Overview
Pobegi is an independent horizontally self-organized contemporary art festival held annually in a forest outside Moscow. Its eighth edition, "Slyot", opened with a virtual program held in VRChat – a social VR platform – before moving to the physical forest location. Two works were created specifically for this virtual environment, exploring what it means to inhabit, restrict, and navigate digital space.
Context: Pobegi Festival "Slyot", VRChat, August 22–24, 2025. Solo works.
Pobegi is an independent horizontally self-organized contemporary art festival held annually in a forest outside Moscow. Its eighth edition, "Slyot", opened with a virtual program held in VRChat – a social VR platform – before moving to the physical forest location. Two works were created specifically for this virtual environment, exploring what it means to inhabit, restrict, and navigate digital space.
Context: Pobegi Festival "Slyot", VRChat, August 22–24, 2025. Solo works.
Place-verse
3D object, VRChat installation
A VRChat installation examining how digital spaces simulate presence and absence – questioning what it means to "inhabit" a place that exists only as code and perception. Stools scattered across the emptiness of VRChat provide a point of fixation yet fail to establish a "place" in the conventional sense. To sit means both to settle and to remain within an anonymous non-encounter. The avatar's presence turns emptiness into a quotation of place, though never into an authentic one.
A VRChat installation examining how digital spaces simulate presence and absence – questioning what it means to "inhabit" a place that exists only as code and perception. Stools scattered across the emptiness of VRChat provide a point of fixation yet fail to establish a "place" in the conventional sense. To sit means both to settle and to remain within an anonymous non-encounter. The avatar's presence turns emptiness into a quotation of place, though never into an authentic one.
No Entry
3D object, VRChat installation
A reproduction of a familiar "No Entry" sign placed before an impassable arch. The participant is compelled to test the boundary through the bodily act of the avatar: leaning, jumping, attempting to pass through. The restriction becomes less an obstacle than an experiment in reality – revealing the peculiar nature of VR, where laws operate not out of necessity but by convention, and any limit exists only insofar as it is acknowledged.
A reproduction of a familiar "No Entry" sign placed before an impassable arch. The participant is compelled to test the boundary through the bodily act of the avatar: leaning, jumping, attempting to pass through. The restriction becomes less an obstacle than an experiment in reality – revealing the peculiar nature of VR, where laws operate not out of necessity but by convention, and any limit exists only insofar as it is acknowledged.
Framework
Both works engage with the question of what virtual space actually is – not as a technical environment but as an ontological one. Place-verse draws on Marc Augé's concept of non-places: spaces devoid of cultural or historical anchoring, where presence is possible but belonging is not. No Entry approaches the same question from the opposite direction – not through the absence of place, but through the performance of its rules. Together, the works ask: what does a body do in a space that was never built for bodies?
Both works engage with the question of what virtual space actually is – not as a technical environment but as an ontological one. Place-verse draws on Marc Augé's concept of non-places: spaces devoid of cultural or historical anchoring, where presence is possible but belonging is not. No Entry approaches the same question from the opposite direction – not through the absence of place, but through the performance of its rules. Together, the works ask: what does a body do in a space that was never built for bodies?
Process
The 3D models were sourced from free online asset libraries and placed in the VRChat world by the world's administrator according to my spatial directions. The virtual festival world itself was built and maintained by the Pobegi team.
The three-day virtual program extended well beyond the visual installations – including lectures, VR performances, and live music sets, all taking place inside the shared virtual space. During the festival I also volunteered as a streamer – broadcasting the program live from my avatar for those who could not enter VRChat directly.
The three-day virtual program extended well beyond the visual installations – including lectures, VR performances, and live music sets, all taking place inside the shared virtual space. During the festival I also volunteered as a streamer – broadcasting the program live from my avatar for those who could not enter VRChat directly.
