2007 - 2017 - ongoing 

Digital photography project 

current edition:
52 x 52 x 5 cm
1 / 5 

Direct colour transfer on aluminium,
permanent ink marker, black aluminium frame. 

Border Lines is a minimalist photography project that spans for a period of over 10 years, with first prints being show at young art biennale in Moscow Museum of the contemporary art in 2008. It is a series of digital photographs of airport service vehicles guidelines on asphalt. Capturing the act of crossing borders, it focuses on the aesthetic of industrial mark making techniques framed in a minimalist composition, exploring the notion of borders as formal lines on the ground, which may remain abstract for one audience yet represent restrictions and rules for others. Suggesting that the city marked by the lines is place where set rules are being played out and experienced by different communities in different ways.

'BORDER LINES' 

Soviet DDR export TV-Set Telestar 4040 tuned into a pirate queer signal, translating quotes by various gender and queer theory writers and activist.

Referring to the notion of (gay) propaganda and television as its medium, this work explores the process of text transformation, as queer theory is transmitted through layers of digital analogue, and analogue to digital conversion, while glitch distortion refers to the censorship and misunderstanding.

PROPAGANDA

FORMATION#7
2016

sound sculpture

aluminium cut, transduction device, sound synthesis




Formation is an aluminium sound sculpture which may be assembled in various ways while each time a new sound file is composed and performed live through the surface of the sculpture itself through a special transduction device.

Taking inspiration in Japanese culture, graffiti aesthetics and methods of translating typefaces into abstract shapes; all elements of the sculpture are based on the graphemes of artist’s tag. Embedded connection slots allow the sculpture to be assembled in multiple ways. The interplay of gravity forces and material resistance defines the form.

FORMATION7

2012

video sound sculpture
1000 x 2000 x 1000 cm 

projection, video mapping composition, 
audio video loops, transduction device, plastic,
light reflective film.

Industrial reflective foil surface bent in the exhibition space dark room to form a half-pipe video portal. A combination of material, shape and generated video loops, challenge the perception of depth and distance. Single channel sound is played through the surface of the sculpture. Translated from each element of the overlaying spatial video composition, it emanates sound waves and mimics the state of Synaesthesia.

REFLECTION 180º

2013 - ongoing project

transmedia intervention
dimension variable

mixed media: water in pet-bottles, posters, display fridge,
single channel video, music theme, vinyl cut application, screen prints.

Queer Water or simply 'Q-Water' is a queer energy drink. An ever-developing transmedial work, that consists of collectible objects, installations, water bottles, advertising campaign posters, interventions, performances, video art, and various printed media items, that reference the notion of Russian ‘gay propaganda’.

The ambiguous wording of the Russian law implies that sexuality is a lifestyle choice, which may be marketed and advertised as a product and that this product will ‘turn’ the consumer onto this lifestyle choice thus infiltrating all sectors of society. Enabling further queer marketing through everyday consumerism, entertainment and finally necessities.

Seeking a way to avoid the censorship in Russia, while at the same time  being inspired by the innocuous imagery and other non-sexual images being outlawed for being too gay. As it happened in a real case study featuring a milk production company which was forced to remove the image of a rainbow from the packaging of a milk brand called “Happy Milkman”.
And yet, encoding a message in subtile details, like the shade of blue, that in Russian langue shares its’ name with a slang word which means fag and can be used as homophobic slur. 

On the other Queer Water project is criticising the phenomenon of pink-washing and the exploitation of the ‘Pink-Currency’ in the west — the idea that gay liberation may be only achieved through capitalism. 

Pink triangle symbol is used as a key element of Q-WATER branding style to create a work devoid of anything that could be seen as explicit, sexual or perceived as gay or provocative, yet encapsulating or bottling up the gay propaganda phenomenon created by the censorship.



QUEER WATER

'BREAKING CHAINS'
'STORY LINE'
'HOME VIDEO'
'LINE'
and others

An ongoing experimental film project.

If a film can create a total world for its audience, then ambient films are intended to create the ambience instead, to construct a narrative out of abstract ambient field recordings, audio-video loops, combined with a sound piece, and site specific audio-video installation. 

Ambient loop also stands for the model of display, yet in this case the term ‘ambience’ is not only referring to the aesthetic qualities of sound, but to the nature and method of creating a video loop itself. The light moves like a brush that is reconstructing a fragment of a field recording in the installation space. 

Manipulating the temporal and spatial of a film, similar to the way language is being manipulated in a poem — through rhythm, sound articulation, and symbolic.  


AMBIENT FILMS

multimedia installation
25 x 40 x 500 cm (dimension variable)

Single channel video bounce loop, water, projector, plastic tray, infusion drip set, video mapping composition, metal wire, two sound channels, saline solution, sound speakers, sound interface, electric piezo microphone,
HDMI and DMX cables 

in collaboration with film director Felipe Andrat.

Water droplets flowing from a medical infusion drip fall into a video projection mapped onto plastic tray commonly used for the analog photography darkroom development process. Each drop activates the sound file playback narrating a synthesised homophobic slur, randomly selected from an ever growing library of derogatory terms used against queer people all over the world. The video projection loop shows a fragment of a male body submerged in water, exposing the word faggot tattooed on his chest. While drops of black ink captured in the video are dripping down mixing with real ones, mudding the liquid depicted in the video.

MICROAGGRESIONS RIPPLE EFFECT 

„Sankhara - Sonic Formations" is a metallic sound sculpture of a human scale. It is a development of the series of works made of irregular asymmetrically cut metal plates, which have numerous connection slots embedded into them, allowing the work to be assembled, dissembled, and re-assembled in multiple combinations.

Connected to a digital sound setup, the assembled structure radiates a resonant ambient music piece, written specifically on and for the sculpture installation, using an experimental customized sound synthesis setup.

The experimental use of a modified transduction device, and liquid silicone, allows the sound wave signal to enter and flow through the material of the sculpture in a form of a micro-vibration.

That alters the soundscape. Transformed and amplified by the resonant body of work the sculpture fills up the installation space with light and sound of unusual physical properties, which bring certain elements of work into motion.

SAṄKHĀRA - SONIC FORMATIONS

A spectator is offered to use a stethoscope through which one can hear a collection of hate speech texts narrated by a speech synthesizer, through a modified sound-emitting device, submerged in a semi-transparent artificial stone, pigmented to look like amber.

Fragments of hate speech made available to the public by various politicians and public figures, examples of nationalism, ignorance, the delusion of white supremacy, and prejudice, are taken out of context and used as input data for a speech synthesizer application as a continuous ever-evolving text.

The audio signal outcome is then sent to a transduction device that is submerged in a piece of pigmented artificial stone cast. Trapped like a prehistoric insect in amber – nationalism, ignorance, white supremacy, sexism, homophobia, transphobia and sexism – relicts of the past.

No tolerance for intolerance. Concentrate and listen!

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Nikita A. Zhukovskiy

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