Alexander Kan: Sergey Kuryokhin - an Overview

A lecture at the Institute of Advanced Studies, University College London, 11 December 2018.
Alexander Kan's abstract:
As someone who knew Kuryokhin very well, worked alongside him for nearly 20 years and has written a book on him I suggest I start the debate with an overview of his life and work: his chaotic and interrupted "official" musical training; dogged perseverance of an autodidact in acquiring knowledge of officially unavailable music, literature, philosophy, history, etc.; early career as a rock musician; the move to and obsessive infatuation with the jazz avant-garde and the music of free improvisation; first underground recordings and their release on Western labels; return to rock and collaboration with leading bands of the Leningrad rock underground (Aquarium, Alisa, Kino); inception and implementation of the revolutionary artistic synthesis of Popular Mechanics; artistic, aesthetic and later political provocation as a fundamental principle of his work; excursion into other art forms: cinema and theatre; political activism of his latest years; his legacy as an artist and cultural figure. Given the audience's unfamiliarity with the artist and his work, such an introductory overview will be necessary to bring them into the context of not only his life and work but the political and cultural environment of the late Soviet and post-Soviet years.
See also:
www.e-e.eu/Kuryokhin/index.html