In our previous publications, we have already mentioned the NonStopMedia festival: you can see how it has changed over nearly 20 years. But we cannot fail to mention it when talking about the year of its creation.
In the early 2000s, the Municipal Gallery actively collaborated with young and promising artists from both Kharkiv and other regions of Ukraine. However, in 2003, the collaboration finally transformed into a festival in an unusual format of “exhibition marathons.”
“We opened the first exhibition. It hangs for three (and sometimes even two) days, on the evening of the third – dismantling, after which we begin to mount the next one. We finish in the morning, in the evening – we hold an official presentation, a vernissage. And sometimes it happened that there was not one project in the space, but several. Then, at night, everything was dismantled and the next wave began,” recalls Tetyana Tumasyan.
The first NonStop was launched with a performance by Bella Logachova – “Wardrobe – internal reverberation of a limited space.” In just 24 days of the festival, 14 exhibitions were opened with the participation of over 20 artists. At the closing of the performance, there was a discussion club “Conference of Young Art Critics.”
From the very beginning, the organizers wanted to draw attention not only to visual arts, but also to other directions – music, theater, literature. The result was the creation of a parallel program, which in 2003 included two performances by the Theater 19, a music project by Andriy Luk’yanov, a production by the children’s theater “Kalambur,” a happening by the White Theater, and a performance by the group 5’nizza.
