At the presentation in Moscow, at the National Centre for Contemporary Arts, visitors will be able to hear from both the organizers and participants of the festival from different years, jury members, and curators of the parallel program. They include Tatiana Tumasyan — initiator and director of the festival, Sergey Bratkov and Alexander Shaburov — jury members of several editions of the festival, Vlad and Viktoria Yurashko, Artem Volokitin, Ulyana Bychenkova, Alina Kleitman, Anna Bykova — laureates, Asya Nikolaeva and Yaroslava Bondarchuk — curator of the film section and coordinator of the festival’s parallel program.

The international festival of youth projects Non Stop Media has been held in Kharkiv since 2003. Non Stop acquired its “international” status naturally — works submitted to the competition began arriving not only from Kharkiv but from all over Ukraine, and later its geography expanded far beyond the country: Russia, Poland, Serbia, Lithuania, Hungary, Slovakia, Germany, Italy, the USA… Over the years, festival presentations outside Kharkiv have been held in Lviv and twice in Kyiv. The upcoming presentation will show Non Stop Media outside Ukraine for the first time. Until 2009, Moscow hosted a similar festival, “Stop! Who Goes There?”, which in 2010 was transformed into the Moscow International Biennale for Young Art. Therefore, the presentation and meeting will take the form of an exchange of experience and a lively discussion.
Non Stop Media inspired the gallery to undertake a number of ambitious initiatives. It was precisely thanks to such an active, vibrant and powerful event that it became clear that there was no need to wait for support from sponsors, patrons, grant providers or local authorities, but that one could rely on friends, volunteers and the team to organize professional international events. Every cloud has a silver lining — the festival had nowhere to present the laureates’ works, and as a result, in 2008 the gallery’s basement was cleared out; today it is an active exhibition space for experimental young art. In 2010, the lack of exhibition space prompted the festival team to try out the premises of a former nightclub that stood unused in the basement of the university. Two years later, in 2012, the YermilovCentre for Contemporary Art opened there, something Tatiana Tumasyan and the gallery team actively helped to bring about.
Following in the footsteps of “Cultural Hero” (a 2002 festival organized in Ukraine by Marat Guelman and Olga Lopukhova), Non Stop Media extends beyond the visual sphere — its program includes literary readings, films, concerts and performances. This practice led to friendships with Pyatnitsa, and later with Sergey Babkin and San, Serhiy Zhadan, Fima Chupakhin, Arabesky Theatre, DakhaBrakha and many other prominent artists and groups.
For young artists, the appeal of participating in the festival is primarily determined by the composition of its jury: Boris Mikhailov, Sergey Bratkov, Viktor Misiano, Alexander Shaburov, Vlodko Kaufman. They attend the festival in person, and the final decision is reached through joint discussion. Thanks to Non Stop Media, Kharkiv has hosted lectures and master classes by leading contemporary artists, seen the latest videos by Bratkov and Blue Noses, performances by Vlodko Kaufman, and numerous special projects by invited guests.
Time and again, the festival discovers new names and serves as a powerful springboard for emerging artists. Many of Ukraine’s leading young artists began their careers by participating in the festival.

Contacts: nonstopmedia.org
+38 057 706 16 20
Ukraine, 61057, Kharkiv, 15 Chernyshevska St.
mgallery.kharkov.ua