Petersburg 2103 is an exhibition about the past, present, and future of St. Petersburg. We will look at the city like a project and above all want to iterate that the present moment is not the end, but a singular stage of the city’s development. St. Petersburg is a megalopolis where one reflects on the past much more often than the future. We rarely raise questions about what future Petersburgians will say about what we are creating now.

The exhibition tells the story of the construction of St. Petersburg. In the plans we try to see the logic and the founding motives of the city’s development in each period. Why did Catherine the Great want to bring in the city’s borders when Alexander I wanted to expand them? Could the construction of a surface-level metro at the beginning of the last century have prevented the revolution?

Fields of residential complexes, so-called “anthills”, are associated with today. Photographer Alexander Gronsky and sound-artist Sergei Filatov explore the nature of these complexes, asking the question: is what seems to be our reality physical, virtual? About the future, one can only hypothesize.

On the second floor of Manege’s exhibition hall, seven artists and architects will try to do just that. Among them are the Dutch laboratory of cities of the future The Why Factory (T?F), French directors Ila Beka and Louise Lemoine, architect Sergei Tchoban, architectural bureau COSMOS, and Russian artistic groups Curiosity Media Lab, 404.Zero, and Stain. Will Petersburg change into an amazing city of skyscrapers or will only virtual museums of everyday life remain?

A happy city is always a compromise between momentary, personal interests and strategy. Developers from ITMO University offer visitors to the exhibition a chance to immerse themselves in a large-scale, interactive game with robots, where each visitor can become a developer and try their hand at building their own ideal city from scratch.

The exhibition in numbers:

–26 days
–5000 square meters
–7 international projects
–20 events
–1 city

Organizers of Petersburg 2103 are ITMO University, Manege Central Exhibition Hall, and Petersburg city government.