{"id":67504,"date":"2026-09-09T20:04:55","date_gmt":"2026-09-09T19:04:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/londoncult.co.uk\/?p=67504"},"modified":"2026-09-09T20:05:32","modified_gmt":"2026-09-09T19:05:32","slug":"andrey-bartenev-behind-every-artist-lies-a-word-from-heaven","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/londoncult.co.uk\/en\/andrey-bartenev-behind-every-artist-lies-a-word-from-heaven\/","title":{"rendered":"Andrey Bartenev: \u00abBehind Every Artist Lies a Word from Heaven\u00bb"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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You\u2019re coming to London for an event that has become an important part of the city\u2019s cultural life. Alternative Miss World was created by Andrew Logan in 1972. What makes it so important to you personally?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

An artist is like a star, a centre from which beams of light radiate. One of those beams stretched from 1992 to 1995: in 1992, at the Assembly of Untamed Fashion in J\u016brmala, I met all my British friends. Then, in 1995, I came to London for the first time to take part in Alternative Miss World. It was held that November at The Grand in Clapham Junction, an old Victorian theatre that had been turned into a concert venue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The atmosphere was extraordinary \u2014 because of what was happening onstage, what was happening backstage, and the whole ensemble of creative people I encountered there. Of course it was an incredible adventure, but it was more than that. I felt as though I had landed inside some enormous pie in which everyone around me was being baked \u2014 and I was being baked along with them. Every creative response I had, all my excitement and enthusiasm, was needed every second. At one point I even began praying that I would never win: according to the rules, once you win, you leave the competition and join the jury. I didn\u2019t want to be put out to pasture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wanted to remain inside that competitive atmosphere. Every time I invented something different. There was Miss Help Russia, for example \u2014 a performance using Soviet imagery. We came out carrying red flags; there were red rabbits onstage. But fairly soon I began moving away from that subject and choosing images that a British audience could read more readily. There was a whole succession of performances.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then, in 2018, I finally won as Miss UFO. The costume was based on a portrait of Lana Del Rey, printed onto stretch jersey that covered a mass of balloons. From the outside it looked as though I had this gigantic head made up of dozens of Lana Del Rey portraits. Nobody could even work out which head to put the crown on, so in the end they simply carried it alongside me. Then, as I was being carried through the auditorium on my throne, a garland of balloons began to strangle me. By the time I got back to the stage, I was half-conscious, wheezing and half-suffocated. Sasha Frolova, the previous winner, saved me: she tore through the cord that was choking me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So why am I entering as a contestant again now? Probably to show a bit of ingenuity, humour and wit. Of course I understand that there is absolutely no chance they\u2019ll let me win again. But the nerves, the rhythm, the joy backstage \u2014 it\u2019s a wonderful adventure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I realised a long time ago that life is incredibly short, and finding a truly unique adventure in the modern world is very difficult. And to find yourself among people with humour, excitement, a sense of dance, uncontrollable laughter \u2014 that is an enormous joy. Alternative Miss World has all of that. People become completely uninhibited; they improvise. And no matter how well I know the entire structure of the event by heart, the joy of the costumes, the make-up, the masks \u2014 that joy is real.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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About five years ago, you said that the most important thing about all this was the feeling of absolute freedom. Is that still true today?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes, absolutely. It is a ruler with which you can measure the breadth of your freedom. I have one delusion \u2014 perhaps more than one, but this is the main one! I believe that every human being born on this planet is born to be an artist. Unfortunately, as they grow up, many people deliberately kill that ability. Sometimes it has to do with the environment in which they are formed; sometimes it comes down to very personal choices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Creativity exists, in one form or another, in every profession. But pure artists are, of course, utopians: writers, poets, musicians, composers; everyone who dances, paints, makes clothes, designs cars. Because an artist is\u2026 You see, there is the name of God, and then there is the name of the artist. I am convinced that anyone can be an artist. But either you preserve an artistic approach to life, or you abandon it. And unfortunately, many people abandon it. Look at children \u2014 look how talented they are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where does it all go? What kind of tooth fairy comes in the night and carries away a child\u2019s entire creative potential? I think the greatest pleasure in life is being an artist, and voluntarily giving that up means doing yourself a great deal of harm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You work across so many different areas of art rather than concentrating on a single discipline. How do you manage to do it all?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I used to have arguments about this with my English friends. They insisted that an artist should work within a single aesthetic, chosen once and for all, in order to be commercially successful. I have never followed that advice. My inner voices told me that establishing myself in the art business was less important than the very essence of art as a constantly changing substance. I make collages, I sculpt, I make costumes, I draw, I dance \u2014 and all of it gives me pleasure. And never, not once, have<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I been left with a bitter aftertaste after a project. Because the interest and excitement I experience are themselves the principal motivation and the principal result. There is something else very important behind this: I am interested in being alive. I don\u2019t suffer from depression, I don\u2019t have bouts of self-abasement, and I value my talent. I think my emotional health is the result of wide-ranging curiosity. But it isn\u2019t a universal prescription for every artist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is good for me could be terribly harmful to someone else. I want to live for a very, very long time, because I have this ravenous curiosity inside me: what else can I make? What else can I invent? What else can I imagine? Sometimes I feel as though I am encountering a manifestation of the future. It says to me: \u201cOh no, you can fantasise, you can have all sorts of abilities, but I<\/em> already know what it is going to look like. All you have to do is listen to me and make it the way I tell you!\u201d The wisest thing is to surrender to that voice and do as it says. And right now, I think the voice from the future is telling me: \u201cCome on \u2014 you\u2019re going onstage as Miss Crocodile!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Is your costume ready? Have you got everything prepared?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course. All the artists submitted their applications about a month and a half ago, right down to the musical excerpts they\u2019ll be using. So now I\u2019m sewing on the last little pyramids by hand, in the places I couldn\u2019t reach with the sewing machine. I can tell you roughly what it is: yes, I\u2019m going to be a crocodile. You see, I have a godson who is seven now, and ever since he was tiny his favourite animal has been the crocodile: \u201ckee-lee-lyo\u201d. It was like a dripping tap \u2014 crocodile, crocodile, crocodile. Whenever we went to the zoo, the very first thing he would do was run to see the crocodiles and alligators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You\u2019re not only a performance artist but also a theatre artist. In 2002, at Robert Wilson\u2019s invitation, you created the performance The Staircase of Red<\/em> at his Watermill Center.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We met in New York. I came to America in 2001, after 9\/11, to support my friends. My long-time director Alexander Khromov and I got on a British Airways flight \u2014 at that time British Airways were my principal partners in England and Europe. On that entire enormous Boeing flying from London to New York there were three people: me, Sasha and one Polish woman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My friend Pasha Antonov, a wonderful photographer, said, \u201cLet\u2019s go and meet Robert Wilson!\u201d Well, wonderful. Of course, let\u2019s go! We went to Robert\u2019s studio and I showed him one of my performances from the 1990s, Faust, or A Series of Protective Spacesuits for Travelling with Mephistopheles<\/em>. In that work I was conducting these large-scale pseudo-architectural experiments with the naked human body. Muscular naked men would come out with the upper halves of their bodies encased in various moving structures made from cardboard and papier-m\u00e2ch\u00e9. I thought it was extraordinarily beautiful, and Wilson was absolutely delighted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He fell in love with my art and said, \u201cI have a proposition for you! Would you like to be the principal artist for my next summer programme?\u201d And I said, \u201cI think I\u2019m free next summer!\u201d So I built installations throughout the enormous grounds surrounding the cultural centre\u2019s main building, culminating in my performance The Staircase of Red<\/em>. Robert designed a gigantic platform for the performance. That was how I began making performances for Robert Wilson, and for the next six years I took part in his public programmes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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You mentioned collage. What does that technique mean to you?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

An urgent telegram! Nobody remembers what that was like anymore \u2014 someone rings your doorbell and says, \u201cUrgent telegram!\u201d Today there is no need for those little strips of text pasted onto a card, because we have social media. But I transferred that principle of the urgent message onto myself: I am both the sender and the recipient of the telegram.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When an entirely new version emerges from an endless quantity of cut-out shapes, fragments and details, that urgent telegram is sent out into cosmic space. Depending on which colours dominate, which diagonals govern the composition, I am telling myself whether everything is all right or whether I need to intervene. Most of the time, everything is all right. My optimism reveals itself through the act of pasting all these things together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How do you feel today, in 2026?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The last thing I will ever stop doing is multiplying beauty. Plenty of people would like me to stop. Well, I will make beauty \u2014 whenever I please and wherever I please.<\/p>\n\n\n\n