What is Kazantip? The eternal question

What is KaZantip? - Huh, as if we know the answer! We’ve been groping for it since 1992 and it's still somewhere out there. We hope, you too couldn’t satisfy the most important question of your life “Who am I?” in a few words. And we don’t mean your name or occupation.

What we know for a fact is what we are not. For example, we know beyond all doubt that we are not a festival, as the press is fond of saying. (We prefer the word “project”) And we are not the Kazantip headland in somewhat far Crimea peninsula, as the Google Maps would tell you, though that’s the very place we initially went from. However, Google Maps will never tell you where to find a very small and tiny – smaller than The Vatican City and tinier than Monaco – over-enclosed land not for every one -- The KaZantip Republic, though that’s what we truly are.

So, given this, now you know that The KaZantip Republic is a nonexistent state somewhere under the sun, which may remind to onlookers something of a festival. Not bad so far, right?

I think, wherefore I exist. I've thought It up, wherefore it exists

The KaZantip Republic came along with other ideas from the head of a man who was badly displeased with the ordinary and mediocre world around him. He didn't try to criticize it, or worse, to fix it, he simply created his own one - his own Orange Land with its own, more fair laws, and made himself its PreZident.

And since it's all due to his imagination, The KaZantip Republic is an imaginary republic. It's pretty small, the area is about 2 km2 of beach in the territory of really existing neighboring state Ukraine, which is definitely no fancies. All in all, the land area where the laws of your dreams are valued more than any generally accepted laws shouldn't necessarily be too large. The point is to have it your way.

The tiny KaZantip Republic exists in a parallel reality, and everything here goes the way the PreZident came up with: "summer all year round" and "life with no pants". The sun is shining, the sea is swinging, the music is singing on every side and the wind is always blowing strong enough for flying with a kite. You can do nothing, if you want nothing to do with doing something or you can do everything you want the way you want it.

This small land of the rising fun is peopled not with damn boring grown-ups, but with cheerful bronzed lazybones, not really eager to say goodbye to their childhood, as well as their PreZident himself. The nonexistence of the KaZantip Republic for the rest of the exhausted world makes its significant independency. It lives by its own constitution; it has its own great nation, small president and lolable government, responsible for the most important things in the state, such as sound and light, love and good humour, virtual deeds and illusions. There is also a visa regime, a bureau of customs, national traditions and the official religion - belief in the reality of miracles. So, and all that jaZZZ.

The Kazantip Republic through the eyes of normal people

When it comes to what other, relatively more normal people think of our imaginary world, it's a big international annual club culture festival held in summer at the Black Sea coast of Crimea, Ukraine (Russia’s neighboring, ex-USSR country). It starts in late July and ends in late August, attracting over 100 000 attendees. The event features hundreds of best DJs, dancers, musicians, performers and other creative minds from around the world. Despite its smallness, republic can afford about 6 dance floors, 30 bars and restaurants, 2 open air cinema halls, 3 kitesurfing stations and an amount of weird architectural structures. All of this is fitted with light and sound and, when the night comes down, looks pretty much like an extraterrestrial space base.

Most commonly normal people compare the KaZantip Republic with Ibiza and Burning Man. It probably seems to them that the KaZantip Republic as well as Ibiza is just a month long open-air party near the sea -- DJs, beautiful girls, dancers and never-ending show. Or, like Burning Man, it's a hangout for freaks and psychos obsessed with self-expression and neo paganism of fire worship. Right, it's quite prestigious here to be a real freak, so the PreZident of the Republic is the first freak of all - absolutely one of a kind. That’s why everybody who happened to get here is going slightly mad. A little mad. Perhaps, as mad as hatter.

History of the Kazantip Republic

It all happened back in 1992 starting as a windsurfing competition that brought together 78 participants and 600 devotees. To make their hanging out at the shore merrier, the prospective preZident of the KaZantip Republic – the president of the Russian Windsurfing Association at that time – simply switched on some little sound on the beach. The next year, even more devotees got there and among them were DJs, who carried their LPs just to keep from getting bored.

The competition was held at the peninsula called Kazantip, not far from the derelict nuclear power station. It had been left incomplete right after the Chernobyl disaster and standing alone in the middle of the field as a tremendous and unimaginable piece of Hollywood scenery set up for apocalyptic movie. And in 1997, the PreZident committed the act of pure kazantypical madness and threw 5000 people party “The Night at the Reactor”, which established a tradition of the Nuclear Nights and went down in the history of Russian rave movement.

In seven years, championship evolved from a small mix of surfers and their friends – young progressives, recreationists, extreme sports enthusiasts, musicians, DJs and journalists – to “the festival of everything related to sea, sex and summer”. A bit underground, but yet international, this open-air happening took place every august and lasted for two weeks. In 1999, it was already attended by 12 000 people.

In 2000, the festival was forced to change its place. Since then, it has no longer been a festival, but a republic. The Independent Orange KaZantip Republic that can freely move in space, wherever the president wants and where the nation is better off. The KaZantip Republic borrowed the name from the headland it occupied early on and enticed its devout followers away to become the Great Nation ruled by a small preZident.

For a couple of years the Republic was wondering around and every august it was necessarily to hunt out its uncharted location before getting there. However, since 2001 it has stationed itself where you can find it now – in little village Popovka, on the Black Sea coast of Crimea peninsula. From then onward, The Kazantip Republic has had its own small area separated from the entire world. There are all the things its citiZens need for life – bars, restaurants, www, first-aid posts, comfort stations, visa application center, customhouse, and above all - dancehalls and stages.

Orange became the national color of the Republic, sunglasses, shorts and I-shirts turned to the national clothes and an old-fashioned yellow suitcase got to be the main national symbol granting visa-free entry. As such, a viZa regime has been finally introduced. The Utopian Kazantip Republic has always lived under a variety of dreamy slogans like “THE BEST LAND EVER" “YOU WERE JUST DREAMING AND YOU STILL ARE” “NEXT ONES TO BE HELD ON MARS”

To know more about the Kazantip Republic click here.

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