In 2019, Culture 5.0 conference became a part of the viennacontemporary2019, having represented the best business cases, in the success of which an appeal to contemporary culture, its language and values has played an important role.
Culture 5.0 conference is the initiative supported by the Aksenov Family Foundation, aiming to explore arts and culture’s practical possibilities of enriching all areas of life from business to science.
Today, thanks to the interest of scientists, politicians and businessmen in contemporary culture, we can expect new qualitative developments and discoveries, business projects and even political decisions aimed at positive changes in the quality of human life. We are glad to promote the dialogue between culture, politics, business and technology, and we are sure that this is the first of many conferences that will take place around the world in the future.
The name Culture 5.0 is no coincidence and was created by analogy with the term "Industry 5.0" (the fifth industrial revolution), the hallmark of which is the productive interaction between humans and artificial intelligence.
Culture 5.0 is our name for future trends and directions that are already tangible and must necessarily be defined and introduced into the everyday vocabulary. These trends are influenced by processes that require an active dialogue between culture, in its traditional sense, and science, economy, society and, most importantly, technological progress. It is time to return from the virtual polyphony of views and opinions that have filled our lives with propaganda and banality, to a reality defined by society as a whole, and by the individual in particular.
Culture 5.0 conference presented projects at the interface of culture, business, politics, and it-technology. Among the events the particularly popular ones happened to be the presentation of technological approaches in the cultural field — the results of the CultTech Lab Vienna 2019, the first step towards the CultTech Hub Vienna, a cultural innovation center in Vienna. Andreas Reinhardt, Federal Minister of Transport, Innovation and Technology, and Sabine Ohler, Director of International Business at the Vienna Business Agency, expressed their interest in this project. They agreed on the support and practical steps towards creation CultTech Hub Vienna, of which RDI.Digital was an important part.
The BioBridge 2019 project presentation was a great success. It was discussed by Kirill Kayem, Vice-President of Skolkovo Foundation, Alexey Vinogradov, Head and Managing Partner of Pharmstandard Ventures, Alexey Konov, RBV Capital, Konstantin Novoselov, Nobel Laureate in Physics, member of the Biobridge 2019 expert council and Josef Penninger, Head of Biological Sciences Department at University of British Columbia, Canada. The presented projects attracted genuine interest on the part of scientific experts. That was evident by the number of questions asked after the presentations, as well as by Russian and international investors. As an outcome of the conference, there were further meetings planned for future cooperation and commercial development of BioBridge 2019 projects.
Within the conference, we held a meeting of ICPC finalists (The International Collegiate Programming Contest), a prestigious international programming competition among students. The heads of international corporations research centers were also invited to join, as well as entrepreneurs and owners of successful digital technology startups, including Zhou Hong, head of Huawei Europe research center, Jonathan Ben Shimon, a Forbes "30 under 30", founder of Matchpool, and Alfredo Silva, University of Porto president. We discussed ideas for creating an ICPC University, cooperation with finalists of the NERC (Northern Eurasia Regional Contest) programming competition, and also met with Federal Economic Chamber representatives to discuss the possibility of holding the ICPC competition in Austria.
An interesting discussion unfolded around the positioning of art and culture of post-Soviet territories in the global context. Art historian Jean-Hubert Martin emphasized the need for a new approach by the world's major museums to unexplored art territories, based on an understanding of their historical and cultural heritage, originality, and the specificity of the artistic practices development. Rita Janssen, member of the Diplomatic Advisory Board of the BOZAR Art Center in Brussels, suggested that we should forget the very habit of defining countries extending from the Baltic States to Central Asia as "post-Soviet" since rich cultural traditions in these territories had existed long before they were part of the USSR. The experts discussed ideas for collaborative projects aiming towards visibility of post-Soviet artistic spaces and their uniqueness in a global context.
The panel discussion devoted to the questions of community building on global, regional and local levels featured world famous experts, among them Charles Landry, urban development expert, author of the "Creative City" concept, Gerfried Stocker, Ars Electronica artistic director, and John McGrath, artistic director of Manchester International Festival. The experts shared stories of success and failures from their practice, touched upon the economic influence of cultural projects on the territories’ development, distribution of roles in the initiation and development of cultural projects. They also addressed issues of main success indicators definition and evaluation of the projects' effectiveness on the local level. The discussion of the participants resulted in the plans for further cooperation in creating cultural institutions and events in Russian regions using the viennacontemporary and invited experts’ experience.
Tatiana Sharshavitskaya, Deputy Chairman of Moscow Committee for Tourism, Kettner Norbert, Managing Director of Vienna Tourist Board, and Andrey Sebrant, Strategic Marketing Director of Yandex, spoke about the development of individual tourist routes. It is worth noting the high level of interaction between all participants of the event tourism market — government institutions, technology and tourism companies, and cultural events organizers. During the event, participants discussed new ideas for collaborative projects in individual tourism, as well as redundant tourism problem solving (informing about less popular and known destinations).
It is safe to say that the conference reached its main goal — to inspire the participants and the audience with new ideas, to discuss possible cooperation and find new interaction formats. Culture 5.0 conference presented a successful format, which allows finding common ground between art, culture and business, politics and science, creation of a constructive dialogue and launching innovative projects aimed at improving people's lives. The team of the Aksenov Family Foundation continues to hold similar events within companies, cities and countries around the world, and closely follows the development of projects that emerged from the 2019 conference.
