"My costumes are suits": Artist Andrei Bartenev about beauty and self-expression
It seems that the daily artist Andrei Bartenevhe manages to do about a million things: he creates costumes for theatrical productions, puts on performances and oversees festivals, teaches on the course, where he helps those who want to understand the basics of modern art. This spring, he also tried on the role of the moderator of the “Fashionable Sentence”, where he created a sensation, urging the participants of the program, in general, not to be shy of being who one wants to - and he shines in unusual, complicated and fun costumes. We talked with Andrei Bartenev, turning almost every exit into an act of art, about the freedom to be yourself, beauty and egoism.
If we talk about experiments with appearance, then all my costumes are, of course, space suits. When we go out into the airless space - we get one spacesuit, we get into the aquatic environment - we get another, in the desert we put on the third, in the city, oversaturated with different people, - the fourth. This is what I do. And the task of my space suits is either to protect my weak human body, or to identify its strengths, or to change its structure. I have always done this and will always do.
I do not follow what is happening in fashion. If I follow, then only a small group of European designers, and these are just five names that I am curious about. But what I see, they practice outside of any tendencies, what they create is intended for a very limited audience. And then I myself can do it all.
I think that taking clothes and an image as a way of self-expression is easiest for big egoists. For the manifestation of the power of egoism, opposition to the environment is required, and a situation in which you are different and alienated from the general mass.
But getting rid of stereotypes depends solely on your free will - take it and get rid of it. Be different, it's much easier than you think, and much easier than being tied to the fears that hold you back.
I think that there is no movement in the direction of "ugliness" - it is rather a journalistic stamp. In fact, all these alien, clown, strange images have always been. Just the media then pick them up on the edge of the news, then throw it away. Accordingly, this culture returns and disappears. I think that the percentage of people who have such rare ideas about beauty does not change. Just curiosity and the degree of sales information varies. Now, probably, it became possible to sell again, and everyone began to talk about it. Of course, the industry of our tricks, "self-study", is also developing. But before there were other freaks, yet the percentage of eccentricity is constant.
Standards of beauty are changing, because our world is changing, and we are a human civilization: songs about beauty are in new words and new thoughts. If we did not find new ways to talk about beauty, then intellectual evolution would stop. The poetic, fantasy world of our thinking all the time gives us new versions of the understanding of beauty. New sounds, words, numbers. Why are all musicians, artists, writers needed? Because they have to write their stories about beauty, corresponding to the era in which they live.
Everything is very simple with me: the dictates of my thinking are much stronger than the dictates of opinions. And I trust my inner voice much more than the choir of external authorities. In the end, this voice is given to you by heaven - and it sounds, and you can do nothing. And it is he who is the measure of all your actions. I didn’t want to do what people around did, intentionally walked the path of denial and heard what I needed. I immediately understood what was left is mine, and this is not so little, this is enough for my whole long life.
For certain people, fashion is a visual language that signals: "I am my own, take me to your team." Look at at least the artists who are engaged in street art: they look like, because they are all from the same cultural cell. This is how it works; fashion exists so that with the help of appearance a person can find friends, comrades who will understand him. Clothing, of course, is a language just like graffiti on city walls. This is normal, and this is the knowledge to use. If you do not want to fall into any category, invent yourself. I can play anything, and I like it. I can be out of categories - and I can be in any of them.