Serhiy Anufriev: "I felt that my son was going into the abyss. But I could do nothing"

I would like to talk to the legend of Ukrainian conceptualism only about art. But the war breaks into the conversation with the voice of a father who lost his son. Anarchist, pacifist, and mystic artist Serhiy Anufriev tells us how his son Timofey, a philosophy student, made his choice to join the Russian Volunteer Corps, which is fighting on the side of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. And how today he has to pray to the cannonade to calm his rage. This interview is about how philosophical conversations heal. And why the number of years lived is not important to God, but their quality. You will find out why the artist dreams of a world without borders, when he thinks the war might end, and what art will look like after that.

Reference.

Ukrainian artist, representative of the school of conceptualism Serhiy Anufriev was born in 1964 in Odesa. His father, Oleksandr Anufriev, founded the Odesa School of Unofficial Art in the 1960s. His mother, Margarita Anufrieva, headed the Odesa Museum of Contemporary Art in the 1980s and the Odesa Center for Contemporary Art in the 1990s. It was she who introduced her son to the circle of Moscow conceptualists: in 1979 she showed him the first issue of the A-Ya magazine, and in the early 1980s she introduced him to the artistic environment.
Since 1985 Anufriev has lived in Moscow. In 1986, together with Sven Tundlach, he created the Avant-Garde Club (Klava) and became its first chairman. In 1987, together with Yuri Leiderman and Pavel Pepperstein, he founded the art group Inspection. Medical Hermeneutics", which later began to be exhibited in the West.
In the early 1990s, he worked in the Kyiv squat "Paris Commune" ("Parkomuna"), participated in the groups "Cloud Commission" and "Tartu Society". In the 1990s, he taught at art colleges in Western Europe.
After his mother's death in 1998, Anufriev returned to Odesa. He took part in the activities of the New Art Association, the countercultural magazine PLI, contributed to the creation of the Odekadans literary school, and founded the Kosa Society. Together with the artist Ihor Husiev, he created the Mir group.
In the 2000s, he worked as an art director at the Marat Gelman Gallery, first in Kyiv and later in Moscow. Together with Hermes Seigott and Sergei Afrika (Bugaev), he created the "orchestra of unknown instruments" called "ONI". During this period, Serhiy met the artist Katia Chala, with whom he has a son, Timofey (2004), and a daughter, Anfisa (2006).
In 2009-2010, the family moved to Odesa. Here, Anufriev formulated the principles of "patternism" and published a number of theoretical texts on Ukrainian contemporary art in the magazine Art Ukraine.
During the full-scale war, his son Tymofiy Anufriev died fighting for Ukraine as part of the Russian Volunteer Corps.

How do you feel about the Russian attacks and blackouts in Odesa?

Serhiy Anufriev. PHOTO: Natalia Dovbysh

At the beginning of the war, I was very afraid of explosions. I wrote poems about it. But later I got used to it. I even slept to the cannonade, not realizing in my sleep that it was there.

But now I'm not so much afraid as I am filled with rage and aggression. I start praying, reading the Shiva mantra. And it helps. It even influences the situation, everything calms down.

I'm waiting for it to be over, because it's time. All resources, both human and economic, have been destroyed and exhausted. We need to build a new economy to create new resources. This is what civilized countries do - in Europe, in America. We also need to rebuild something here.

I think that in the future, Russia needs to build a different society, a different canon based on different principles.

For example, Estonia has switched entirely to bitcoin and new technologies, and they have freed up a lot of bureaucracy. All those structures where clerks used to sit have been freed up, and people now have a different function. But I think artificial intelligence will free everyone.

That's why I develop, for example, the art of "absolute realism" because it cannot be reproduced by artificial intelligence.

What is "absolute realism"?

If you look at the history of art, the Renaissance is light, the Baroque is darkness, Romanticism and Impressionism are air, and the avant-garde is form. And one step from there you come to the idea, to conceptualism. But "absolute realism" demonstrates a more fundamental thing than an idea.

The principle of absolute realism is perception. At the basic, primary level, it is the only thing that exists. And from perception come eidos, discourse, form, and so on. Absolute realism is about traces. It's not an image, but a fixation of what is around us. As if with a camera. This art is more related to photography. But it can also be painting. It is not emotionally colored. It is not a choice, but the absence of a choice, intention or vector.

The problem is that we don't see what we are surrounded by. Our environment is a mystery. We see only 10% of it - what touches us or is in our interests. And everything else we miss as spam. 90% of reality is spam for us.

But we, as Aldous Huxley wrote in The Doors of Perception, can see everything-all the secret that was hidden. It wasn't hidden, but we didn't see it because it was "not the time" for us, beyond our interests. It was not interesting.

In what format do you see this art?

Serhiy Anufriev. PHOTO: Natalia Dovbysh

I want to do merchandising - on ceramics, on plates, on various small forms.

But most of all I dream of large formats - murals. I know that they were made before the war, but not now. I don't know where the people who are responsible for this are, but I really want it to come back.

I want to paint a mural in Odesa, for example, on the French Boulevard. There is a big white horizontal wall at the National University. I see it as a table surface. There are books and a pen on it. A minimalist image in the style of absolute realism. And all this on a huge scale.

The format creates the magic of color and space. You start to see something different - something that is actually around us.

My goal is to change the scale. If we learn to change the scale of our surroundings, we can change the scale of the whole reality. And with it, our version of it. And maybe this is how we will stop everything that is happening. The hell that is going on now.

I just wanted to ask you about this. I read your 2017 article "Kobzar Under the Pillow," in which you expressed the opinion that the West divides and rules, and that Ukraine and Russia are artificially divided and brought to a state of war. After February 24, 2022, how do you think about this? Has your opinion changed?

I can explain what I mean. Any government, especially the American government, is evil, a parasite. I am an anarchist. I've always said that. I'm not in favor of the government, I'm in favor of people being able to live in peace and freedom.

Like, for example, in Switzerland. There is no "government" in our usual sense. It is true, it is not an illusion. I lived there and saw how people live. Life there is very transparent because people do not hide anything.

Just like in the Netherlands, it is a Protestant position. Large windows on the ground floors: people live as if in an open space. They sleep, and you can see it from the street. And you can sit outside and have dinner. There are no rigid boundaries that divide us here.

I am for a life where people trust each other more. Where they are not divided by states or any administrative boundaries. All of this, in my opinion, is to some extent absurd.
There is an American artist named Peter Fend. He traveled with a map on which the world was divided into river basins. River basins are a much more natural way to divide the world. Perhaps in the future, the world will be organized in this way, not on the principle of states at war with each other.

I am for the brotherhood of nations. And for each nation to preserve its identity. Like, say, in Germany. People there are very open-minded. Bavarians feel like Bavarians, but they know that they are part of Germany. Munich residents can say: we are Munich residents, but we are also Germans. And also Europeans. And more broadly, part of the West and the whole world.

Serhiy, I wanted to come back to Odesa. You once said that Oleksandr Roitburd, an artist and at one time director of the Art Museum, with whom you were friends, brought the city out of the mire of oblivion. And after his death, there was no one to continue this line. What, in your opinion, is happening in Odesa now in the cultural sense?

I was in Kyiv not so long ago, at Christmas. And I can say that we cannot even compare. Kyiv has a cultural life, contemporary art. New and old galleries work there. People buy something, exhibit something. There is life there. There is even an underground.

There is nothing like that in Odesa. All the people I'm interested in are either fighting or left at the beginning of the war. The artist Ihor Husiev was mobilized. As a result, there were three of us left: me, Viktor Kolosov and Oleksandr Dremov. My colleagues make great paintings - each of them in their own way. And it is very interesting. It is connected with the social, but not directly, but through a parable, through a metaphor.

Now Kolosov has an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. Maybe someday we will team up for a project.

But Odesa is such a magical city that it may happen that we will stay here alone.

Do you think the state or the city should help artists?

Of course, we need help. But it's not about money. As an anarchist, I'm in favor of no money at all. So that we can eat because we paint. And for this we should be given clothes and housing.

It's not utopia, it's possible. It's a form of barter. We can exchange what we make for what we need. You give a person pants and they give you a painting. You give a salad and he gives you a book. Everything can be exchanged.

Things have a price. But money is not a perfect system. It's just the transition of one thing into another: perception turns into consciousness, consciousness into image, image into action. Actually, this is our life.

What should the function of art be nowadays?

First of all, art should not be one-dimensional. It has many floors, many levels.

At one level, it can be very political-aimed at the victory over evil, over darkness. Not only over its specific manifestation, but over darkness in general. This is relevant today.

At the same time, there should be art that is not about this at all, but about something else. For example, absolute realism, which opens our eyes to the reality around us.

All dimensions of art are connected through associations. However, sharp, political art should not be mixed with aesthetic art - art that speaks about aesthetics, demonstrates pure, unbiased perception without a specific role or direction of action. It does not act, but rather perceives.

I am in favor of preserving this multidimensionality in art.

Serhiy, I want to ask you about Timothy. How did it happen that a person who studied at the philosophy faculty in St. Petersburg decided to fight in the RDC?

Sergei Anufriev. PHOTO: Natalia Dovbysh

I clearly see who the aggressor is. And I hate aggressors. All my life I have hated any violence. So I tried to say something to Tymofiy, but it was impossible. It was his decision.

I saw that he was going into the abyss, that he would fall. I felt that he was going the wrong way, but I could do nothing. I know that God does not care how long you have lived. What matters is the quality of life you have shown.

"Aeneas" is what they write on missiles now as revenge for him. Many people have already been killed. And this, in my opinion, is not very good either. But I respect it. War has its own rules. There must be justice.

Many people die for the truth, for the truth. I believe that this is a masculine position, close to the divine. The life that Timothy lived is incredible in its intensity and richness. It could be stretched into a very long TV series. This is not the life of a 21-year-old boy. This is the life of a man who has already seen a lot, starting from childhood.

Even his birth was incredible. He could have been born in a taxi.

Katya gave birth in the water. We prepared the bathroom, but the landlord kicked us out. We got into a taxi and went to a friend's house. There Katia went to the bathroom. At that time, some people from Britain were in the three-room apartment with a cake, roses, and champagne. And suddenly Katia came out of the bathroom with a baby in her arms, still with the placenta, and the umbilical cord hadn't even been cut. And all the women started crying because it was incredible.

Let's talk about philosophical counseling. Who comes to you? How similar is it to psychotherapy? Can such conversations help the military with PTSD?

A person comes, we drink tea and just talk. It can be any kind of discourse or stories, but the main thing is that we are equal. I try not to violate the boundaries of their inner space and not to delve into trauma. On the contrary, I take her away from this issue, offering a kind of excursion into another reality. When attention shifts, internal knots gradually unravel by themselves.

For me, the essence of therapy is to move away from the problem. As long as you are fixated on it, no solution appears. The way out is to change the state, to imagine another life, other interests, without touching the painful.

Psychoanalysis, on the contrary, often works by immersing oneself in the trauma, and this can be painful. I believe that it is not always necessary to open the wound.

Sometimes the problem disappears if you stop feeding it with attention. It can dissolve in a state of inner peace, goodwill, and a certain meditation.

Philosophical counseling is also therapy, but through a calm conversation. No arguments and no intention to solve something immediately. Just being together in a dialog, drinking tea and letting your thoughts flow freely. It's more like a state of relaxation than working on a problem.

Serhiy, how do you feel about the next decade? What will happen to art, culture, and the world?

There are different scenarios. If there is no major war, culture will flourish. Even if conflicts remain, as they always have, art will develop very intensively in the new world.

A new market will appear, probably on the Internet. It will be formed by IT people: they will buy art, but more often affordable art, merchandise, small forms. This is a new class of consumers.

Once upon a time, art was supported by aristocrats, then by the bourgeoisie. Now it is technical professions, people of the digital world. They will create a network market, a new form of art's existence.

At the same time, traditional formats will remain. They will become rarer, almost rare, but they will not disappear. Like in Japan: there are slow trains stylized as nineteenth-century trains. Tickets for them are more expensive than for high-speed trains, because you can see the journey, not just get there.

I hope that this logic will spread. After this turbulence, the world will need calming, therapy. Perhaps it will be a new Renaissance, a broader and longer process.

The current state is exhausting itself. It cannot go on forever. The war has to change its form or stop, otherwise it does not happen.

I have a feeling that it will end soon. And maybe this year. I did not feel this before. Now it seems that something is shifting on a deeper level, and this is rather a positive change.

People need to come to their senses. They need to get out of the state of struggle and move to contemplation. They saw a different world.

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