t work. Igor Demidov has walked this path in business and distilled from it principles that work equally well on both sides of the divide between commerce and creativity. Not advice, but real rules.

Ableton appeared in 2001. Baroque — in the 17th century. Yura Ginzburg is convinced that the distance between them is smaller than it seems, and is ready to prove it live. A lecture-show about how time works in music and why structure never goes out of fashion.

At a certain point, Dmitry Volkostrelov cleared everything superfluous from the stage and discovered that it was precisely then that the space came to life. A lecture on the principle of subtraction: how to work with what remains when you stop adding.

Major brands have long since ceased to be mere advertisers — they build cultural platforms, launch festivals and collaborate with artists. But they rarely talk about how they make these decisions internally and what they are actually looking for in partners. Discussion moderator and leading expert on sponsorship integration Yuri Subbotin asks representatives from T2, Zen and T-Bank questions about money, meaning and where the line between them lies.

Most collaborations between a brand and an artist end in a compromise where both lose out. Evgeniya Afanasyeva from koshta.collective knows how to prevent this — and has built an entire practice on this knowledge. The studio has come a long way from its first digital projects to large-scale art installations that have been seen by the whole world. How do you structure projects so that the brand gets what it wants and the artist doesn’t lose themselves? A talk on the mechanics of a partnership in which art remains art.

Maria Poudan started out with fashion films — and this isn’t just a backstory, but a method. Her ability to perceive space through visual culture, fashion and media led her to the architecture of the future: parametric structures, biodesign and digital worlds. House on Mars isn’t just the name of the studio; it’s literally about how her practice works: you take an idea that seems unrealistic and pursue it through disciplines, projects and the people you invite along the way. A lecture on how fantasy becomes strategy — and why multidisciplinarity is not a weakness, but the only way to build what did not exist before.

The composer hears music. The robot carries out a command. Between these two logics, Dmitry Masaidov and Nikolay Popov are searching for something that does not fit into either of them. A conversation about inventing a common language where no languages existed before.