Andrey Ustinov Germany
My interdisciplinary projects deal with such topics as perception, property, resources, and power. I have participated in numerous international exhibitions, biennials, and festivals, among others, the 50th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen 2004, Flaherty NYC at Anthology Film Archives 2013, Media Art Biennale WRO‘ 2017, CityLeaks Festival 2019. I currently live and work in Berlin.
I have a special term for the business I‘m in: Secondary Art. SA is art that goes unnoticed at first. More specifically, it‘s the art of observing the process of perceiving. To make the perception visible or hearable, I assemble image or sound-reproduction constructions out of context-specific components. These constructions become technical extensions of the natural senses. A heartbeat becomes a drum, like in my performance „Heart Dance“, a mouth becomes a loudspeaker, like in the project „Medium“, ears become a TV antenna, like in „The Mobile Séance“. https://andreyustinov.com/manifesto/
First and foremost, my art pretends to have practical applications. I don‘t specify the function, but rather allow the perceivers determine it. My performances and site-specific sculptures are designed as functional public tools, each person is confronted with their own choice of application. I work with polarities such as “public display” versus “personal views”, “public tool” versus “personal use” and “public fascination” versus “personal disappointment”.
My projects aren‘t spectacles, but situation-based experiments, psycho-geographical research, where the unique guests‘ reactions are the only true project content. SA is not inventive, it‘s just a repetition of all the things artists do: performances, sculptures, short films, drawings, photographs, video installations and site-specific projects.
