CYFEST (Cyberfest), the biggest Russian art and technology festival, created by the St. Petersburg Cyber ​​Media Art Lab, will be held for the first time in Italy, in Caserta. From June 22nd to July 1st, the Royal Palace of Caserta will host the final stage of the XI edition of this traveling Festival, which started in November 2017 in New York (USA) and had its main event in St. Petersburg (RU), with stops in Beijing (CH) and Brighton (UK).
 
Cyfest arrives in our country for the first time in 2018, "the year of Russian culture in Italy", creating a connection between the State Hermitage Museum (venue of the Cyfest in St. Petersburg) and the Royal Palace of Caserta. In the baroque rooms of the royal apartments, art and technology will merge into a unique exhibition, through interactive installations, kinetic sculptures, video projections and artificial intelligence. The exhibition is curated by Anna Frants, Elena Gubanova and Isabella Indolfi, and involve Italian and Russian artists.
 
The protagonists of the exhibition will be the artists Anna Frants, Donato Piccolo, Alexandra Dementieva, Licia Galizia and Michelangelo Lupone, Elena Gubanova and Ivan Govorkov, Franz Cerami, Daniele Spanò, Aleksey Grachev and Sergey Komarov, Maurizio Chiantone.
 
In line with the concept of Cyfest 2017-2018, "Weather Forecast: Digital Cloudiness", the Caserta exhibition invites artists to reflect on the influence of technology on life today. Man has always tried to control and predict the weather conditions, unpredictable by nature, a metaphor of the future. However, in the modern era, Man has modified, through irresponsible behavior, even the planetary climate. At the same time digital is a ubiquitous cloud that permeates and modifies, as if wearing Kantian lenses, all aspects of social life: from work, to communication, to personal relationships, to intimate ones. We live in parallel worlds, in "private clouds", the "Public cloud", "community clouds" and "hybrid clouds". The only one who uses the digital consciously, bending it to his needs and answering his own questions, is the artist, who, through new technologies, tries to re-create, recover and arouse, what is most profoundly human: doubt, feeling and emotion.
 
The CYFEST Festival is organized annually by Cyland Media Art Lab, a non-profit organization founded in 2007, based in St. Petersburg and New York, which aims to promote the interaction between new forms of art and the most advanced technologies. In 11 years of activity, CYFEST has created connections and cultural exchanges between Russia and the rest of the world, hosting 236 artists and 37 curators from USA, Germany, Japan, Canada, Argentina, Brazil, Finland, Italy, the Philippines and organizing exhibitions in Moscow, New York, Bogotá, Mexico City, London, Berlin, Tokyo and in many other cities all over the world. Among the prestigious partners of the Cyfest are The State Hermitage Museum, the Pratt Institute, Leonardo/ISAST and the NCCA of St. Petersburg.
 
"This year Cyfest decided to invest in the Campania region, shining a light on one of the landmarks of Neapolitan culture: the Royal Palace of Caserta. In order to make this event an opportunity of growth for all, we are building a vast network of partners from Caserta through the major cultural institutions of Naples, including Regione Campania, MADRE, Città della Scienza and Fondazione Banco Napoli” explains curator Isabella Indolfi.
 
The event is organized with the contribution of OneMarketData; under the patronage of the Regione Campania, MADRE Museum, Fondazione Idis - Città della Scienza, Fondazione Banco di Napoli; in network with Seminaria Festival, Academy of Fine Arts of Naples, 012 Factory, Dynamic Museum of Technology Adriano Olivetti of Caserta.