Gypsytechno. 2017, 7 chanel HD video instalation, sound

Gypsytechno

Gypsytechno is an ongoing multimedia work engaging footage from Roma festivities around the Balkan region and my techno DJ sets.
Once during a long journey through the Balkans, I stumbled upon a rural holiday celebration.
Paradoxically, this event reminded me quite a lot of the hipster-oriented techno festival Sunwaves, which takes place annually seventy kilometers to the south of this village.
This impression of similarity led me to the idea of combining two phenomena which were seemingly opposite, but, in fact, had much in common—that of the rural festival and techno music.

What are the commonalities? In essence, everything—choreographed dancing, the scenography of the holiday, the merging of tradition and novelty, the shared principles of the participants, the spirit of being together under the sun in the summer.
And so I began combining these two phenomena, dubbing footage of Roma holidays with my techno mixes. The total virginity of these videos is fundamental. I do not do the editing. I do not introduce the narrative. These are original videos. I provide the soundtrack. The revelers do the rest.

The YouTube channel where I upload these works has gone viral. At the moment, these videos have been streamed nearly one million times.

The most important aspect of the mystical involvement of a person into the surrounding world is the establishment of connections between the actions of the subject and the situations allegedly provoked by such actions. But what form does such natural thirst for participation takes in urbanized socio-cultural conditions? Techno-culture has become our new ritual – it creates a temporary community, where atmosphere of equality reigns and peaceful coexistence of the community members during the ritual is a priori.

Nikolay Karabinovych coherently splits urban mythology by mixing techniques, uses anthropological analysis of the nature of modern feast and conducts partisan propaganda of unity in ritual.

He invites a visitor to join the ritual by exploiting the ecstatic temporality of the temporary community in the feast situation. In the familiar atmosphere of a techno-party the visitor can share the joy of dancing with the inhabitants of the Roma settlements of Macedonia, Bulgaria and Romania. Synchronous reproduction of video and audio materials has a common rhythmic base. It is the rhythm that allows the visitor to immerse in the situation of the proposed video archive and compare his usual ritual with the traditional Roma festivities and the unity of the rhythm makes this immersion softer and more amusing — as a reaction of recognition takes place.

The body of the project “Gypsytechno” is digital – the project is aimed primarily to work with the internet audience, which connects to the scheme of transfer of the dance and feast spirit. Mass ritual activities of Roma pushes the audience to reflect on the phenomenon of the feast and to create their own private parties: today we will dance techno not only in our usual community, but we`ll unite our party with the Roma feast. This combination of video and audio allows the audience also to combine simple and attractive forms of leisure – listening to techno and watching weird videos.

Physical realization of this work is possible only in the situation of the party, when the music plays loud and everyone is ready to dance, as the visitor here is an active participant in the relational project and immersing in the work is possible only in presence of unhindered reaction of audience transfer. The Closer Art Center is an ideal venue where it is possible to exhibit such work continuously, as such a unity of the art center and the main techno-mecca of the country allows to reveal the very essence of the DJ method of work as the communism of forms.

After all, contemporary art tends to abolish the phenomenon of ownership of forms, and any element can become actor of a new relationship. In accordance with the position of the French critic and curator Nicolas Bourriot, “Any DJ today works basing on the principles inherited from the historical avant-garde, whether it is a deviation, a response or supplemented ready-made, dematerialization of practice, etc.” – the project Gypsytechno can be called “twice-added ready-made” – the audio-visual part of the work itself is a product of mixing, but its subsequent exposure is impossible without labour of DJs playing in Closer, and of course the presence of club visitors.