Gogolmania.  Friday night and everyone who's cool, plus me, is at the "Gogolfest", a modern art extravaganza at the new "Art Arsenal" (see report on the "De Profundis" opening, 23 August).  Whereas "De Profundis" is in a more or less fully restored part of the vast new art space, "Gogolfest" is in the larger, rawer, still-to-be-completed bit - a creative paradise of immense proportions.  In the course of a couple of visits I see: a spooky piece of performance art by the theatre group "Axe" involving pigs' heads, coloured liquids, saws, hammers, flaming flowers and a bunch of increasingly shell-shocked-looking artists (photos at http://community.livejournal.com/gogolfest/21860.html); a terrific Ukrainian post-industrial landscape installation peopled with Socialist Realist masterpieces; a Russian pneumatic pop group called Aquaaerobika featuring giant ice-cream cones and lip-stick tubes; Finnish theatre group Keskusteluja; and a host of other stuff ranging from music to video to film to paintings to a perambulator filled with stuffed penguins.  "The world is born from chaos ... Today Gogolfest - mad vortex lines, styles and cultures" says the flyer.  Right.  It certainly feels like an outstanding place to spend an hour or two, and runs until 27 September.  I'll be back.