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Where do you hang out in Moscow?
Lots of different eateries and art hangouts. I love this city, especially
wondering around the center in the evening.
What’s your most outrageous purchase?
Right now I’m more interested in creating than wasting. Probably
it was some very specialized instrument used for drawing. But more often than not that’s the
kind of thing people give me.
What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever done?
There have been hundreds; sometimes I don’t even believe
that certain things happened in real life. Maybe the book and
the exhibit in 2009 at Manezh — it’s crazy once you understand
that all of it was done by just one person.
What’s the best adviceyou’ve ever received?
There’s no reason to show off your intelligence. Every one of my artist friends has said that.
Back in the ’80s it became the catchphrase of our avant-garde.
If you could be someone else for a day, who would it be?
I’m happy just being myself, and I have a pretty ironic take on vanity and vain people.
If you wanted to change the world where would you start?
I’d brush my teeth and wash my hands, if I was starting today. I don’t have any illusions, and for
the time being I’m happy enough just changing the world through creative production and
exhibits.
If you could change one thing about yourself what would it be?
Pride and acrimony.
Fashion from the ’80s is coming back into style. Is always related to cultural
mentality?
I think fashion is most related to taste, and in some tangential way with current events. Artists
and the media create fashion, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t some idea of “modernity”
there, too. There is probably something going on culturally that brings about the revival of a
certain time or decade’s fashion — if you go to stores now, they’re selling ’80s gear.
Actually, the Soviet ’80s had a lot in common with the American ’60s, but style-wise the were very
modern, almost avant-garde. What role did tattoos play in the subculture of the Soviet ’80s?
Tattoos are like art and an important way of self-identification.
People used them as a way to mark themselves as “other,” outside of the normal sphere of
society. I can’t say that there were “subversive” tattoos in the Soviet Union, but criminals often
had them, which is why we’re focusing part of the exhibit on the development of the tattoo
from criminal to an art form.
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