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AP Could you say a few words about the idea of Cloudy Commission please.
AN Well, I'll try. Actually, all the stories in light of The USSR being my homeland are flavored with paranoid endlessness at all times. A few fact, maybe. In 1991, D.Ligeros and myself came across a book named Definer of Clousy Forms written in the 30s. The book was published by Cloudy Commission. We were inspired with the name and have decided to make a new Commission. We have issued new charters, seal, letterheads. Tanya Detkina and Volodya Mogilevsky were responsible for re-publishing of the Definer. In December 1993, Cloudy Commission members gathered for a conference at Moscow Star Museum. Anybody could choose type of clouds he or she liked, would like to explore, and was provided with new documents. Currently, there are about 150 watchers, leaving in different parts of the world. The strategy itself, to be short, is about the clouds that are completely short and very changeable. They look like jelly pouring out of mug one minute, and like a squirrel sitting on a shoulder of miner the other minute. One just chooses the right observing point. I am very interested in joint creative work. Cloudy Commission appeared in the beginning of the 90s, TARTU Society in the middle, in 2000 I joined the Medgermenevtics. The modern situation is completely different, but still there is a hope to
have the joint project inspired internally, and not just performing curators' instructions.
AP Does that mean that you miss joint work, though preferring sole creative work? Or are you just protesting the instructions of exhibition curators?
AN Sometimes it happens that in the conversation you may predict your companion'\s reaction to your words. It is something like exchange of consciousness. Joint creative work is the highest degree of friendly relations. All my joint initiatives are with musicians lately. They are more open to group actions, since each of them is playing his or her role. And they are less Narcissus in themselves.
A few times we made performances following my book Antipodes. Reciters were reading stories happening in different parts of the Globe, musicians played music, and myself showed real time video illustrating all the happening. Unfortunately, we had such performance only in Europe, we did not have relevant offers from in here.
My wife Ivanka Skrivanek, she is a composer, and myself edit video magazines from time to time. So, we don't feel bored.
As for your second question, I would suggest my old idea to hold an exhibition of curators' art, with all their paintings and handicrafts, made in individual manner. The only condition: artist curator should select works and give names to them.
AP How did it occur to you to make a project Captured by film?
AN During the last two years I was working on a big film project. I worked both as a cameraman and photographer. When I realized that my collection keeps more that 50 hours of video and 10,000 shots, I had to select the best ones. Why does one printed picture bear the comprehensive information about the film, while the other not even the least, after all those re-dublications? What are those clues that attract attention of the audience? I studied the materials, and it occurred to me that all the picture bear absolutely the same information about the film in general. Those snapshots are just various phases of the same movement, and that i'-s of the film'.
It's important how far the snapshot is spread in the present, giving a hint about the past and the future. So, I start choosing pictures out of esthetics of color, light, composition, and perspective. I felt much at ease after that.
Well, normally, following the drama laws is very important in advertising. There are key points in any literature, they are important from the point of view of the plot, of the text. To put the idea of the film in words is absurd.
What about all those breathing, signs of relief, passages, paths, panoramas, all what is called air in the film? Unimportant from the point of plot, those faults make the core of the film. They are even more difficult in implementation for cinema process, than key dialogues or monologues. That's why not all of my snapshots can be taken as advertising. Most of them resemble intervals between TV programs. Do you remember those park benches covered with snow and surrounded by smooth instrumental music? Nothing is happening. One just needs to have a look at them to free himself or herself from literature nonsense surrounding
them:
AP Is painting valuable for you? Is it relevant to video projects?
AN Painting sometimes illustrates some pseudoscientific discoveries. Sometimes the plot is being invented in the process of panting, or even later. Many years before I learnt about conceptualism I painted picture with signatures non-relevant to the pictured. Do you remember Ant by Kabakov? I felt something like that looking at illustrations in kids books.
In this project the text was withdrawn out of the illustration, as they [the text and the drawing] exist in different times. Textual synopsis give a hint to the future, they describe the way the plot of the film is developed. Paintings are directed into the past, as if such films had already been shot a long ago. This temporary contradiction is removed with frames in the shape of film, disclosing all the conditionings of film-making.
In this exposition, video, as well as paintings, is subordinated to thematic space fixed between the two themes, interested to me in the first place, cinema and dreams. This is a space for guessing and prognosis of future.
AP Isn't it a contradiction to lock snapshots on each other, stressing they are limited with frames, speaking about their future as about category stipulated by time flow?
AN Well, snapshots are framed, as well as pictures, although paintings may split into fragments. Film fragments are presented in time flow, unlikely with painting, as if not having the third dimension. They are built in the time, and not space, one minute in film may be one minute or one year in real life. I had such project, and it was my reaction to the exhibition of a Polish photographer who photographed himself on every 1st and 15th day of the month. After his death we could see him aging at the exhibition. I have decided to merge gap between every 1st and every 15th day. I photographed myself every day. Naturally, I haven't changed much. It was a demonstration of the abilities of cinema, at which every next snapshot is very much similar with the previous.
AP Art often flew to the future in its illusions, sometimes art was falling into sleep, downloading all kind of information from counter-mirror world of dreams. What is a dream for you?
AN It is hard to believe, but for an average life we spend 25 years sleeping. It's a big luxury to spend a quarter of century in unconscious rest. For me, dream is a meaningful source of inspiration. For more than a decade I write a dairy of dreams, it may be publish one day, probably. Many of my projects cover this topic. Even my last name is about it. (NaSONov has a word Dream in it). One of my projects tells a story of a person, who was sleeping all his life. Nevertheless, he was functioning normally, but stayed in a parallel world. He was born on the day when Vladimir Lenin signed a Degree on creation of the USSR, and woke up after the Coup. His name was Soviet. Actually, he has lived the life of the Soviet Union. The project was called Etymology of Dreams, it explored the personalities who have the word Dream in their personal names. I begun with myself, and finished up with Mendelssohn, Parkinson, Besson, and many others, including Carlson. For example, Jacobson means
The Dream of Jacob. In the Bible, Jacobson means staircase to heaven. So, there are different semantic chains here.
AP Anyway, what's the plot of the snapshot?
AN Any snapshot is a picture. There are thousands of them in a film. Any snapshot or picture is interesting seeing. This idea opposes our project Captured by film, in which the picture is a snapshot. And I have another idea. I'd like to find the history of painting in snapshots, i.e. renaissance, impressionism, baroque, and even abstractionism.
переводчик Darya Bielecka,
редактор David Margison
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