[11][12] The project unfolded on the territory of the largest shooting location in Europe spanning 12,000m2, named the Institute, built on the site of the former Dynamo Aquatic Stadium in Kharkiv, Ukraine.
[23][24][25] The territory of the Institute comprised laboratories, newspaper editorial office, a canteen, residential buildings, the First Department, a hairdresser's, maintenance staff premises; the employees were paid in Soviet rubles.
[31][32][33] In November 2011 the shooting was finished and the location was destroyed, the destruction itself becoming a part of the story [34] The survived items(small and large props, artifacts, costumes) have been preserved and used in other DAU contexts.
[38][39] Around 200-300 non-actors lived on-set at any one time [40] and around 400 were filmed including scientists, musicians, artists, composers, religious leaders and philosophers, as well as waitresses, cleaners, secret police officers, cooks and hairdressers.
Nobel laureate David Gross, Fields Medal winner Shing-Tung Yau, Nikita Nekrasov, Dmitry Kaledin, Andrey Losev, Samson Shatashvili, Carlo Rovelli, Eric Verlinde, James H. Fallon, and others.
Among the employees and the guests of the Institute there were Marina Abramović, Carsten Höller, Boris Mikhailov, Peter Sellars, Romeo Castellucci, Rav Steinsaltz, Peruvian shaman Guillermo Arévalo and others.
[71][72] The original idea of Ilya Khrzhanovsky to create a film about Lev Landau transformed, along the line, into a large-scale study of human nature, that continues to this day.
Khrzhanovsky created a work in the genre of culture of the 1930s–60s.”;[76] “the DAU project, therefore, is not a Gesamtkunstwerk, but a work in the Gesamtkunstwerk genre, i.e. a kind of anti-Gesamtkunstwerk”;[77] “perhaps it is more correct to call it the most ambitious experiment in the field of the theater”;[78] “the sprawling immersive-theater/film/installation project”;[79] “a striking combination of documentary and feature films, artistic fiction and the truth of life, the imaginary and the real, the past and the present”;[80] “somewhere between a behavioral experiment, a cinematic cycle and an art installation”;[81] “a total artwork”;[82] “this phenomenon can be called the territory of memory - individual, collective, historical and artistic”.
[84][85] The movies were voiced by Gérard Depardieu, Willem Dafoe, Isabelle Adjani, Fanny Ardant, Isabelle Huppert, Charlotte Rampling, Iris Berben, Hanna Schygulla, Barbara Sukowa, Katharina Thalbach, Veronica Ferres, Heike Makatsch, Toni Garrn, Lilith Stangenberg, Kathrin Angerer, Palina Rojinski, Vicky Krieps, Jella Haase, Lars Eidinger, Martin Wuttke, Blixa Bargeld, Bela B, Bill Kaulitz, Tom Schilling, Marc Hosemann, Frederick Lau, Franz Rogowski, Louis Hofmann, Sven Marquardt, Tahar Rahim, Denis Lavant, Lou de Laâge, Éric Cantona, Pascal Greggory, and Amira Casar.
[87][88] Khrzhanovsky claims that the movies are just trailers,[89][90] of what he calls the main product - Dau.Digital, an interactive online platform presenting all 700 hours of rushes where a user is navigated by the tags and can structure their own narrative.
[96][97] Thames & Hudson prepared the publication of DAU Document,[98] collecting stills from all footage, on-set photographs shot with Soviet-era Leica cameras (selected from 1.5 million images) and results of the scientific experiments carried out in the film.
Essays exploring themes such as the nature of community, power, love, altered states of consciousness and violence intersperse the visual chronological account.
The final section catalogues the 80,000 items of period clothing and props as well as the characters who populate the project, where frames from all the footage are presented in chronological order.
Fraternity (London),[106][107] and was planned with the support and participation of directors Tom Tykwer and Romeo Castellucci, artists Marina Abramović, Carsten Höller and Ai Weiwei, musicians Teodor Currentzis, Brian Eno, Robert Del Naja and Massive Attack, politicians Michael Müller, the Governing Mayor of Berlin, and Monika Grütters, the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.
[108] Upon entering the venue, visitors were to undergo a body search procedure by the security composed of the Israeli military men; on this closed territory visitors were to immerse into performances and concerts of artists including Romeo Castellucci, Carsten Höller, Massive Attack and in particular a performance of Marina Abramović and Teodor Currentzis, whose participants were to go through the washing procedure (a reference to the gas chambers under the guise of a shower in concentration camps).
[111][112] The cancellation was followed by a discussion: Fanny Ardant, Isabelle Adjani, Robert del Naja, Willem Dafoe, Gérard Depardieu, Brian Eno, Ruth Mackenzie, Kristin Scott Thomas, Hanna Schygulla, Sasha Waltz, Tom Tykwer and other artists, directors, curators, politicians, producers spoke publicly in support of the project [113] and against the opinion that it was not acceptable as Berliners ‘had had this Wall for enough time’.
[116][117] The release was hosted by Châtelet Theater and Théâtre de la Ville that both became venues for Serguey Diaghilev's Russian Seasons a century earlier,[118] as well as by Centre Pompidou that housed an installation reconstructing an apartment at the Institute and inhabited by the characters of the project.
[123][124][125][126][127][128] The connection between the project, the Paris premiere in particular, and the art of avant-garde was also created by the design of the space in the Châtelet Theater by the artists Olga Gurevich, Alexandra Smolina, Boris Shapovalov.
[136] Screenings of the films (without titles, but numbered [137]), conferences, performances, concerts, shamanic rituals were simultaneously held at the venues; it was not possible to learn about the schedule in advance - the principle of uncertainty and constant metamorphosis, offering the visitor an unexpected encounter rather than regular format and experience, became part of the concept of the project.
[143] The musical installations shaping the event's soundscape, produced by Vangelino Kurenzis and Damien Quintard, included works by Brian Eno and Robert del Naja.
[147][148][149] At the Théâtre de la Ville one could visit a reconstructed Soviet communal apartment, with performers-residents living there around the clock, and Altai shamans performing rituals; works from the Centre Pompidou were also exhibited in this space, in particular Sergey Bugaev "Afrika"'s “John Cage hands over the banner of socialist competition to Kuryokhin”.