Andrey Petrov

Someone I know once said a curious thing, “We don’t have PR-experts who’d be capable of executing the systematic approach”. People who have the faintest idea of the kind of image of the company they’re working for they should be promoting are hard to find in our country.

The profession of a designer (graphic designer, interior designer, etc.) has been largely discredited in our country. The amount of useless and shallow people among them is unbelievable! They make a postcard without even giving it a thought — who they’re making it for and why. They see their objective as self-fulfilment, not, say, helping this club create a positive appeal, for example.

Complexes are the reason we do things. However, while someone engages in creative endeavours, others don’t get past flashy self-promotion. The greatest heroes are the greatest cowards. Death is what scares them far less than other people thinking that they’re cowards. That’s why they’re always the first to jump in front of a tank…

Nowadays the market is undergoing a colossal shift. We’re moving away from western models, gradually abolishing the monstrosities previously associated with big business: when they used to bring a photographer from overseas to do a regular photo session, and pay him 60 thousand pounds for three shooting days…This fad was left in the past, but now the client expects us to work for free.

The problem with Russia is lack of such concept as respect for intellectual labour. Let me explain, when a person is operating a machine trying to manufacture something, nobody comes up to him and says, “Give it to me”. Because everyone knows that whatever that is he’s manufacturing, it costs money. But people can just come to Baskov and ask him, “Why don’t you sing for us?” Or my friends turn around and say to me, “Would you make some business cards for me?” And if I name the commercial price, they get upset. But I don’t say to my friends who do construction, “Listen, how about you build a house for me?”

If you look at what actually happens when a crisis strikes — it strips us of our obsession with superficial glitter. We used to be spoiled by money. And even the very intelligent people who I was lucky to be surrounded with had somewhat given in to the influence of all this trinketry: what’s the make of what you wear on your wrist, what do you smoke, what do you drink? Nowadays, the crisis is eradicating all of this… It’s the time of purification… One thing that bothers me though, is that, like they say, you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs...I wouldn’t want to be one of those eggs.

A touchstone of your successfulness is your own very worldview confirmed through the acts of creation you engage in.

I’ve noticed that Russia has a power to enchant foreigners. And I can see why. The well-tuned mechanism knows no faults, whereas Russia is the country where both past and future are equally unpredictable. This makes us feel useful, this leaves room for His Grace Chance, who plays a tremendous role here! There’s something going on here all the time, some drastic changes, every 4 or 5 years we discover some new opportunities. Whereas all that’s left to them is boredom, and that is what they come here for — they’re looking for adventures, new opportunities.

Any Russian girl could be a beauty queen of France or Spain. Russia is the only country where sexism flourishes to the extent that is unimaginable to any European country, no European woman feels as much of a woman, a feminine half, as a Russian woman. It might have something to do with the patriarchal norms that have been incorporated into our mind. A woman in Europe wants to match men in their spheres: because you’re a director, I’m also going to be one; because you’re a fighter pilot, so am I…But there’s no other country where girls would long for marriage as much as they do here! Girls overseas want to have a career, our girls want to get married.

When adopting something, we tend to focus on adopting the form, often forgetting about the content. Unfortunately, it happens too often that it’s the form that becomes an end in itself.

A lot of people here like to say things like: “I’m a bit of a designer. I’m a bit of a psychologist…” Well, if you ask me, I’m a bit of a surgeon, would you like your appendix removed, maybe? (Laughs.)

I was 11 when my grandfather, a phenomenal man, once said to me, “The professionals are all extremely uninteresting, boring, narrow-minded people”. I was astounded. How can that be?! But he carried on, “You see, a child is born into this world with his eyes wide open. Everything fascinates him. Why is the sky blue? Why is mum the way she is? And then we grow up to become professionals…” and the only thing that interests us is work. I don’t want this to happen to me. I want to preserve this childlike fascination with the world.

As long as you’re interested in living, you’re interested in everything.

People go to temples. Some of them want to find God; some of them want to escape people.

Downshifting is an act of weakness. It’s the same with many other people who pray to a whole lot of different gods just because they don’t believe in themselves.

One of my friends once said, “I can’t live without doing good. It’s not the stack of cash that makes me feel like a man, it’s helping people”.

True, we all pay our taxes, but is there really anyone out there who’d judge those who don’t?

Regardless of how busy I am, I always read about 100 pages of fiction a day.

My main source of information is people who are smarter than me, talking to them, trying to argue their position without seeking for intellectual reassurance, but to obtain their knowledge.

The problem with a lot of people is that they view a textbook as an undeniable fact, not a ground for speculation. Einstein once said, “Almost everybody is born a genius. By the time we reach consciousness, at about the age of 6-7, we already know what we can do and what we can’t. And then there’s a fool who starts questioning everything, and oddly enough, it’s him who makes the great discovery”. I guess Einstein had the right to say something like that (smiles).

Foreigners are not afraid to smile. Watch a foreigner walk into a club, he’s smiling from ear to ear. And have you seen the way a guy with a hairstyle like mine walks in? “I’m a man, a dominant male, move over, all of you!” Sounds like they, unlike us, aren’t worried about getting hurt.