Potete dirci qualcosa di più sui vostri primi contatti con lʼarte in Russia e sullʼimportanza che il movimento Samizdat ha avuto nei vostri lavori?
Si è trattato di un periodo individualista. Lʼabbiamo descritto nel nostro primo libro Russian Samizdat Art, uscito nel 1986, sette anni dopo la nostra partenza dalla Russia. A vivere attraverso lʼauto-pubblicazione (in russo samizdat) non fu solo la letteratura: tutta lʼarte sopravvisse in un modo simile. Era una forza automotivata ed autosufficiente. Lʼarte del Samizdat ha probabilmente rappresentato il più simbiotico miscuglio di arte nel movimento underground, una sorta di ibrido di concettualismo, poesia visiva e concreta, libri di artisti, documentazione di performance e installazioni. Sostenuta da una sconosciuta intellighenzia culturale allʼOvest, ha continuato a fermentare nellʼisolato, quasi ermetico, recipiente della Russia Sovietica. La sua costituzione permetteva quasi tutto di diritto, mentre quasi tutto era proibito di fatto.
A quellʼepoca lʼesposizione ufficiale dei nostri lavori artistici sarebbe stata impossibile. Invece, noi ed altri amici artisti abbiamo dato vita a mostre non ufficiali, spesso collettive, nei nostri appartamenti. Per un poʼ di tempo abbiamo mantenuto un giorno fisso, un giorno la settimana in cui le nostre abitazioni si aprivano agli amici, che a loro volta portavano altri amici e così via, senza mai interrompere la catena. Eʼ così che la molteplicità delle singole esperienze artistiche, quelle non ufficiali, ha potuto sopravvivere. A casa nostra, abbiamo ospitato diversi poeti, esibizioni musicali, e tanti altri rumorosi eventi come la lettura di poemi musicali di Rimma, rappresentati da cinque esecutori nello stile del madrigale. Tutte queste attività non solo disturbavano enormemente i vicini, ma attiravano periodicamente lʼattenzione della polizia. Qui, come risultato di numerose riunioni tra amici, sono nate molte idee sovversive: ad esempio la preparazione della prima rivista sullʼarte contemporanea russa A-Ya , pubblicata in seguito a Parigi.
Quando gli storici dellʼarte europei cominciarono ad “infiltrarsi” nei circoli moscoviti, li aiutammo a raccogliere materiale per il primo articolo sul concettualismo di Mosca per la rivista Flash Art, che creò un legame con la Biennale dellʼEst Europeo a Venezia nel 1977. Durante questa manifestazione, la stampa internazionale notò la nostra performance Zoo (nella quale sedevamo nudi in una gabbia con il cartello “Homo Sapience, group of mammals, male and female” - a simboleggiare la cultura russa ingabbiata dal regime Sovietico. Come era prevedibile, questʼavvenimento focale ci creò numerosi problemi con le autorità, per cui, dopo che i cubi di Rimma furono nuovamente esposti alla biennale successiva, nel 1978, venne il momento di fare fagotto. Come tocco finale, il nostro party dʼaddio fu allegro ed esagerato come quello di Finneganʼs   Wake.

Can you please tell us more about your early approach to the Arts in Russia and the importance that the Russian Samizdat Movement had on your works?
It was a maverick period. We described it in our early book Russian Samizdat Art that appeared in 1986, seven years after our departure from Russia. Not only literature had to live by self-publishing (samizdat in Russian),but art also survived in a similar manner. It was a self-motivated, self-sufficient force. Samizdat art represented probably the most symbiotic potpourri of art in the underground movement, sort of a hybrid of conceptualism, visual and concrete poetry, artistsʼ books, documentation of performances and installations. Supported by the unknown unity of cultural intelligentsia in the West, it continued to brew in the isolated, almost hermetic, vessel of Soviet Russia. Its constitution permitted almost everything de jure while almost everything was forbidden de facto.
In this period, official exhibition of our artwork would have been impossible. Instead, we and other fellow-artists thrived on unofficial, usually group, exhibitions in our apartments. For some time we had a jour fix, a one-day-a-week open apartment for friends, who used to bring their friends and so on, thus keeping the chain unbroken. That was how self-preservation of the collective singularity common to the unofficial multiplex of Russian culture was built. In our own place, we held many readings of different poets, musical performances, and other noisy events like reading Rimmaʼs score-poems by five performers in a manner of madrigals. All this activity not only greatly disturbed our neighbors, but periodically attracted the attention of the police. Here, as a result of many gatherings with our friends, many subversive ideas were born: for example, preparation of the first magazine on contemporary Russian art A-Ya that was later published in Paris. When European art historians began to ʻinfiltrateʼ into Moscow art circles, we helped them to collect material for the first article on Moscow conceptualism for Flash Art magazine that created a link to the Eastern European Biennial in Venice in 1977. During this event, the international press picked up our performance Zoo (in which we were seated naked in a cage labeled ʻHomo Sapience, group of mammals, male and femaleʼ) symbolizing Russian culture caged by the Soviet regime. As could be expected, this focal event created many problems for us with the authorities, therefore, after Rimmaʼs cubes were shown again at the next international Biennial in 1978, the time came to pack up our belongings. As a final touch, our seeing-off party was as merry and wild as that in Finneganʼs Wake.

Do you still have a close circle of artist friends where you discuss and share opinions? Is that still important to you?
In New York, our new circle of friends was built rather quickly. A happy coincidence brought Italian artist and visual poet Mirella Bentivoglio to New York at the same time as our arrival. (She was one of the curators of the Biennial 78; that is how we became acquainted.) She introduced us to several people; and that circle grew in a chain reaction. Probably due to the right chemistry, her friend Jean Brown, collector of Dada, Surrealism, and Fluxus, became also our dear friend for many years. And the same is true about Mirella herself. Naturally, there were plenty of discussions and exchange of opinion in the many-tongued art world of New York. Our relatively small conceptual objects characteristic of the Moscow period grew into big sculptural projects and even several murals. We remember the comments of one art critic who said that when he came to our Manhattan loft-garage on Spring Street he felt like Alice entering the hole and suddenly appearing in the midest of the spectacles and wonders of other dimension.
On the other side, it seems that together with the creative freedom of the West we experienced some sort of regression into chaos, into the motley world of art. New York is a conglomerate of everything from everywhere, in which all is branded as normal, even the most abnormal. Here we encountered highly subjective individualism bordering on atavistic selfishness, psychological fragmentation and a variety of other short-circuits. In spite of the distinctiveness of each and every individual, most people repeated otherʼs opinions, under the guise of artistic liberty. In short, New York stimulated exteriorization of relationships at the expense of internal values.

But stepping aside from the events and entering the world of creative ideas, the picture changes. Moving in space, from the East to the West, was a preamble for our moving in time, from youth to maturity. Both these shifts involve adjustment and lead to the so-called process of individuation that requires some ʻpruningʼ of the environment: separation of the Chaff from the Wheat. People walk at their own speed, in cycles, usually ideas are not communicated at once, but by gradations. And one of those gradations was expressed in our switch to conceptual photography at the end of the 80s. For that we needed another environment, a contemplative one. Things can have depth but that depth is within us, and its recovery needs concentration and much more. As usual, life was acting out the events in sequence, so we moved out of Manhattan to the country. We had fewer friends, but more silence and concentration conducive to our work.

Rimma, you have been called a “three-dimensional” poet, how do you feel about this and how important is poetry in the creation of your photographs?
Many concepts in our photography are rooted in that three-dimensional poetry. These poems are generally ʻclothedʼ in small cubes, which have text inside or outside. Bearing the elements of poetry set up within the object of art, these cubes are like materialized haiku; they speak with the language of coded simplicity, where metaphorical clarity does not contradict the ambiguity. If one opens the cube with ”My thought” on the lid, what would be the answer to its inward question?and much more. As usual, life was acting out the events in sequence, so we moved out of Manhattan to the country. We had fewer friends, but more silence and concentration conducive to our work.

Rimma, you have been called a “three-dimensional” poet, how do you feel about this and how important is poetry in the creation of your photographs?
Many concepts in our photography are rooted in that three-dimensional poetry. These poems are generally ʻclothedʼ in small cubes, which have text inside or outside. Bearing the elements of poetry set up within the object of art, these cubes are like materialized haiku; they speak with the language of coded simplicity, where metaphorical clarity does not contradict the ambiguity. If one opens the cube with ”My thought” on the lid, what would be the answer to its inward question?
While Rimma was versatile predominantly with the word-concepts, Valeriy was at home with archetypal forms, as if she employed the algebraic method of conceptualism, while he preferred the geometrical one. Both these approaches constituted the basis for our photography. In our early series of Photoglyphs (which literally means ʻcarving with lightʼ, in Greek phos-, photos- denotes ʻlightʼ and glyphe stands for ʻcarvingʼ) we used mainly close-ups, with cryptographic words and drawings. They were made directly on the skin, like on a human parchment. We photographed the ʻchosenʼ words without verbal context, inscribed on the faces. Extracting the metaphysical meaning from the traditional bookish environment, we placed it straight on the faces, moving it into, say, the realm of poetic truth. In that new organic environment, words appeared in the full body of their allusive meaning, not as faceless morphemes of the linear textual form. We gave them flesh. At the same time, our own thoughts became visible, recharged with the expression of the features of the faces. For example, we literally dissected the word ʻbe-lie-veʼ on the forehead with the help of the braids. By demonstrating the treason of falsity, the word was forced to reveal its contradictory core. The same question of reliability of mind tested in the cubes appeared on our photographs. A lie can come in the form of a truth, and the truth can come in a form of a lie. Be-lie-ve it or not. By words, we can arrive anywhere, but it is not necessarily at the truth. For example, take the words of Mullah Nasredin, the Sufi master, who said: ”I never tell the truth.” Try to grasp it. If this is true, it contradicts his statement. But if he lies, as he promises, it means he really is telling the truth.

1977, si sviluppa in tre fasi: la prima illustra i nostri corpi in posizione fetale allʼinterno di due uova; poi stiamo friggendo queste uova, mentre nella terza foto stiamo mangiando queste uova come pasto auto-sacrificale. Finalmente si mangia.
Questa performance è stata allestita come un ritornello, apparentemente tornando allo stato iniziale, ma ad un ottava più alta. Era come un serpente ouroboro, che si mangia la sua stessa coda, e cosi ricrea se stesso. Più tardi il tema dellʼembrione, delle uova e degli elementi sacrificali riapparvero in molte nuove forme nelle nostre fotografie. Non esiste un confine netto tra le foto in bianco e nero delle nostre prime performance e il lavoro successivo. La differenza è che allora avevamo degli spettatori e invitavamo diversi fotografi, mentre ora siamo noi stessi a fotografare lontano dalla vista del pubblico. Cʼè stato un momento in cui ci siamo fermati (per quanto riguarda le sculture) per trovare nuove idee. In ogni caso le nostre performance, allora come adesso, sono ugualmente delle still performances.

Le vostre fotografie sono come gemme; ognuna è davvero speciale. Cosa significano veramente per voi?
Sembra che durante tutti questi anni abbiamo sviluppato il nostro discorso fotografico alla maniera di un sutra. Nel processo del suo stesso divenire, porta con sè un filo concettuale che lega

How did the transition from performance art to “still performances” happen?
The motives of our early performances concealed in the mythological terms what we were supposed to experience later in our art-and-life complex. We were already involved in creating a blue print for our future photographs, that photomorgana of optical illusions and explorations by means of words, signs, and symbols. For example, our early still performance The Eggs, 1977, develops in three stages: the first one depicts two eggs with our bodies in the embryonic position inside them; then we are frying these eggs; and in the third picture we are eating these eggs as the self-sacrificial meal. Supper at last. This performance was enacted in a ritornello manner, seemingly returning to the initial state, but in the higher octave. It was like an ouroboros snake, eating its own tail, and thus recreating itself through its own known substance. Later the theme of embryos, eggs, and sacrificial elements reappeared in many new forms in our photography. There is no sharp border between the black-and-white photographs of our early performances and the later work. The difference is that then we had spectators and invited different photographers, now we shoot ourselves and out of the public view. There was a moment when we stopped (for sculptures) to regain new breath. However, our performances, then and now, are equally still performances.

assieme i suoi grani come un rosario (che è lʼesatto significato di sutra in Sanscrito). Alcune persone conoscono ed osservano se stesse solo in un flusso costante di sviluppo, sia esso un processo
interno oppure esterno. Questo lavoro, prima di ogni altra cosa, sfrutta le risorse della conoscenza, che è forse in grado di illuminare i punti interni di contatto. Forse è un esercizio necessario per lʼanima. Lʼarte moderna pone lʼattenzione principalmente su realtà decostruttive e su istinti primari, nutrendosi abbondantemente degli impulsi originati dallʼego dellʼartista. Vivere per lʼarte e vivere di arte è una cosa ben diversa. Con lʼaiuto dellʼimmaginazione, il viaggio verso il mondo intelligibile può riparare ciò che è stato rotto da una visione distorta e conflittuale della quotidianeità. Può portare gli archetipi in una dimensione temporale. Ed evocare lʼintuizione. Lʼintuizione, se messa al di sopra dellʼintelletto, porta con sè un effetto olistico.
Uno degli strumenti importanti in grado di creare quelle che voi chiamate “gemme” è nascosto tra le pieghe dellʼumorismo, che accompagna molti dei nostri concetti. Uno scherzo impercettibile, verbale o visivo, può aiutare a risolvere i paradossi nascosti dentro i limiti della vita. Di fatto, la vita umana è piena di zig zag, che spesso si uniformano attraverso una serie di contraddizioni. Per controbilanciare questa verità, noi cerchiamo di unire lʼessenza col nonsenso, con lʼaiuto del buon senso.

Nonostante le vostre immagini siano visivamente molto sofisticate, ho letto che voi non usate la manipolazione digitale. Come le realizzate?
Utilizziamo una fotocamera 4x5” che ci offre innumerevoli possibilità di esposizi esposizioni multiple. Tracciamo uno schizzo della prima esposizione sul vetro di messa a fuoco ed esponiamo la seconda immagine sullo stesso negativo col massimo della precisione.
Il procedimento richiede una certa disciplina e una concentrazione che può essere paragonata a quella richiesta ad un arciere. Cercando di ottenere unʼimmagine che sia il più vicino possibile a come lʼabbiamo immaginata, rendiamo praticamente irrisoria la necessità di ritagliare, ritoccare e manipolare durante il processo di stampa. Le fotografie sono basate su schizzi e, tuttavia, sono create dʼimpulso. Guardando indietro comprendiamo che tutti gli sforzi di una vita dedicata allʼarte in generale e alla fotografia in particolare sono stati piuttosto spontanei e in un certo senso naturali. Attualmente, realizziamo solo stampe a colori e utilizziamo Photoshop principalmente per il design, la poesia visiva e le correzioni tecniche delle scansioni. Un giorno potremmo usarlo anche per scopi creativi.
Non ci piace ricorrere ad assistenti perché abbiamo lʼimpressione che il nostro lavoro si sviluppi come in un processo alchemico, senza testimoni e senza influenze dallʼesterno. La musica barocca, più spesso quella di J.S. Bach, ci fa da sottofondo mentre lavoriamo. Ci aiuta ad organizzare le idee sui nostri volti come un dramma lirico o un sermone si adattano alla musica. Per quanto invece attiene agli sfondi, noi prediligiamo il velluto nero che si adatta bene a ricreare scene di vuoto contemplativo e di incertezza sulla collocazione geografica e temporale. Questo nero senza colore e senza fondo fa levitare la scena dalla monotonia del mondo, trattenendo solo lʼessenziale.
Per molti la nullità dello sfondo è inconcepibile. Noi la pensiamo diversamente: la vera pienezza non può essere veramente piena se non include in sè anche il concetto di vuoto.

I capelli di Rimma suggeriscono una grande forza, polivalente e significativa nelle vostre immagini. Perché i capelli sopra ogni altra cosa?
I capelli sono il materiale organico che è spesso più a portata di mano (e di testa). In termini tecnici, è un modo facile, compatto ed autosufficiente con cui vestire una donna. Eʼ il vestito più naturale, la più archetipica moda che non va mai fuori moda. Ci serve contemporaneamente sia da pseudo abbigliamento che come cilicio per la penitenza. Con questi creiamo oggetti come il Graal e tessiamo disegni lineari coi boccoli come nella Eva a figura intera. Siccome siamo inclini ad un lavoro basato su idee atemporali, dobbiamo seguire le loro regole, che richiedono simili forme mitologiche e metaforiche per manifestarsi.
La cosa più importante è che la struttura filamentosa dei capelli chiari ci permette di creare la minima densità corporea, esaltando, così in una certa misura, il principio della consapevolezza. Eʼ difficile trovare unʼespressione adeguata in una forma tangibile, che possa mostrarci una sostanza intangibile.
In generale, i pensieri inafferabili hanno la tendenza ad attrarre una corrispondente visione meno densa della figura umana. Sotto questo aspetto, la ricerca estetica (nel suo significato, dal greco, di senso di percezione) aggiunge qualcosa a quellʼidea. Nei sentimenti culturali e religiosi che caratterizzarono lʼarte antica, il lato caritatevole della realtà era mostrato sotto lʼaspetto delle qualità armoniose in cui lʼapparenza fisica non doveva mettere in ombra lʼaspetto metafisico. A Socrate è attribuita la preghiera di donargli la bellezza interiore dellʼanima e concedere che gli aspetti interiori e quelli esteriori di un uomo siano una cosa sola.

Your photographs are like gems—each one is really special, What do they really signify for you?
It seems that during all those years we were developing our photographic discourse in a manner of a sutra. In a process of its own becoming it carries a conceptual thread and binds together photographic beads like a rosary (that is precisely the meaning of sutra in Sanskrit). Some people apprehend and observe themselves only in a constant flux of development be it an external or internal process. This work, before anything else, is a tapping the resources of knowledge that can possibly illuminate the inner points of contact. Perhaps it is a necessary exercise for the soul. The low key of modern art is that it draws attention mainly to deconstructive realities and primary instincts, feeding largely on the artistʼs ego drives. To live for art and to live by art is quite a different thing. With the help of imagination, the journey to the intelligible world can restore what is broken by a distorted view of the bittersweet and conflict-ridden daily life. It can bring the archetypes into time. It can evoke intuition. Intuition, if raised above intellect, brings a holistic effect.

One of the important devices for creating these, as you called them, ʻgemsʼ is hidden in the element of humor, which accompanies many of our concepts. A subtle joke—verbal or visual—might help resolve the paradoxes hidden behind the limitations of life. Indeed, human life is full of zigzags, often conforming to one another through series of contradictions. To counterpoise this truth, we try to unite essence with nonsense with the help of the sense.

Despite the fact that your images are visually very sophisticated, I have read that you do not use digital manipulation. How do you shoot and create them?
We use a 4x5” view camera that gives us many opportunities for multiple exposures. We make a drawing of the first exposure on the ground glass and expose the second image on the same negative with the maximum of precision. The process requires certain discipline and concentration that can be compared to archery. Trying to shoot the image as closely as possible
to our idea, we minimize the necessity for cropping, retouching and manipulating during the printing process. The photographs are based on the sketches and yet, they are done on impulse. Looking back we understand that our life-long efforts in art in general and photography in particular were rather spontaneous and to a certain degree effortless. For the time being, we make only C-prints and use Photoshop mainly for design, visual poetry and technical adjustments of the scans. One day we might use it for the creative purpose as well.
We do not like to use assistants because we have a feeling that our work proceeds like an alchemical process without witnesses and without an external influence. Baroque music, most often J.S.Bach, is on in the background as we work. It helps us to set up our ideas on our faces like a lyric drama or sermons set to music. In terms of a real background, we prefer black velvet that is well suited to creating the scenes of contemplative vacancy and uncertainty of geographical location and timing. Such colorless, bottomless blackness lifts the scene away from the worldʼs treadmill, retaining only the essential. For many people the background nothingness is inconceivable. We see it in a different way: genuine fullness cannot be full unless it includes emptiness as well.

Rimmaʼs hair is incredibly powerful, polyvalent and significant in your images. Why the hair above everything else?
Hair is the most organic material that happens to be near at hand(and on the head). In technical terms, it is a convenient, compact, and self-sufficient way to create a womanʼs outfit.. It is the most natural outfit, the most archetypal fashion that never goes out of fashion. It serves us both as a pseudo-garment and as a haircloth for penitence, all at once. We make objects out of it like Grail and weave linear drawings of the braids like a full figure of Eve. Since we have an inclination to work with atemporal ideas, we have to follow their rules, which demand similar mythological and metaphorical forms for their manifestation.
The most important is that the filamentous structure of flaxen hair permits us to create the minimum of corporeal density, thus exalting, to a certain extent, the principle of consciousness. It is difficult to find an adequate expression in a tangible form, which can show an intangible substance. Overall, subtle thoughts have a tendency to attract a correspondingly less-dense vision of the human figure. In that respect, the aesthetic quest (and what is aesthetic—in Greek, a sense of perception) adds more to that idea. In the cultural and religious feelings that characterized the early arts, the benevolent side of reality was shown under the aspect of harmonious qualities in which physical appearance was not supposed to overshadow the metaphysical aspect. Socrates is credited with the prayer to give him beauty in the inward soul, and to grant him that the outer and inner aspects of man be at one.

Gli oggetti e i simboli che utilizzate nelle vostre immagini sono tratti da una specifica fonte iconografica o nascono alla vostra sensibilità personale e al vostro mondo interiore?
Probabilmente da entrambe le fonti. Benché diversi rispetto alla loro sostanza, nelle arti questi due mondi sono tuttavia plasmati lʼuno dallʼaltro. Dal punto di vista oggettivo, un romanzo universale contiene in sè i modelli per tutti i destini umani. Finché lʼuomo sarà sensibile ai giochi metaforici che propongano
una partecipazione allʼuniversale, sarà possibile tracciare in essi la legge della regolarità in natura. Essa parla sempre attraverso le voci delle persone adatte, per una qualche nascosta distribuzione delle cose. Ognuna di queste persone creative usa il linguaggio proprio al suo tempo e alla sua collocazione, portando le sue personali caratteristiche e la propria forza nella reiterazione del tema principale. Ossia il concetto principale dellʼesistere viene ripetuto continuamente in ciascuna generazione. Dal punto di vista soggettivo, molti artisti cercano di afferrare i modelli mitologici con lʼaiuto delle immagini e dei concetti. In questo non siamo soli. Non sarebbe una novità se dicessimo che lʼalto livello di accumulo dʼinformazioni può essere raggiunto attraverso lʼarte, specialmente ora, che i confini tra le arti e altre forme espressive (come la filosofia, la psicologia, la musica, il teatro ecc.) sono spesso trasgrediti se non abbattuti. Gli oscuri messaggi della natura sono sparsi qua e là. Noi cerchiamo soltanto di raccoglierli e di dar loro una forma attraverso la nostra arte. Per mezzo dellʼopera dʼarte, il sacro può entrare nel mondo reale e, se tutto va bene, influenzare lo spettatore.
Per essere più precisi, noi utilizziamo certi messaggi metaforici che si possono ascrivere al processo dʼindividuazione; questi sono filtrati dalla nostra consapevolezza, dai sentimenti; e della nostra vita in generale, e questo si riflette nelle nostre fotografie. Ma ancor più il nostro ruolo di osservatori si estende fino ad essere lʼosservatorio stesso in cui il nostro destino è insieme il metodo e il punto dʼattenzione. Eʼ, diciamo, il metodo di un chimico che impiega tinture e boccette per i suoi esperimenti: allo stesso modo noi usiamo la nostra mente come soluzione e il nostro volto come recipiente.

Quali sono i vostri progetti per il futuro?
La prossima serie di lavori riunirà elementi di fotografia e di scultura. Stiamo espandendo la forma e il significato della fotografia in un mondo di oggetti tridimensionali, usando metallo in rilievo, ritagli ed altre tecniche. Lʼombra del nostro lavoro concettuale è ancora presente dietro i nostri progetti, anche dal lato pratico. La recente retrospettiva sulla storia dellʼarte russa al Museo Guggenheim sta per riaprire nella sua sede di Bilbao, in Spagna, questʼanno. Uno dei nostri primi lavori concettuali Stones è incluso in questa mostra come a ricordarci che la Madre Russia è allo stesso tempo la pietra del guado e quella che ci ostacola.
Ma le cose più importanti succedono nel lato creativo, che riunisce i fatti e le leggende. Un nostro amico disse che le nostre foto gli ricordavano dei manoscritti illuminati di origine indefinita; e, infatti, abbiamo cominciato a trasformarle in manoscritto, estendendo la nostra fotografia nella letteratura. Nessunʼarte è immune dallʼermeneutica. Avendo così tanti concetti fotografici c he non sono ancora scaturiti, noi creiamo per loro un rifugio. Il libro dei Photoglyphs fu stampato diversi anni fa; ora stiamo lavorando al volume Perhappiness, in cui “perhaps” (forse) e “happiness” (felicità) sono intrecciati nel processo pittorico. La nostra biografia sempre in evoluzione può raggiunge la sua conclusione solo attraverso la nostra arte. Forse la sua ricerca estetica, la drammatizzazione psicologica e la sinossi analitica potranno in qualche modo ringiovanire anche qualcun altro.

Are the objects and symbols you use in your images taken from a specific iconographic source or do they come from your own personal sensibility and inner world?
Probably from both these sources. Though different in regards to their substance, in the arts these two worlds are nevertheless molded from each other. On the objective side, a universal novel contains the templates for all human destinies. As long as man is sensitive to the metaphoric games that propose participation in the universal, it is possible to trace in them the law of regularity in nature. It always speaks through the voices of suitable individuals, by some hidden dispensation of things. Each of these creative people uses the language peculiar to his time and location, bringing his own distinctiveness and force into the reiteration of the main theme. That is to say, the main theme of the life-time concept is constantly repeated in each generation.

Overall, subtle thoughts have a tendency to attract a correspondingly less-dense vision of the human figure. In that respect, the aesthetic quest (and what is aesthetic—in Greek, a sense of perception) adds more to that idea. In the cultural and religious feelings that characterized the early arts, the benevolent side of reality was shown under the aspect of harmonious qualities in which physical appearance was not supposed to overshadow the metaphysical aspect. Socrates is credited with the prayer to give him beauty in the inward soul, and to grant him that the outer and inner aspects of man be at one.

Are the objects and symbols you use in your images taken from a specific iconographic source or do they come from your own personal sensibility and inner world?
Probably from both these sources. Though different in regards to their substance, in the arts these two worlds are nevertheless molded from each other. On the objective side, a universal novel contains the templates for all human destinies. As long as man is sensitive to the metaphoric games that propose participation in the universal, it is possible to trace in them the law of regularity in nature. It always speaks through the voices of suitable individuals, by some hidden dispensation of things. Each of these creative people uses the language peculiar to his time and location, bringing his own distinctiveness and force into the reiteration of the main theme. That is to say, the main theme of the life-time concept is constantly repeated in each generation.
On the subjective side, many artists try to grasp mythological patterns with the help of images and concepts. In that, we are not alone. It would not be a novelty if we say that the high level of information storage can be reached through art, especially now, when the boundaries between the arts and other forms of expressions (such as philosophy, psychology, music, drama, etc.) are often transgressed if not broken down. Obscure messages of nature are scattered here and there. We just try to pick them up and shape them through our art. Via the artwork, the sacred can enter the matter-of-fact world and hopefully influence the spectator.
To be a little bit more precise, we use certain metaphorical concepts ascribed to the process of individuation; they became sifted thought our consciousness, feelings and our life in general, and that is reflected in our photographs. More than this, our role as observers is extended into the strange state of being the observatory itself where our own destiny is both the method and the point of attention. It is, so to speak, the method of a chemist who employs tinctures and flasks for his experiment; and in the same way we use our minds as solutions and our faces as vessels.

What are your projects for the future?
The coming series of work is reuniting photographic and sculptural elements. We are extending the form and the meaning of photography into the 3D world of objects using metal reliefs, cut-outs, and other techniques. The shadow of our conceptual work is still present behind our new projects, even on the practical side. The recent retrospective of the history of Russian
art at the Guggenheim Museum is going to be reopened in its branch in Bilbao in Spain this year. Our early conceptual work Stones is included in this show thus reminding us that Mother Russia is simultaneously our stepping-stone and stumbling block.
But things that are more important happen on the creative side, which unites facts and fables. One our friend said that our photographs remind him of illuminated manuscripts of indeterminate origin. And indeed, we began to turn them into a manuscript, extending our photography into literature. No art is safe from hermeneutics. Having so many photographic concepts that are not issued, we are creating for them a ʻpaperbackʼ shelter. The book of Photoglyphs was printed several years ago; now we are working on the book of Perhappiness, in which ʻperhapsʼ and ʻhappinessʼ are entwined in the pictorial process. Our own unfolding biography can come to completion only through our art. Perhaps its aesthetical quest, psychological dramatization and their analytical synopsis may somehow rejuvenate others, too.