© Maria Kokunova from the series 'The Cave'

Maria, you were recently shortlisted with the project The Cave on the Urbanautica Institute call 'Sacred. The Experience of Beyond'. Firstly, tell us about your approach to photography. How it all started and how has your work evolved?

Maria Kokunova (MK): I first turned to photography in 2013, with a philological education already in my background. I studied academic drawing and painting for five years. It was when I was taking my composition classes that my interest in photography started. After studying the form for some time, I realised that it is meanings that I want to work with. And the medium of photography matched my tasks perfectly. Photography is a curious phenomenon that has many characteristics that affect ontological issues. I was interested in the history, theory and “philosophy of photography”, in the words of V. Flusser. The image is generally embedded in our everyday life and in many ways defines and constructs it.

Having immersed in the process of learning I realised that the general method that I used in my work - self-reflexivity - is inseparable from the study of the media development history and the logics of media functioning, photography, in particular, because these phenomena in many ways constitute and determine me (being a subject or the absence of a subject). In other words, in my case, the nature of the medium is closely related to my sphere of interests (the mechanism of subject construction).

At the present moment I am working with project photography and I use a variety of methods, like collage, appropriation, photographic representations of performance.

© Maria Kokunova from the series 'The Cave'

© Maria Kokunova from the series 'The Cave'

© Maria Kokunova from the series 'The Cave'

Your work “The Cave". How have your self-realization work been influenced by where your choice to remove yourself from the digital age?

MK: When I intentionally cut myself off from active social life, it gave me the opportunity to focus on my art education and my projects. Of course, the inadequate connection with the outer world, isolation, and frequent violation of personal boundaries by the children have a traumatic effect. However, the same circumstances gave an impulse to the project. And that is what I am speculating about in The Cave project. My new "lifestyle" has literally made the plot for the project only it was converted into a personal myth. Thus, social distancing continues to trigger my imagination and memories making the necessary condition for the major method of my practice - self-reflexivity.

© Maria Kokunova from the series 'The Cave'

© Maria Kokunova from the series 'The Cave'

© Maria Kokunova from the series 'The Cave'

© Maria Kokunova from the series 'The Cave'

© Maria Kokunova from the series 'The Cave'

You have an extensive educational background, in your opinion is formal education necessary to be a good artist?

MK: In my opinion, to be an artist, one needs to study (and I would note continually) although it is not necessarily should be a classical art education. Consciously chosen education can build one's ontological map and background which further may help to determine the scope of interests for a person as an artist. Craft skills can be acquired depending on one's tasks, or it is possible to gather a team for collaboration. But, being a modern artist and photographer, one will have to work with the idea, first of all. For me, linguistic education, the language (later coupled with psychoanalysis and philosophy), formed such a basis. My projects are to a greater extent inspired by literary fiction: novel 62: A Model Kit by Julio Cortázar inspired the project This City Is Just a Version of You. I turned to Ulysses by James Joyce while working on The Face project. To create the character of Pyromaniac for the project based on real life, among all other sources, the books Before I Burn by G. Heivoll, The Wasp Factory by I. Banks and The Temple of the Golden Pavilion by Y. Mishima. Reading literary fiction triggers mental processes that help me to develop my own artistic images. It is a somewhat indirect conversion of words into images, my entry point into visual through language.

© Maria Kokunova from the series 'The Face'

© Maria Kokunova from the series 'The Face'

Coming back to the question of art education, I believe that it is much more important to stay in the environment of contemporary photography and contemporary art, to study in schools, workshops, etc., to collaborate with colleagues and curators. At some moment the competent supervision of my mentors and a well-thought-out program made it possible to move from focusing on the aesthetics and the form of an image to analysing the whole range of its sementic components used to its full potential in a project. I am studying now at The Education Environment High School based on The Rodchenko Moscow School of Photography and Multimedia in the course Transmedia. Contemporary artistic practices and I am planning to develop my own practice through installations and performance.

Who are some photographers or filmmakers who have inspired you?

MK: My artistic background is continuously developing, there are several signature names, however, they are not the names of photographers, artists, or directors. They are rather theorists of contemporary art and philosophers. The authors I am constantly turning to are S. Freud, J. Lacan, W. Benjamin, R. Bart, G. Didi-Huberman, G. Bashlar, B. Groys, E. Petrovskaya, V. Podoroga and many others. I have mentioned only a few of them, which, so to say, are always "at work".

As I have already said, literature makes a great source of inspiration for me, both classic and modern. Among many others, I would like to single out the following authors: J. Joyce, M. Proust, V. Woolf, J.-P. Sartre, A. Camus, F. Kafka, J. Cortazar, J. L. Borges, G.Garcia Marquez, Y. Mishima, J. Saramago, J. C. Somoza, Gaute Heivoll. These authors are very important for me as they have "participated" in my projects. At present, the literature of the stream of consciousness and magical realism is especially close to me.

How has COVID-19 affected your work output?

MK: Well, Covid-19 did not affect the work process itself, as I work in the studio at home. But all this lock down has made a great impact on the implementation and promotion of the projects. The Sony World Photography Awards exhibition 2020 in Somerset House was cancelled and my project The Cave was to have been exhibited there. Several exhibitions were either cancelled or delayed in Russia. Moreover, it is a great loss when it comes to inspiration, as I wasn't able to see in person the works of other artists.

Are you working on any upcoming projects you would like to share?

MK: I have just finished a new project The Collector. It is about consumption and the processes that lie behind the logics of its functioning, like relieving anxiety, overcoming the fear that time is irreversible and death is inevitable through purchasing a thing, coming into possession.  This project will consist of a photo series and audio installation. I hope I will be able to implement this project in some exhibit space.

© Maria Kokunova from the series 'The Collector'

© Maria Kokunova from the series 'The Collector'

© Maria Kokunova from the series 'The Collector'

Could you recommend us three books?

Of course, with pleasure. The Athenian Murders by José Carlos Somoza is a stunning detective story which helped me a lot when working on The Cave project. It is in no way related to the project in terms of the plot, but the author works with the same allegory - the cave. Besides this book gave me a great emotional impetus, put me on the right "creepy" tracks. 

Ce Que Nous Voyons, Ce Que Nous Regarde by G. Didi-Huberman. An awesome theoretical work that is close to my interpretation of how contemporary art works.

Philosophy of Photography by V. Flusser - an incredibly interesting work; it is more about ontology and several degrees of alienation through language and its varieties than about the phenomenon of photography.

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LINKS
Maria Kokunova (personal website) 
About Russia on Urbanautica Institute