89-26. Wind of Change. Sonic Ghosts of a Broken Utopia by Nikolay Karabinovych

Artist Nikolay Karabinovych, in conversation with musician and writer Yuriy Gurzhy invites you to an unconventional lecture where every audience member is a co-creator. From a stack of vinyl records, you’ll choose key tracks, and the hosts will weave them into stories, reflections, and sounds.

Guided by Karabinovych and Gurzhy, you’ll journey through the sonic traces of an era. Records will turn into artifacts of memory, revealing how hits became tools of “soft power” or even emotional manipulation - from theories about the CIA’s influence on charts and the USSR’s collapse to the phenomenon of disco-polo, which drowned out political debates.

At the heart of the event is the installation Wind of Change by Nikolay Karabinovych, presented as part of The Impermanent show, where the whistle symbolizes unfulfilled hopes. But what if, instead of echoes of the past, we create a new sound together? Bring your musical memories on vinyl - they could become part of the shared story.

Nikolay Karabinovych (born 1988 in Odesa, Ukraine)  - works in a multidisciplinary field that unfolds across video, sound, installation, performance, and text. His practice draws from and reconfigures the layered, often violent (hi)stories of the region known - or misknown - as “Eastern Europe,” merging them with intimate family narratives and broader diasporic echoes. Refusing static geographies or linear timelines, Karabinovych engages with the politics of memory, marginality, and belonging, often through sonic gestures. Music - as genre, ritual, rupture, and residue - is a recurring gravitational force in his work. Karabinovych is a graduate of Belgium's Higher Institute for Fine Arts (HISK), Ghent (2020). His work has been exhibited at institutions including HKW Berlin; M HKA Museum of Contemporary Art, Antwerp; MAXXI, Rome; Albertinum, Dresden; Bozar, Brussels; Museum de Fundatie, Zwolle; Belgium Jewish Museum; Zamek Ujazdowski, Warsaw; w139, Amsterdam; among others. He has participated in Steirischer Herbst (2024), Kaunas Biennale (2023), Kyiv Biennale (2023, 2021), Survival Kit (2023), and the parallel program of the Venice Biennale (2024, 2022). Karabinovych has also operated within curatorial and collaborative frameworks, including as assistant curator of the 5th Odesa Biennale. He is a three-time recipient of the PinchukArtCentre Prize (2022, 2020, 2018).

Yuriy Gurzhy (born 1975 in Kharkiv, Ukraine) is a musician, songwriter, composer, DJ and author living and working  in Berlin since 1995, Yuriy Gurzhy has founded and led numerous musical projects, including RotFront, Shtetl Superstars, The Disorientalists, and Kaminer & Die Antikörpers. As a curator, Gurzhy compiled twelve influential music collections for various European record labels, among them the bestselling Russendisko Hits (2003), Shtetl Superstars – Funky Jewish Sounds from Around the World (2006), and Borsh Division – Future Sound of Ukraine (2016). With RotFront, he recorded three albums and toured extensively across the globe.