E.D.E.N. (Emulated Digital Experience of Nature) is an immersive audiovisual installation conceived as a fictitious simulator from an unspecified future: designed to recreate the experience of nature beyond its disappearance. AI-generated landscapes unfold as a continuous, painterly environment through which visitors move. The system gradually loses stability: human presence introduces subtle shifts, while movement intensifies the process — the image dissolves, fragments, and drifts toward abstraction. Across cultures, the idea of a harmonious natural world persists as a foundational image. Here, it reappears as a simulated environment that cannot fully sustain itself. Interaction becomes a quiet but persistent force, exposing the fragility of what appears whole. — Shown at Todays Art Festival, The Hague, 2019.

Anima Apis is an interactive audiovisual installation currently in production. A swarm of digital bees inhabits a hive-like structure enclosed within a larger transparent cube. Drawn toward the visitor, the bees dissolve on contact with an electric grid that separates the human from what approaches it. A synthetic soundscape attempts to reconstruct the hum of a living hive. Human presence is not neutral here: the system is conceived to respond to it, and as visitors come closer, the disappearance accelerates. Eventually, the system enters a terminal phase in which mechanical bees remain, no longer responsive to human presence. Unlike the swarm that preceded them, they neither seek nor respond to the visitor. The system survives. The life within it does not. What remains is not preservation, but substitution. Credits Concept & artistic direction — Dasha Shkel Audiovisual development — Elizabeth Ros, Danil Matvienko (Konstruktor)

The Last Report. From Antarctica With Love is a large-scale audiovisual installation centered around a luminous, faceted iceberg form. Using projection mapping, the object becomes a temporal interface in which vast geological and historical processes unfold. Within a compressed time frame, the viewer witnesses cycles of growth, transformation, and disappearance: from organic landscapes to technological structures and back to abstraction. The installation constructs a looping system in which time appears as a continuous process of accumulation and erasure. The iceberg becomes both a container and a surface of projection, holding traces of environments, civilizations, and their transformation. An additional audio layer is accessed through a local Wi-Fi radio stream, allowing visitors to listen individually to a sound composition based on recordings of melting ice from the Neva River. This extends the installation beyond the visible, introducing a more intimate, embodied dimension of the work. Rather than illustrating a specific history, the work reflects on the instability of what appears permanent, revealing planetary time as a shifting, cyclical condition. — Shown at ArtAntarctica, Manege Central Exhibition Hall, St. Petersburg, 2020–2021.

HOPE is a public light installation created for the Museum Line programme at Manege Central Exhibition Hall and shown outdoors from 24 December 2020 to 19 January 2021. Composed of simple geometric forms and intersecting lines, the work unfolds as a system of closed trajectories. Within this structure, a single continuous line gradually emerges, cutting across the composition without belonging to it. The work places this open trajectory against a structure of repetition and enclosure. — Light installation · Museum Line, Manege Central Exhibition Hall, St. Petersburg, 2020–2021

Defenseless Masks is a project at the intersection of art and wearable form. Developed in response to the conditions of restricted contact, the work reconsiders the mask not as protection, but as a site of vulnerability. Placed over the lips rather than the face, the object shifts the function of concealment into a gesture of exposure. It interrupts speech while intensifying perception. Balancing between ornament and constraint, the masks operate as fragile interfaces between the body and its environment. In this video the object is tested in movement. — Wearable objects and video · 2022 Concept and performance — Dasha Shkel Camera — Anthony Shirokikh Music — Stas Glazov

Defenseless Masks A/V was a one-night audiovisual event built around the mask objects: live AV and DJ sets, a fashion show and a photo exhibition in a former gas holder. The masks moved from the object to the body and the stage — worn, performed, photographed. What had been a fragile interface between the body and its environment became a public one. — Audiovisual performance and fashion show · Lumiere Hall, St. Petersburg, 2022 Concept, curation, production and performance — Dasha Shkel A/V live: Stas Glazov (Berlin), Tonoptik Fashion: SATINN, IULIASKU Vocal: Daria Chubakova DJs: Riad, Shinanay Freestyle: Samo Video: Lapa Vlad

The Great Black is a long-term socio-cultural project that explores how the appearance of a single object can transform a familiar environment. Initiated in 2012 and developed across more than ten countries, the project began as a performative interaction with a fictional character and gradually evolved into an open-ended experiment. Filming takes place in various locations, where the emergence of The Great Black disrupts the usual flow of reality. The presence of the figure alters both the environment and the perception of those who encounter it. For the person inside the black form, identity becomes unstable: age, gender, and appearance lose their relevance. The figure exists beyond fixed characteristics, functioning as a shifting point within each situation. The Great Black operates as both presence and absence. It absorbs and erases visual distinctions, creating a space where perception is no longer anchored in familiar categories.

The Great Black is a project by Dasha Shkel exploring how the appearance of a single form can transform a familiar environment. This audiovisual performance, created in 2017, brings together moving image, sound, and spatial intervention. THE GREAT BLACK 05/18/17 is a collaborative work combining live music, visual systems, and performative presence. Credits Photo/video: Dasha Shkel Visuals: Pavel Zmunchila, Polina Syrovyatkina Fashion: ANTISTAR (London) Live music: Roma Bromich Installations: Sergey Rublev Camera: Anthony Shirokikh