SKIF 12 - St Petersburg’s traditional avant-guard music festival

We would like to announce that the SKIF-Festival takes place from April 24-27 2008 at the Modern Art Center St Petersburg (located in a former Soviet-style cinema complex Theatre Priboy on Sredniy Prospect 93 of the Vasilevsky Island).

SKIF stands for Sergey Kuryokhin International Festival, it is dedicated to the memory of Sergey Kuryokhin the internationally acclaimed Russian composer, musician, performer, and an influential figure in Russian rock, jazz and experimental music. In 1991 he caused a veritable media uproar with his appearance on the Russian TV show “5th Wheel”. It was one of his semi-improvised acts of performance art, broadcast live: he proved that anything was possible to prove, even that “Lenin was a mushroom”. According to the English Wikipedia, he thereby created one of the first popular media viruses in the Russian media. For an English-subtitled version of this legendary piece of “Russia in the 90s history” visit overstream.net (a useful video posting service which allows you to subtitle in any language the posted videos online).

Kuryokhin’s media virus thesis: Lenin is a Mushroom
Photo via: ru.wikipedia.org

After Kuryokhin’s death in 1996 his wife established the Foundation and Festival to continue to promote contemporary music and arts in and from Russia. SKIF-1 and SKIF-2 were held in 1997 and 1998 in New York City, SKIF-3 moved to Kuryokhin’s home town St Petersburg where it is held since then.

The concept of the Festival is derived from Sergey Kuryokhin’s legendary project “Pop-Mechanika” which gathered on stage artists from the most varied backgrounds: musicians of Rock, Jazz, Classical music, Folk as well as poets, dancers, clowns and even animals. One can get an impression of the “Pop-Mechanika” spirit here.

Sergey Kuryokhin. Photo via http://video.recovered.info/

In his project Sergey Kuryokhin accepted no artistic boundaries, and this lies at the core of the SKIF festival concept. Each year the Festival presents new names in contemporary, progressive and original music from Jazz to Electronic Music, from World Music to Noise and Experimental.

The SKIF-12 program includes over 40 music collectives from all over the world:

Nils Petter Molvaer/Thomas Stronen/ Eivind Aarset (Norway), MoHa! (Norway), DAAU (Belgium), Ben Frost (Iceland), Pierre Bastien (France), FM Einheit & Caspar Brotzman (Germany), Black Engine (Italy), ZU (Italy) , Alamaailman Vasarat (Finland), Funckarma (The Netherlands), Mitch&Mitch (Poland), BJ Nilsen (Sweden), Fusedmarc (Lithuania), Analogik (Denmark), Harmonia: Michael Rother/Hans-Joachim Roedelius/Dieter Moebius (Germany) , Leafcater John (UK), Midi Lidi (Czech Republic), Nid & Sancy (Belgium)* , Moha! (Norway), Eraldo Bernocchi (Italy), Trigon (Moldova), Jahcoozi (Germany), Polar Bear (UK), Dick Verdult (The Netherlands)* , The complainer and the complainers (Poland), Silence Kit (Moscow), Actual Music Quartet RSM (Russia), Port Mone (Belarus), I Am Above on the Left (Russia), Gurzuf (Belarus), Earworm (Belarus), N.O.M. (Russia), Digital Forks (Russia), Ilya Belorukov (Russia), atlantida (Russia), Cyclofillydea (Russia), and other artists.

For more detailed artists info visit.

The music program will be accompanied by daily performances, films, animation and video art. The last day of the festival April 27th is dedicated to film media. This year’s program includes films by Miron Zownir, “Zownir Radical Man” (Slowboat film, Germany), “American Astranaut” (USA), Russian and Czech animation, video clips and experimental shorts.

This year’s SKIF will also commemorate the sudden death of another influential figure of St Petersburg underground artist circles Natasha Pivovarova (the founder and ex-singer of the St Petersburg based band KOLIBRI):

On Thursday night at 23:00 St Petersburg musicians, dancers and artists will come together for a joint performance dedicated to her memory. One can surely expect an unusual spectacle.