Turandot 2070, Orchid Avatar
AES+F are an artist group working at the intersection of traditional media and digital technologies. They define their practice as a kind of ""social psychoanalysis"" through which they reveal and explore the values, vices, and conflicts of contemporary global culture. First formed as AES Group in 1987 by Arzamasova, Evzovich, and Svyatsky, the collective became AES+F when Fridkes joined in 1995. They achieved worldwide recognition and acclaim for their work Last Riot (2007) in the Russian Pavilion at the 52nd Biennale di Venezia in 2007 — the first in a trio of large-scale, multichannel video installations that have come to define the AES+F aesthetic. The artist group has worked in set design for theatre and opera, for instance, they created the set for the reinterpretation of Sarah Kane's famous play 4:48 Psychosis and a reimagined Turandot together with the Italian opera director Fabio Cherstich. Works by AES+F have been showcased in signature festivals and biennials around the world. Also their work was featured in influential new media events such as ARS Electronica (Linz), Mediacity Seoul, and Video Zone (Tel Aviv). The group had more than 100 solo exhibitions in addition to group exhibitions in key art institutions around the world: the ZKM (Karlsruhe), Moderna Museet (Stockholm), Tate Britain (London), Centre Pompidou (Paris), Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza (Madrid), Today Art Museum (Beijing), Mori Art Museum (Tokyo), The State Russian Museum (St. Petersburg), Garage Museum of Contemporary Art (Moscow), and others. Their artworks are in possession of the world's principal collections of contemporary art, such as Moderna Museet (Stockholm), MOCAK (Kraków), Sammlung Goetz (Munich), ZKM (Karlsruhe), The State Tretyakov Gallery (Moscow), Art Gallery of South Australia (Adelaide), Centre de Arte dos de Mayo (Madrid), the Louis Vuitton Foundation (Paris), and more. AES+F received multiple awards and prizes over the years for the project Allegoria Sacra, including Sergey Kuryokhin Award 2011, Pino Pascali Prize 2015 (18th Edition), and others.
The premiere of the opera Turandot took place in January 2019 in the Teatro Massimo. Members of the Russian art group AES+F and director Fabio Cherstich were coauthors and scene-designers. The time of the three-act opera, which lasts three hours, is set in the future. Beijing had become the capital of a world empire by 2070 and Princess Turandot had established a radical techno-feminist matriarchy all over the country. A foreign prince, who came to win her heart, is forced to act in sublimity of a grandiose futuristic metropolis that combines traditional Chinese motives with monstrous man-made structures and biomorphic formations. An important role in the plot was taken by the choir, which appears as a frightened and deceived mass, in its adoration of the princess reaching the point of idolatry. The video which offered for purchase is based on the opera Turandot.
