A useless artist statement

I see the uselessness of any action, the imagined can never become real: the same as what I imagine of myself and what other people imagine of me can never coincide. I see the impossibility of any communication, and what can be more ridiculous than to make art about it? It’ll be a tautology: to make an impossible thing about it’s impossibility.
However, maybe this is what I have to do. To make film about possibility/impossibility to make film, to make art about possibility/impossibility to make art. Maybe this is how I should read my previous works, maybe unconsciously I’ve always seen this dilemma.
The world is incomplete, indefinite. Words, or other symbolic tools can only augment reality’s indefiniteness. The point of doing something, I thought, was to reduce this gap between cause and the effect, signifier and signified. But it is utopian, I’ve realized. The only possible thing is to show this gap, point at it. But how can I do something, if I am myself is this damn gap. I only exist in this gap, to be more precise. The only way to make something is to suspend myself from being, i.e. to have a look from the outside. This is the most difficult thing for me now, and at the same time this is the most necessary thing. I have to take the look from the outside in order not to get lost.
 

On “Body limits”

(From the point of view of an “ideal viewer”)

Moments of the disappearance of the silhouette (or its parts) produce the feeling that contours were dissolved in greyness, or the outline was erased. Such motive suggests a very special dialogue with the painting or drawing in this work. The figure of the woman in this video is shown by the contours, the body doesn’t have the volume, it is flat. At the same time when the screen is being lightened by the flashes the viewer can distinguish three-dimensional body. The thing that the object (in this case - body) becomes tangible with the help of the camera, or, more precisely, achieves stability when it is being photographed uncovers the message of the medium in a certain way. Body had been in a transitional state, in a state of becoming, fluid and sensitive like undried paint and then suddenly got solid and fixed in a space. First, it tells us that photography’s function is fixation of a constantly changing state, an introspective function in a way. Second, with the camera shot body achieves its strict, nonerasable contours, that is becomes estranged from the environment.

Time surrounds me, I am in a flow of time or, on the contrary, time exists in me, it is being born from my relation with things, am I the time myself? Where happens a synthesis of the present, the past and the future (whether it happens at all), in what of these three times can I be placed, if “I” is not a thing, not a point on a time line, “I” itself is an unceasing change which avoids any fixing? How can I with my duration coincide with the world around and with what part of it is necessary to coincide? And what for I think about all this finally?
Asking all this questions (except, perhaps, the last one) I do not intend to find the definitive answer as any answer being a point contradicts the very essence of the question: what is time and how it can be thought, how to think me and my anxiety caused by time. Instead of the direct answer I would like to come to a certain way of actualizing the experience of time, to find out the universal way of its representation extending on art sphere as well.
 

"Make yourself at home" - was a course held in English in Smolny in 2008 together with Finnish academy of Fine arts. Below is my proposal for the project within this course. The chosen place for the project was Lev Gumelev house museum.

My starting point was to think of the house museum idea in general. The thing that struck me was the huge gap between what person did and became famous of and the way he/she is actually presented in house museum.
Do I really need this extra information? Do I need to know whom Akhmatova slept with and on what kind of bed to love her poetry? Do I need to know whether Dostoyevsky preferred tea or coffee to get a deeper understanding of his novels?
I feel like if I’m interested in one’s artistic practice his former living space is not for me. What is it for? I’ve got the sense that house museum mission lays somewhere in mystification of particular person, transforming him/her into national hero. Objects in display are not distant and untouchably “sacred” here. On the contrary, they’re exhibited in a way that produces a sense of familiarity. I’d even say a sense of mutual belonging. As soon as I recognize a certain object as familiar, as if it could’ve been mine, or reminds me of the one I used to possess, I got the feeling of belonging to the space. As soon as I belong here I can take everything for granted: Dostoyevsky – the best family man, Akhmatova – loving mother, Gumelev – the greatest Russian scientist. Isn’t nice to be in a company of such indisputably noble and decent people? As if my personal history all of a sudden has become more important and brightened by the very closeness to them.
 

Dear Emily,

I would like to apply for the summer school "Forumak leto". I am interested in this program first of all, because I assume it to be a great environment for sharing ideas and gaining more knowledge about contemporary art practice. To my point of view, the importance of cooperation with practicing artists, curators and theorists can hardly be overestimated. It gives a range of different approaches to the art related topics and helps to locate one's own erratic investigation within the framework of art discourse.
I've been trying myself in different activities: from theoretical research and video-based works to curating an exhibition and what I've learned from that after all is that medium is not so much important to me. I can use anything that suits my idea and aspiration to tell something.
I think that this summer school can give me both, an objective critical perspective on my previous works and a creative impulse for the future ones.