Alexandr Jurasov:

– Are there any limits and restrictions in your activity?

– Everything is possible. It’s only a question of desires, assets, space and action. Well, as far as the ceiling is concerned, then Olympics is a definite ceiling in events’ organization. It’s hard to fancy something more of a great scale and staginess as Olympics opening. It’s a pure manipulation, a psychology of crowd management… That is what I like about our business so much. But today it’s ever more and more complicated to rule crowd’s emotions as modern person’s chakras are all loaded, which leads him or her to penetrate the world through some sort of valves. So the first thing the organizers are to carry out to shake a man, to awake him, to turn him back to that state of open-minded childhood is to struggle through this blockage and shoot a way out the overall routine. Still there are less and less methods of doing so. Today we have to invent the ones. And a child’s psychology is extremely grateful in this concern. Children do feel the fake, you just can’t get them in. Well, adults in their turn have some kind of a behaviour censor. I wouldn’t say that it imposes any restrictions but it does raise difficulties.

– What’s the way the Internet influences the creative process?

– Well, everybody is aware of the Internet pros. And speaking about its disadvantages I would point out the process of forming some sort of a common average creativity in the Internet space. I mean once a person feels like creating something new, he straightly addresses the Internet. And the teams working in the same sphere draw the information from the very same source. It all results into a systematic similarity of everything they get after all. And it’s all far from being somehow special. I mean in the end everybody gets the same dish comprising identical ingredients… It seems to me that a man visiting the Lenin’s Library some time ago can be in some certain way compared to an archeologist in search of something breathtaking while he was trying to figure out the ways he could get the materials on the needed topic. So we can also see that the good old grandfather’s method was also quite worthy you know. It is much of a labor, but it does lead to a more sophisticated, more profound results.

– Then in this case can we state that art is being degrading?

– Art is at the point of regeneration. I like the way Spengler interpreted the issue. A certain époque imposes a certain language of communication and self-expression. Every époque gives birth to its own art direction, and now it is the period the old values are giving their way to new ones. Art is experiencing the era of plagiarism and borrowing, kitsch and grotesque, an era of contradictories’ combinations and even an era of ill tastes I would say. And this is unavoidable thing to experience. Any impulse of inspiration and blow of fusion is followed by cynicism and analysis. Art has become smart. You know what has happened? Today an artist’s commercial platform and his advanced speculations on his own works are much more valuable than the works in themselves. It’s the last thing to do to comment your piece of work. A work can be referred to a piece of art only in case it does speak for itself. And once it needs being commented and interpreted it turns to a piece of some analytical art. And the whole thing is an attempt to find simplicity through analysis.

It’s a highly controversial issue. Well, let’s take even Picasso, making some cave drawings in the end, which can stand for his desire to speak out plainly and to be understood at the same time. But the thing is, that today many people try to speak out via this primitive language without having any substantial background behind, which stands for their attempt to give profanation for a pure art. That is the very moment when Marketing The Great and Management The Great join the play and start mixing people up. In view of the fact that there are not many really art sophisticated people it becomes even less challenging to festively wrap it all and sell. It all provokes the necessity to confirm as well as to conduct this huge amount of contents and awards… You know, there are much more arrangement in the art and not real events today.

– Does that all enable to become a Raphael in the époque of Photoshop?

– The crazy thing is about the fact that nobody perfects in technique. I wish somebody could paint as Raphael did! Nobody can, as it demands the whole life from one. And nobody is going to spend one’s whole life to something as we live in the era of quick money, which turned art into a decorative thing. People nowadays take everything as merely fast food, I mean they no more see godlike filling of the art, they no more feel like joining the godlike process. The capitalistic system brought forth ill-cultured consumers. On the opposite the mass art has developed greatly as far as its quality and efficiency are concerned. I can’t state that Britney Spears is an offgrade product, as well as I can’t but respect her “creators”. I can’t but respect Hollywood for its proper, high-quality movies. But these are all products, which must be properly distinguished with art. All this stuff is destined to enable multiple TV channels to cover round the clock broadcasts. This is all about content and that will never turn into a piece of art.

– So where will that all bring us?

– Nowadays people are putting less trust into science, which will naturally take its toll on the world outlook. We have got the idea of the fact that we will be degrading in case the progress with substitute every other value further more. According to Nietzsche: “Domestication makes every animal dull, fat and idle”. We undergo the same process. The more the mankind immerse into itself the more it gets disillusioned, and it’s always a tough disillusion. So after all the new targets will be figured out which will bring about the desire to personify these new tendencies in some new art. There’s really much left. But there’s one thing I am brilliantly sure about: speedup will bring no positive shifts. The mankind will surely see it soon. Speedup can be really sensible in the economic sphere, but it will never bring, let’s say, spring to come earlier. Art emerges only from a man and nature cooperation, a man in himself having invented nothing positively new. This is nature that enriches us with new ideas. And we all will find ourselves in an artificial world once we break up with nature. An artificial world stands for self-delusion and self-delusion implies irritation. We all need to learn how to draw life from the natural source again.

– Is it fair about all art directions including cinema?

– Cinema is a virtual world. It can mostly influence the mass mind. Just think about the number of people daily visiting the Tretjakov’s Gallery comparing to the some nice movie’s traffic within the same daily period. Cinema stands for mystics. It preserves time flow. I guess cinema is the Dream of Ancient Egypt.

I regret that they started neglecting the very shooting process due to the grant potential of computer graphics. Nevertheless to create masterpieces one should master even the skills of using a computer. Everything turns to be so artificial, silicon, the latter substituting everything natural and true. Still they managed to perfectly tackle various types of problems in the times, when there was not any computer graphics! A case in point is Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis”. You will meet the very true city of the future, which however was created through no usage of any computer tricks… I, for one believe, that a computer’s assistance does somehow kill the artist.

– Can art go together with material interest?

– Well, no doubt a commercial constituent is significant in every sphere, we try not to omit the one in our company as well. I guess, should we become slightly differently oriented, we would have become richer, spiritual richness is not implied here. It might not be true that we would survive, should we have done trivial things. And now we have a reputation of brave and creative guys, of a team always ready to provide interesting and special salvations. We do like such an approach and I will never exchange the one for something else. Regardless of the fact that we have accumulated a mammoth experience within a decade period, we still do our best to surprise people and grant them breathtaking emotions. Then it all looks as something fresh. Otherwise we do not get satisfied with what we do. And it’s impossible to move ahead once you are not internally satisfied. I mean you turn merely into a craftsman, the word being used in its negative sense. Long absent, soon forgotten!