Heike Wegner Interviews Pawel Pepperstein About Sergei Bugaev (Afrika) in Vienna Kitchen Dialogue

In June 1999, Austrian critic Heike Wegner conducted a kitchen dialogue interview with Russian artist Pawel Pepperstein about Sergei Bugaev, known as Afrika. The conversation took place at Bugaev's studio in Vienna. Pepperstein, co-founder of the Medical Hermeneutics group, discussed Afrika's significance as a former enfant terrible of Petersburg's neo-avantgarde movement. Wegner explained her approach of collecting statements from others to write about Afrika due to lacking her own adequate language. The interview was published on ARTMargins Online as part of their interviews section. Pepperstein was asked to share concrete insights about Afrika both as an artist and as a good friend, with specific focus on his connections to artistic circles. The dialogue represents a significant documentation of post-Soviet avant-garde artistic networks and critical discourse from the late 1990s.