Medium

Genre:performance, public intervention | Year of presentation:2002 | City/Country:St. Petersburg / Russia |

Location:M-Video Store | Material:white shirt, ears, voice | Equipment:TV, remote control, headphones, microphone, speakers, audio amplifier, mixer | Duration:6 hours |

The performer sat like a spiritual oracle on the floor of a large electrical goods store and reproduced with his voice every sound which he heard through the headphones connected to the TV set. Movies, news, music, advertising, every conceivable tones and noises were performed using his vocal talents. The visitors switched between the different TV channels with the remote controls for hours and enjoyed the unconventional spiritual session.

The project was sold to several electronics stores in Saint-Petersburg and Moscow as a promotion compagne where the alleged “promoter” was supposed to present the quality of various media devices on offer.

Performance:Andrey Ustinov | Video editing:Andrey Ustinov | Curating:Daria Pyrkina | Production:NCCA Moscow |

You sing superb!

original medium: super-VHS
duration: 3 minutes

A short film-portrait documents a short episode of daily work of a St. Petersburg video store employee. He – is a professional Karaoke singer. His daily professional duty is simple: singing the same songs from the repertoire of an immutable karaoke machine. He spends days of a full-time job communicating with the same video monitor, reading texts of the same songs on its screen and singing along to the beats of the same synthetic melodies. The efforts of the singer are not in vain. At the end of each performance of karaoke, the machine sends to the monitor screen its dry unbiased estimate: “You sing superb!”

camera: Yuri Popov
video editing: Andrey Ustinov

Acquaintance

In 2001, the St. Petersburg business center NOBEL organized a private party dedicated to the opening of Andy Warhol exhibit at the St. Petersburg Hermitage Museum. All representatives of the St.
Petersburg art-bohemia of the time were invited: fashionable artists, critics, journalists, museum workers and gallery owners. The most honored guests received personal invitations, guests of lower rank were invited without a name. I also managed to receive one of these nameless invitations through “personal acquaintances.” In order to consolidate and legitimize this “personal acquaintance,” I decided to make an appropriate performance.

I was dressed in a black suit. On my right hand, I put on a black rubber glove, which made the hand look like a prosthesis. The glove was filled with raspberry jam. As soon as I found among the audience, communicating at ease, one of the scandalous representatives of Petersburg bohemia, I took off the glove, approached the “star” closely, stretched out my clammy hand in a salute, and loudly pronounced my name. “Celebrities” stretched their hands in response, mostly imposingly and reluctantly, yet snatched it back with disgust and horror, looking at me in fright and questioning. In response, I handed them a specially prepared paper napkin, bowed, and left.

Among the huge number of “acquaintances” made in the evening with numerous quite famous people, there was but only one positive contact, which is worth of special mention. It was the “acquaintance” with the art scholar Ivan Dmitrievich Chechetov. Ivan Dmitrievich was the only man from the complete St. Petersburg beau monde, who, in response to my action, laughed loudly and cheerfully, asking then twice with a genuine interest for my name.

(Documentation of performance is not preserved.)

Inauguration

May 7, 2000 occurred the inauguration of the new Russian president Vladimir Putin. Russia was entering the era of Putinism—the current period of its history. On the same day in St. Petersburg, the cultural center Pushkinskaya 10 was opening the festival “Unofficial Capital.” The art community in St. Petersburg (as much as, actually, elsewhere) is very apolitical and politically unaware. The day, which many left-wing intellectuals regarded as a triumphant return to the “Sovietism,” was not taken seriously at all by the majority of the art audience. At the festival opening, routine receptions, parties, art exhibitions, etc. were planned.

I decided to spoil the festivity for the artists.

The cultural center “Pushkinskaya 10” is located in multiple courtyards in an old central district of the city. In order to move from one building to another, one must pass through a tunnel that connects the different courtyards. In one these courtyards, I drew a white canvas on which I was planning to project the live broadcast of Putin’s inauguration. As if the inauguration was to stand in the way of strolling tipsy artists. They were, according to my plans, either to remain in the tunnel and watch the inauguration to the end, or break through the barrage in fury.

The barrage has been erected, but for technical reasons I could not implement the projection of television broadcast. The project failed.

(Documentation of performance is not preserved.)

Gypsum

The work was implemented for the festival “Informal Capital” held in St. Petersburg in May 2000. All regular visitors of the gallery POLYGON have been suggested to conserve in a box with gypsum an object representing their “personal culture.” People were willingly participating in the project. Some constructed sculptures from gypsum, while others sank some personal things in it. When the gypsum boxes had accumulated a few dozen, they were all collected together and exhibited in the courtyard of the cultural center “Pushkinskaya 10.”

Upon completion of the project, one of the former participants asked to return his personal object, which had been conserved in the box thoughtlessly. I protested. Then he offered a payoff. I suggested instead of a payoff an exchange: the needed object would be returned in exchange of an other, useless one, which was to replace the old object. He agreed. Then I asked him to publicly prove that the cost of both of these objects, as well as the amount proposed as payoff, were equivalent. Hesitant and confused, he presented his evidence. The object has been returned to him.

His performance, as well as our discussion has been documented on video.

(Documentation of performance is preserved in part).

Saving the Castaways

An orange bath and a small orange inflatable boat from military equipment are set in the center of the gallery. The rubber boat is filled brim with gypsum, and a small television is walled into gypsum. The TV plays an endless loop record of a video performance that took place in the summer 1998 in Luga, on the Green Lake. The performance consisted of the following: I floated in a rubber boat in the lake, rowing up with hands. An expensive camera was installed directly over the boat. During the performance, a leak in boat was discovered in the middle of the lake. The boat began to deflate. It was supplied with a special hand pump. I had to continually inflate the boat during the transit of the boat over the lake.

During the exhibition at the gallery POLYGON, I did the second performance. The orange bath was filling with tap water. Finally, the bath was full, and the faucet was turned off. I opened four bags with gypsum and overturned them into the bath. Then the gypsum was thoroughly mixed. I undressed and, wrapped up in a thin plastic bag, I immersed in hot gypsum. I continued to lie until it completely hardened. The bath was previously supplied with a special hammer. With its help, I broke the hardened gypsum, and left the bath.

The work is dedicated to the memory of my schoolmate Stanislav Vasilyev who died in an accident. In summer 1998, Stas worked in one of the Luga summer vacation centers on the banks of the picturesque Green Lake. After a party with his colleagues, he was riding in a car with them, returning to camp. He was at the rear seat, where he fell in a deep sleep on the road. Approaching the lake, the slightly drunk colleagues lost control and the car crashed into the lake. All of them were able to jump off a locked car and swam out of the lake, but Stas was left alone to sleep on its bottom locked in the car. None of his colleagues tried to save him.

Fuflo

A series of minimalist paintings made on sheets of wood particle board. The Russian word “fuflo” means fraud, embezzlement, as well as poor quality goods, empty sensless objects, something apparently valuable, but in fact representing no value.

After the default of 1998, I was left without any means of livelihood. In despair, I returned to Luga to my parents and settled as handyman for the construction
of a future elite holiday center for employees of a large Moscow bank. All other workers were in a similar economic situation. I spent working three winter months in the cold. For warm up, the workers went into the interior of the future holiday center. There they took off their sweatshirts, in Russian called “fufaika,” and took their seats around the batteries. While the workers were lying, I sketched in a notebook the sweatshirts hanging on a nail. From the constant dampness and cold, they were becoming stiff, adopting the shape of their owner’s bodies. Each of these sweatshirts became a sheepskin of their owner, his seashell, his second body—a body of a wage laborer.

The construction of the elite holiday center was finished. The manager announced that to receive the salary, workers themselves should go to St. Petersburg to the central office of the construction department. The trips to St. Petersburg continued unsuccessfully for a few months—the office stayed closed. In late summer, the workers gathered at the private office, demanding their earned wages. This time their money was paid, but as a result of inflation which lasted all this time, its value depreciated entirely.

I bought with all this money paints and brushes, and painted a series on sweatshirts picked up at a construction site on wood particle sheets.

(The work was never exhibited).

Spring Sisyphus-training

Within a few winter months of 1997-1998, I grew in the street an icy lump, watering it every day with cold water. With each day, the lump overgrew with new layers of ice crust; it became more infused with ice, and turned each time larger, heavier and harder.

At the same time, I built a wooden structure akin to a seesaw. In the first day of spring, I placed the lump in the exhibition space of the Reserve Palace in Pushkin, leaving it at the base of one of the levers of the wooden seesaw. On each side of seesaw, I placed an aluminum bucket and a casual rag for floor cleaning. I undressed to the waist, and began to roll the icy lump up the seesaw, until it outweighed the seesaw, and the lump slid down to the opposite side. I slid down after the icy lump too. Once on the opposite side, I wiped with a rag the melted ice from the floor, squeezing it into the bucket. Then, again, I rolled up the lump. In the center of the lever, the lump again began to outweigh the seesaw, turning it over and the rolling down to the starting point of performance. Again, I wiped from the floor the thawed ice and squeezed out anew the water into the bucket.

And all repeated again. The lump was rolled up the seesaw, keeling over to the opposite side, then the water was wiped and pressed into the buckets. The lump rolled up again in the opposite direction. The action lasted for several hours, until the ice completely melted, and all the water of the melted lump was collected back in the buckets.

“How much water has flowed from the time of ascent of Sisyphus until the time of his fall? And how much water went under the bridge at the moment of his triumph?”

(The statue or a documentation of performance are not preserved.)

Demob Album

The project represents an eclectic object between book, sculpture, photo album, and experimental literature.

I have created from my army photos my of subjective “Demobilization album.” The accompanying text is abstract, a mixture of stream of consciousness with visual poetry and graphic design. It tells of existential experiences of an anonymous author on the verge of physical and moral survival. The book is wrapped in a soldier’s overcoat, and is equipped with different attributes of army “folk art.”

(The work was never exhibited).

New Aporias

The project represents a series of experimental texts on the verge of visual poetry, philosophy, conceptual art, and graphic design.

The poems parody famous aporia of Zeno, bringing the classic thesis on immovability and immutability of the world to an acute poetic grotesque. Many of these texts became prototypes of future performances and other conceptual works.