Abstract
KaZantip is an electronic music festival held in Crimea before having to move to Georgia after the annexation of Crimea by Russia. It is defined by its Russian creators like a giant beach rave party, which lasts 24 hours a day for a month. From 1991 to 2013, KaZantip festival has attracted a growing audience: in 2010, up to 30,000 people "lived" together on the site and, in a month, more than 150,000 people stayed in. This resulted in a frenzy of real estate not or little controlled, but also significant drugs problems before a drastic regulation over the last years. The festival had become, over the seasons, a lever for tourism development in the Crimea.According to its designers, KaZantip is not a simple festival but a 'Republic' that works with his Government, his president (OrganiZator), its constitution, its Department of Foreign Affairs for communication with the outside world deemed "imperfect", his ministers of happiness, music, dance and rave, etc., and its own laws. The most important law is "SCHASTIE" (be happy and have fun)! This raises lot of questions: 1- Would this territory, self-proclaimed symbolically "independent Republic of KaZantip" be then a "cultural" innovation? A cultural state? An "urban" space devoted to a global party, for a global world, the whole being justified in relation to new values or supposed to be? The traditional link between local authorities and the festival, or even between power and music, is to be reconsidered in the context of this type of original event.2- The concept of festival would not allow apprehending the novelty of the phenomenon since the diplomatic and geopolitical dimensions are to be taken into account, not more than its amplitude, nor the importance of the values that he conveyed. The many contradictions in the statements of the various actors (organizers, public actors ...) raise the question of the complexity of the links and negotiations surrounding this kind of events.3- The difficulty of surviving for powerful events since the link to the specific land that hosted those breaks, also raises the question of the territorialisation of festivals and other events.4- Finally, the utopian dimension of the event brings back to sets of values that had been at the origin of many festivals that became mythical (Monterey, Woodstock, Goa, for example) but also massive events of other kinds than they are religious (Taizé) or political (Larzac): what this massive character, the music and the youth of the population which frequents these places raise this type of reaction which not found in other events yet also massive ( matches, political events)?This utopia, in fact mainly a big business, was responsible for its success but also its problems because of its insertion in the geopolitical issues related to progressive tensions between Ukraine and Russia.The determination to break (more than a real utopia) that mark the name of the independent Republic of KaZantip was a humorous political claim, a try to thumb its nose at the history. In fact, history caught but without destroying it before the relocation and the power of the market economy strike a bigger blow.