No Return · Anton Ketov, Jana Safronova, Danila Safronov

The work

No Return takes place in a distant future in which humanity has survived wars, epidemics and conflict by retreating into protected cities maintained by a machine civilization. Humans are preserved as a species, but they are no longer the masters of the world they inhabit.

One place remains outside this order: Berlin. No one knows why it has been preserved — by another civilization, by the planet itself, or simply by accident. People with nowhere else to go begin trying to reach it.

The project combines performance with an improvised exhibition of artifacts from the lost human world. Audience members are invited to bring an object carrying memory, add it to the temporary collection and take another object away.

No Return imagines migration after the end of human sovereignty: a movement toward a city that survives as both refuge and mystery, while fragments of the old world continue to circulate from one person to another.

The festival

Emigration to the Future was an interdisciplinary festival that took place in Berlin-Wedding, 7–9 August 2026, bringing together artists, performers and researchers from seven countries working across performance, installation, video, sound and public intervention. Curated by Vsevolod Lisovsky and Anton Polski (MAKE / Citizen Make), across venues including exBrache, Chto Delat and public space around Wedding.

emigrationtothefuture.org · Telegram: @emigrationtothefuture

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