Chernobyl, selfies and radioactive raves: The art project illuminating our dark obsession with disaster

For many, the scene of the world’s worst nuclear accident has become a post-apocalyptic muse. For the organisers of Artefact, it’s a shrine to Ukraine’s unloved past. Oliver Bennett reports

DJ Valeriy Korshunov put on the ‘radioactive rave’ in an attempt to create the ‘largest digital sculpture in the world’ (Artefact)

Lasers danced across a teetering steel structure and poi dancers swirled fluorescent batons. At the foot of this spectacle was a ringmaster – artist and DJ Valeriy Korshunov, clad in a gold cape – sending a trance soundtrack whirling into the tainted air.

It was as if Burning Man, or at least a part of Glastonbury, had landed in this unlikely festival site – the Duga radar in Chernobyl’s exclusion zone. Korshunov’s company Artefact’s aim was to create the “largest digital sculpture in the world”, and in doing so, he put on this “radioactive rave”. On the face of it a resistible offer, something powerful propelled me into this tainted space to witness Korshunov’s sinister but sublime son et lumiere on the vast metal frame.

A danse macabre it might have been, but Korshunov’s post-fallout piece is part of a national florescence. Ukraine, Europe’s second poorest country, is presenting itself anew to the world and one can make the case that 2019 has seen the emergence of “cool Ukrainia” (as it turns out, its country branding was inspired by the UK’s efforts). With EU accession on the cards, Ukraine is having a cultural moment that repudiates the world of “fake news”, associated with the old Soviet overlords and their supporters.