A free display at the Design Museum in London, created by performance artist Fyodor Pavlov-Andreevich saw a collection of wooden furniture spread throughout the museum. Climb, hide within, and temporarily inhabit these sculptures to create your own experience of ANTIFURNITURE.
Interview with the artist
BK. Antifurniture. You referred to the exhibition as a theme park: a source of entertainment, often specifically designed for children. What is the goal of the exhibition for you? Are you trying to evoke the curiosity and the excitement of children on a playground, or are you trying to redefine how a human body should experience itself through its interaction with your pieces? Are you trying to entertain people, or to wear them out?
FPA. My fascination with theme parks started very early in my childhood. I grew up next to an amusement park in Moscow. When I was young, we scarcely had enough money for food, never mind roller coasters. At the time the rides appeared completely unattainable: so sumptuous, yet still out of reach. I used to peek through the fence at the attendants, whom I used to imagine as goddesses reluctantly granting access to their magic – the rides, or the Cave of Fear – without paying the slightest attention to the children around them. As I was growing up, in games with my friends, I started inventing my own amusement parks, and I continue doing so to this day. Back then, the props were quite basic: a stick to imitate a horse, or drawing lots to choose what the attraction would be. Through these games I discovered my mind, my passions, my sexuality, and my fears. To me, the attractions represent a merger between the carnal, the terrible, and the frightening; in other words, between tragedy and circus. The rides in the exhibition are based on these early games I played. They are analogue, old-school, made of wood, and only brought to life by the movements of the human body. They are uncomfortable and bulky. They are the ultimate impersonation of what I had in mind when I was a child – the theme park of my dreams I never got to visit.
BK. It seems that fear and joy go hand in hand for you. Why is that?
FPA. I think the link between fear and delight (or joy) is equivalent to the one between veneration and humiliation or debasement. Look, a perfect example of this relationship comes from early European history. On the main square of a town, a prisoner would have their arms and legs chopped off to the townspeople’s delight, and then what was left of their body would be tarred and feathered. The victim would be wheeled around for the assembled masses to belittle and to taunt them. Citizens would kneel in front of them in mockery, calling them a deity and asking them to forgive their sins. This throws into question our understanding of what, who and how the society puts on a pedestal and how slim the border is between consecration and destruction. This reversal is in our nature, and it does not take a big push for the society to abandon the ideals it held dear if something changes its perspective.
BK. But why is fear so important to your art, and this project in particular?
FPA. The concept of fear is a cornerstone of Antifurniture. I realised it long after uncovering the initial idea for the project: this potpourri of rocking, shaking, swaying traps for the body. The world of phobias is enticing, varied and all-encompassing. It can never be fully explained, but it also tells us everything about human behaviour. Every piece in the exhibition is related to different phobias: sometimes only one, sometimes as many as five. I want the viewer to come face to face with the attractions, carrying their fears with them, to engage with the works and maybe even find some relief in the process. Each and every fear is a product of our consciousness. By changing our perception, our consciousness can be altered in a way that would ease, or maybe even heal, our fears.
BK. Is the role of the invigilators crucial to the experience?
FPA. The invigilators, or the guards, are just like the Horae who stand at the entrance toMount Olympus, or St. Peter the Apostle who greets each soul at the Pearly Gates of Heaven. They have the power to grant or refuse entrance, and you are at their mercy. But if they let you in, they help you cross the border. The invigilators hold the role of escort, but also the role of translator: the Pythia who serves the Apollo. When we, within our minds, stand at the edge of another mode of being, the person who has the courage, even the audacity to fulfil the role of the messenger becomes very important to the people around them. Sometimes these people have no knowledge or right to take on this role, they are simply pretending, but it doesn’t matter, because it happens as it was meant to be for that moment in our lives. That’s why I wanted the inviligators at the Design Museum to be entirely subjective: they are granted the freedom to act as co-creators—even demiurges, like the Horae themselves. bring their unique perspectives and artistic visions as they shape each visitor’s relationship to and interaction with the pieces.
BK. As a performance artist, your presence is absolutely key to your work; however, for this exhibit you are leaving the pieces behind in your place. How does that feel for you? And where do you fit in?
FPA. I see myself as a planner, a facilitator of the process, even a dispatcher. I want to invite people onto this stage, then step aside. Nothing remains in my hands; I will not be there and I will not be able to help. So I am not that carrier, the Pythia, or the controller. My role is to connect the dots. I am building a collective performance body out of the visitors to the exhibit, and together they will substitute for my physical presence.
BK. I want to move the conversation onward to the viewer experience. Antifurniture requires active engagement from the visitors – more precisely active passivity, or a surrender to the shape of the sculpture. There is also a subtext of violence within the pieces in the exhibition, as the body is ultimately forced into a set of discomforting positions. Did you set out to raise this topic of violence without direct references to death or aggression?
FPA. I think we live in a world where the border between cruelty and tenderness is almost non-existent. All human relationships exist in waves of one followed by the other, and wherevercruelty is found, tenderness will inevitably turn up as well. An obvious example would be the sexual dynamics in a lot of relationships, including BDSM culture and other kink communities, but I am not just talking about sex. When applying these concepts to the history of performance art, it is acceptable for artists to be cruel to themselves, as they are the keepers of their own body, but cruelty towards others is never permissible.
When I engage in performance, I never know what consequences I will face afterwards. In this project, I am working with other people’s bodies, and I have to think twice about where the work could lead them. I am not asking visitors to sacrifice their well-being, but I am asking them to sacrifice both their mental and physical comfort. It is important to me that I share that burden, putting part of it on the visitors’ shoulders. This is precisely why I lead them to the realm of fear.
My pieces are meant to change the rules of engagement and force the participant into a limbo, a vacuum where fears do not exist. Art often strives to lead the viewer into this state, but does so delicately and from afar. Instead, I want to face it head-on, unapologetically, because I refuse to be fearful. My field is performance art, where an artist often finds themself walking the thin line between life and death, often akin to committing a ritual suicide. This is my way of performing that ritual.
BK. Can you delve into a particular piece within this context? I know that “Lord of the Fishes” means quite a lot to you. You were thinking about the home and the human body, right?
FPA. For a number of years I have been studying aporophobia: a fear of homeless people, or, as described by Adela Cortina, “the rejection of the poor”. One of the first motifs that emerged in this project was the lack of space for the human body. This is also a story of migrants and migration, where today 500 people might squeeze into a boat meant for just 50. How? What condition were their bodies in while they were aboard that vessel? If they even made it to the shore, where would they fit in once they reached their destination? What niches, nooks, and corners exist for them? “Lord of the Fishes” tells a story of a body that is not welcome anywhere.
BK. How did the shape come about?
FPA. Mechanically it was very challenging. Don’t forget that this exhibition involves a certain forced choreography. I wanted to build an objectconstruction that would contort a body into a very specific position, leaving no alternatives. It took us almost three years, but the beginning of the war added new momentum and direction to the project. It shed light on how it needed to grow, as the need for such sculptures became impossible to ignore. We worked with carpenters, designers, and engineers throughout a long and challenging process, but eventually, we found the correct solution.
BK. Is your team essential to this project? What is your working process?
FPA. Again, in this project, play the role of dispatcher. I have not touched any part of it with my own hands. I am neither an architect nor an engineer; I cannot build or draw; essentially, I am useless. This is why I need people who will act as my eyes and as my hands. (For most of the sculptures presented at the Design Museum, I teamed up with BoND Architecture, a celebrated firm founded by a duo of New York-based Israeli architects. We share a great deal in common, including our admiration for Israeli artist Absalon and Soviet architect Ivan Leonidov.) Still, in order for them to project my consciousness into their finished product, they need to do it blindly. The whole team consists of about 40 people, and not a single one knows the full purpose of the work. The work requires an element of the unconscious mind. For every person that I work with, the story will be a little bit different:. Put differently, it is important for me that one hand doesn’t know or understand the actions of the other. That way, my unconscious becomes nestled into someone else’s, like a chicken laying an egg from which a giraffe with a tiger’s tail is born, who can then fornicate with a peacock…
BK. In your work, you treat your body as a form of social sculpture. Did this mission translate into this exhibition? Do your creations take this role upon themselves or project a specific message?
FPA. When the team and I were discussing the project, we realised that we were creating a shell, a framework to be filled and then attributed to any political, cultural or even natural occurrence imaginable.
It reminds me of a joke.
A man comes to a doctor with a frog on his head. The doctor asks, “How can I help you?”
The frog replies, “Could you please help me? There’s something stuck to my ass.”
My point here is that you do not always know what is primary and what is secondary. Antifurniture is a set of triggers, a collection of objects that can mean completely different things depending on the audience, the place or the moment in time. The sculptures are empty without a person to fill them.
BK. But you have also created these attractions, bearing in mind what people should confront during their interaction. We talked about Lord of the Fishes, the Centipede is about human connection?
FPA. The Centipede is about togetherness. In Russian, there is a saying that can be directly translated as “the feeling of the elbow”. What happens when people come together, how will it play out? Sometimes it makes us safer and sometimes it puts us in bigger danger, sometimes it can save your life, but sometimes it can kill you.
In your practice, you take a lot of inspiration from cis female and transgender performance artists. Marina Abramovic is an old friend of yours, but you also admire Valie Export, Ana Mendieta, Zackary Drucker; what speaks to you in their experiences?
I am a very empathetic person, sometimes wastefully and chaotically. But I feel closest to what is usually considered a female trait: protection and compassion. My biggest role model is my mother. She is the most important person in my life: she is my monster, my meaning of life and my Demiurge, all at the same time.
But I am not sure that the gender of the artists I admire is specifically important. In my career I looked up to quite a few male artists or writers: Francis Alys, Daniil Kharms, Stelarc—or, on a more recent side of things, Cuban artist Carlos Martiel. But when I speak about the culture and the country I belong to, I always envision her as female.
BK. Why do you believe a museum to be the right venue for Antifurniture?
FPA. I am trying to reveal the museum as an inherently unsafe space. What am I trying to say here? Among public spaces, a museum is universally regarded as the most secure. In contrast to a theatre or a cinema, where people can be forced to experience emotions; made to laugh, or cry, or hurt; where it can be challenging to stand up and leave when you want, a museum seems safe. Visitors are, in a manner of speaking, completely free. They are free to engage—or not; free to stay as long as they want—or free to leave. Nothing is mandatory, not even feelings. This is the greatest deception. The museum is the most dangerous of them all, as you cannot see how, when and by what you will be affected. The moment of impregnation remains undetected. So this is a manifestation of a change to an inherently safe and secure ambience, where the museum is no longer a space for contemplation and congregation, but a place where your personal space can be breached (more like a brothel or a massage parlour). For a lot of people basic physical contact is threatening, but here you are entering into it voluntarily and engaging with people you have never met before, and whose faces or spirits you’d never be able to identify, like in a glory hole or dark room. Museum becomes the space where everything happens.