Organizers

National Centre for Contemporary Art (NCCA)

The National Center for Contemporary Art (NCCA) is a museum, exhibition and research organization which aims its efforts at the development of contemporary Russian art within the context of the global art process, at the creation and implementation of programs and projects in the sphere of contemporary art, architecture and design both in this country, and beyond its borders.

The National Center for Contemporary Art was created in Moscow in 1992, at the moment when contemporary art was only acquiring the basis for its normal existence and development in Russia. The Center provided an important and crucial structure consolidating the activities of masters of contemporary art, stimulating their creative efforts. The activity of NCCA has been essential in the processes of the reorganization of the artistic life in Russia during the 1990s. It was important both for Moscow, where the Center was based then, and for many regions of the country where NCCA efforts initiated the implementation of art projects in the sphere of contemporary art triggering the processes of its development there.

Today, when the efforts of the previous years are bringing fruit, the National Center for Contemporary Art continues its active work aimed at the development and popularization of the Russian contemporary art and its integration in the global art context. At present NCCA is a network institution with its branches in major cultural centers of Russia, such as St. Petersburg, Nizhnii Novgorod, Yekaterinburg and Kaliningrad.

The activities of the National Center of Contemporary Art follow several basic lines:

*popularization and support of contemporary Russian art;

*various forms of curator work helping realize exhibition and audiovisual projects, installations, performances, hold video and movie presentations, creative sessions;

*analytical and information research activity in the sphere of contemporary art;

*educational activities – lectures, seminars, master classes;

*work to form the collection of contemporary art, including Russian and foreign art.

These basic lines of activity correspond with a number of long-term programs developed by the Center staff. Every program features the implementation of individual projects initiated both by the experts of the Center, and by other curators, researches, masters of contemporary art with the support and immediate participation of creative and technological subdivisions of NCCA.

Today NCCA is a leading Russian state institution specializing in the issues of contemporary art. The activity of the Center evolves in close cooperation with artists and independent experts in the sphere of contemporary art, art culture and various organizations, such as museums, research institutions, public organizations, both in Russia, and abroad.

The National Center for Contemporary Art works under the auspices and with the constant support of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation and The Federal Agency for Culture and Cinematography.

Ural Branch National Centre for Contemporary Art (UB NCCA)

Ural branch of the National Center for Contemporary Arts is a museum and exhibition center and a research organization. Established in 1999 the EbNCCA states its mission as introduction and dissemination of contemporary art in public urban spaces.

Since 2005 the Center's team has implemented several big cultural projects, such as premier-retrospective of Ulay "Performing light", the public-art festival "Stolpotvorenie", international exhibition project "IN TRANSITION RUSSIA", two consecutive annual festival-laboratories "Art-Factory", and others.

The Center has been a basis for the publication of a quarterly magazine "for producers and consumers of contemporary art" - "ZAART", which provided a review of the cultural activity in the Urals in its connection to global art. The magazine has become a printed archive of the Ural art of the 2000s. Today "ZAART" is converted into a net-resource, which presents regional cultural projects in modern Russia, particularly of a "non-Moscow" locations. The EbNCCA also manages the collection of Ural-Siberian video-art.

In 2008 the EbNCCA initiated a cultural program "Ural factories: industry of meanings". The program provides unprecedented interaction between contemporary art and factories and creatively rethinks the phenomena and industrial reality in urban environment. Ural Industrial biennial became the next step of this program.