The seasonal urban culture festival, Summer Platform, will take place from August 21st to the 23rd in Nalchik, Kabardino-Balkaria. The schedule of events includes street artists, curators of contemporary art, and progressive musicians from the Russian independent music scene. Additionally, the festival program includes lectures, master classes, art events, concerts, and DJ sets. The festival is organized by the “Platforma” institute with the support of Nalchik Administration. EE had a brief conversation with Bulat Khalilov, one of the event’s organizers, and discussed the festival’s origins and current lineup.
BULAT KHALILOV
Ethnographer, co-founder of Ored recordings
It’s a seasonal festival of urban culture—we want to invite movements and individuals doing creative work to come to our city. Through this festival we want to think about the culture of Nalchik and its identity, how to make an impact on Nalchik's culture, to build it and showcase it. This translates to us putting together something really local but with global features.
In 2019 we invited a variety of different speakers, activists, and scientists working on music, urbanism, anthropology to Nalchik. This was the theoretical part. The most important part was the musical line-up: from free-jazz and local traditional music to dream pop and experimental post-rock. This year we invited specialists of contemporary art (from V-A-C foundation, Garage museum), music festivals ("Боль" festival, Moscow Music Week), and some from the IT-business (ITV Group). My record label, Ored Recordings, is curating the music portion. The musical line-up is Пасош (Moscow post-punk), Утро (Motorama's side project with a more avant, post-punk sound) and Zaur Nagoy who will perform traditional Circassian music.
Overall, the subjects and goals of this festival are very serious and we work very hard, but at the same time we want to make it entertaining. We are not forcing the people of Nalchik to do some kind of academic research, we want to invite them to think about their home and have some fun.
Read more at platforma-nalchik.ru.
