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.