A diverse group of artists, curators, and critics greeted Barbara London on her first endless day in St. Petersburg. The nights are "white" this time of year in the high northern latitudes, and workers and shirkers follow the sleepless rhythm of the sun.
OLESSIA TOURKINA is a curator at the Russian Museum, and co-editor of Art/Science Kabinet, a magazine with an international perspective, yet directed toward Russian concerns. Not long ago, the circulation of the magazine was twenty copies, and now it has a run of one thousand.
	VIKTOR MAZIN is co-editor of Art/Science Kabinet, and a Freudian analyst. Freud is surprisingly popular in Russia. Freud's emphasis on self-examination appeals to a people who have discarded the communalism of Marx/Lenin.
SERGEI BUGAEV, who goes by the name "Afrika," is an artist and a consultant to a member of the Russian parliament, Yuri Chekotchein.
Afrika with his "raw" materials, American and Russian flags. He has produced many versions of Russian flags, but now sees virtue in the American flag: it is ruled, ready for text.

Semiotics in Russia has a peculiar resonance. Upon opening to the West, Russia was flooded with incomprehensible advertising symbols. The Russians had to acquire a new language. It simply wouldn't do to have people order a "sosa-sola," the Cyrillic interpretation of Coca-Cola.

Alla, about to board a bus, explains that the ticket price of one ruble (about fifteen cents) is "socially satisfactory." The people and the government hold dear the remnants of communal ideals.	ALLA MITROFANOVA, artist, critic, ideologue, and idealist of the old school. She does not want St. Petersburg rebuilt, i.e., "tarted up". Nor does she support the "judging" of art by institutions or individuals. All artistic production is valid, and not subject to hierarchical evaluation.
ANDREI KHLOBYSTIN, artist, and artist as mediator. The Russians have suffered a complete loss of identity, from Yeltsin on down, or up. Nobody knows who they are or what they want. The people are adrift in a void. Khlobystin puts his faith in "communication" as the means to recovery. His works are festooned with mirrors, so that people can examine themselves. And he has shot many videotapes of people in front of a camera, simply talking and looking at themselves.
	TIMOR NOVIKOV, artist and patriarchal leader. Novikov is the founder and articulate spokesperson of Neo-Academism, the St. Petersburg art movement that views modernism as a noxious virus. Novikov advocates a return to an art based on beauty, tradition, classical forms, and the orthodoxy of the Russian Church. In resplendent St. Petersburg, the Venice of the north, his vision has resonance.