BK: You studied at the ICA in the past, and now you’re at the Vilnius Academy of Arts. How would you describe the differences in contemporary art education between Moscow and Vilnius, and what are your impressions of the two systems?

YP: Yes, I studied at the ICA, and I chose it because several artists I admired recommended it. I went to the open day, was immediately drawn in by the faculty — like many others — and decided to apply. After graduating, I realized that compared to Europe’s well-established educational market, Moscow’s art schools function in a kind of semi-underground mode, relying on the energy and commitment of the community. That in itself is valuable and worth appreciating.

When I first arrived in Vilnius — a small city of about half a million — I was struck by how many events were happening in the field of contemporary art. It was clear that the state invests far more in this sector than in Russia.

One tangible difference is the abundance of workshops: everything from laser cutting to garage-sized 3D printers, all freely available to students. And then there are the teachers. At least in my department (media), they genuinely care, and two years of consistent engagement with them makes a huge difference. At the ICA, by contrast, teachers often just don’t have enough time. Even though Stas Shuripa, the rector, tries to speak with every student individually, it’s simply impossible for him to keep up. Again, this comes down to resources, which points back to the broader question of the status of contemporary art in Europe versus Russia.

BK: Am I right that you’ll need to submit and defend a written thesis at the end of your studies, and that you’re working on it now?

YP: Yes. I have to situate my practice within a theoretical framework and produce a text that meets the formal requirements of a master’s thesis — but the format itself is fairly flexible. I still need to define my goals and objectives, propose a hypothesis, and test it, which is both amusing and a bit absurd, especially since the thesis can be written in the style of a diary or even a screenplay.

I began in a more classical mode, and my thesis is titled “Invisible Labor in Training Artificial Intelligence”. One paragraph looks at how artists have engaged with online outsourcing, starting in 2006, when Amazon launched its clickworker (editor’s note: “clickworkers” — online workers performing simple computer tasks such as image classification or data entry) marketplace, “Amazon Mechanical Turk” — a platform where people perform simple digital tasks such as image classification or data entry. I trace what has changed since then and develop my project on that basis.

BK: When did you first turn to the theme of labor? Or has it been present in your work for a long time? It seems to me that questions of labor and production have once again become central in contemporary art. And when did your interest in artificial intelligence emerge?

YP: Labor has always been present in my work in one form or another. At some point I realized how rarely we ask critical questions about the kinds of activities that structure our daily lives. My own background is in business, where corporate tools designed to maximize profit are pervasive. They often spill over into culture and everyday life — for instance, using a kanban board to settle a family argument or to plan out a life strategy. That logic makes you start to see yourself as a project. I didn’t know what to do with that realization, so I began to question labor itself.

As for artificial intelligence, I think what’s striking about the current AI boom is how it pushes everyone — from corporate white-collar workers to people in cultural and artistic production — to reconsider their place as subjects within a professional field. Why? Largely because of the looming risk of job loss. Personally, I don’t interact much with AI itself. What interests me more is what lies behind it: the kinds of labor that go into its development and the people who carry it out. The central part of my thesis looks at this hidden work — for example, the large pools of workers whose tasks might eventually be automated, leaving them without employment altogether. That tension became the starting point for my research.

In the game you can either go down to the parking lot — where nothing awaits — or up to the terrace. On the terrace stands a coffee machine, which turns out to be a kind of comic character. In the end it becomes the only source of “support,” though of course that support is entirely artificial. It dispenses affirmations like: “You’re great,” “Everything will be fine.” You can keep coming back to it, almost as if it were a bargain-basement psychotherapist.

The player navigates a series of scripted dialogues. Of course, they’re predetermined, but still offer choices. That was the idea behind what we called game essayism. Many art-related games end up as simple arcade pieces — mechanics lifted from a line of thought or a cultural phenomenon and then turned into a game loop. We wanted something different: not just gameplay, but a guided authorial scenario, a concept you have to live through and experience personally.

At one point Simone approaches the curator of the first deal, Claire, and greets her enthusiastically: “Hello, Claire, I’m so excited to work with you! I even wrote my master’s thesis based on your book On Post-Participatory Practices.” The reference, of course, is to Claire Bishop. Claire immediately lashes out: “Listen, girl, I make millions for this company — why should I waste time on stupid questions? At least back at the university they respected my time. Why did I ever leave?”. Simone then has dialogue options: she can try to reassure Claire with “I’ll be brief, it won’t take long,” or confront her directly with “I think you left the university for another reason — because you’re paid much more here.” Through these branching choices, the player gradually uncovers what went wrong in Claire’s deal.

In one of the dialogue branches, Claire describes a performance where the artist acts like a cat — stroking every visitor in the gallery and occasionally using a litter box. It’s an obvious nod to Oleg Kulik’s performance Mad Dog, or the Last Taboo Guarded by a Lonely Cerberus.

From there, the exchange takes a sharper turn. Simone asks: “Would you even want to include such works in your collection?” Claire replies: “No. I sell dead things, and I don’t plan to buy anything else. You can’t make money on living art.”

That moment actually came from a real conversation between my supervisor, the artist Arturas Raila, and Claire Bishop herself. She had come to Vilnius for a discussion, and he asked her: “You’ve already killed performance and video installation — what are you planning to kill next?” His point was that once art is canonized in her writing, it becomes framed as something finished, already past. Bishop answered: “I didn’t kill anything. It was already dead.” I felt that exchange carried its own weight and resonance, so I decided to embed it directly into the game.

BK: What games have influenced you?

YP: Honestly, I’m not a gamer at all — I’ve never really played. What fascinates me are the mechanics of the visual novel. Serj Tubash (co-creator of the game - ed.) once spoke about this in a lecture on the museumification of games. The visual novel is a very accessible medium for artistic expression, yet it’s still undervalued.

What surprises me most is how little games are represented in contemporary art. The games industry is, what, five times larger than the film industry? And yet while many of us grew up playing San Andreas, we hardly see video games taken seriously in the art context.

Serj believes this underrepresentation is only temporary — that the game medium is a growing trend. He reminded me that just five years ago, you could count the number of scholars working in so-called game studies on one hand. Now, there are major conferences around the world dedicated to exploring video games as a language of social and artistic expression.

BK: That’s a very sharp and also quite difficult question.

In the 1990s, installation art played a crucial role in contemporary practice. An installation is a form that allows one to move from the exhibition space into an inner world, while still remaining distinct from it. If we think about game mechanics in this light, my favorite example of a “total installation” would be Palle Nielsen’s The Model. There’s now a great deal of scholarship on this work. Originally presented at Moderna Museet in Stockholm in 1968, it was a children’s playground where adults were not allowed. Children could do whatever they wished, organizing their own society through play, while adults could only observe. That boundary was central to its meaning as an installation.

Video essayism developed along a similar path. At first, artists like Chris Marker, Harun Farocki, and Jean-Luc Godard created film essays. But when television funding dried up, they moved their practice into exhibition spaces, where the video essay took on an installed form.

The relative underrepresentation of video games, in my view, has to do with how the gaming experience unsettles the dialectic of internal and external space. The player both participates directly in the process and remains at a distance through the interface. I haven’t seen a game quite like Tatly before, but I’ve often come across work in the “in-game” vein — in-game photography, in-game essays — such as Harun Farocki’s Serious Games. In another remarkable work, Parallel, he reconstructs the history of video games and digitalization, examining them from the outside, again through the format of an installation.

Let’s consider the form of this work and what makes it distinctive. As with any video essay, the key element in a film essay is writing — not writing as a finished product, but as a process, a personal and subjective practice. In this case I see a kind of writing that takes on the qualities of fiction. And what is fictional writing, if not a return from the future to the present? Here it takes the shape of a science-fiction hypothesis, one that allows us to view the present differently. Marker’s films — especially Sans Soleil — are classics of this kind of essay.

If we speak of game essays, the game itself assumes a conceptual function. It mobilizes aesthetics — or, in the case of Tatly, a particular mechanic — to produce knowledge, even to become knowledge. This is a fascinating move, expanding the post-conceptual tradition in art, which at the moment is in something of a decline. Video essayism, too, no longer has the prominence it enjoyed in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Another aspect that struck me was the visual dimension of the game essay. Strangely enough, it reminded me of Personal Shopper, the film by my favorite director, Olivier Assayas, starring Kristen Stewart. Her character makes a living by selecting, trying on, and purchasing clothes for celebrities. Running through the film is this thread of conversation about ghosts, about life and death, and about what might be called “labor in vain.”

It seems to me that with Tatly you’ve created something similar — a Kafkaesque, gothic game essay. These three elements together allowed you to produce not just a game, but a work of contemporary art — one that extends and reanimates the post-conceptual tradition.

YP: Yes, that was our main goal: to create something more than just an arcade. We may not have been consciously thinking of Chris Marker, but the mechanics of his work were clearly in the background. Playing a game is like being guided through an artistic statement — the authors are always present, always leading the viewer.

I’d return to the three points you mentioned, because they’re essential for us as we keep working in this direction. While you were reflecting on the “in-game” format, I thought of the collective Total Refusal. They also operate at the borderlines — producing video essays, but as if from inside the experience of the game itself. Viewers encounter their work in a kind of interpassive state. We, by contrast, try to keep a distance from that approach, while still extending the essayistic line.

BK: I’d add that your game also employs science fiction. And in science fiction, it always matters what kind of science forms the basis of the imagination. For a long time I’ve been thinking about the idea of art history fiction: what if we take the history of art itself and project an imaginary future out of it, one tied to the problems of labor? Interestingly, this direction is beginning to develop now. Recently, for instance, a small Parisian press published a book imagining Marcel Duchamp not as a chess player, but as a Go player — and suddenly China and Japan, the “Oriental theme,” emerge in his work.

BK: Tell me more about your other projects.

YP: My next work is called “Side Effect. You may forget how to Swallow”. It’s a two-minute film shot on 16mm, and it took me about six months to complete. I joined an analog film lab here in Vilnius (Spongė lab) — there are enthusiasts who are engaged in shooting on film — and half a year later I finally finished the piece. Afterward I even made a meme: a guy stares at an analog film camera and says, “I started shooting on film because, on the one hand, it’s really expensive, and on the other hand, it’s incredibly difficult.” That pretty much summed up how I felt about the whole experience.

The premise of the film is that the reel itself appears as if it were a found object. When you play it, you discover an institution called the Kontemporary Art Center — an abstract name, but clearly connected to contemporary art. This center has developed a special technology for an auction house, allowing it to determine the estimated value of artworks more precisely and thereby increase sales. To obtain this estimate, however, you must create a small edible copy of the artwork and attach a psychoreceptor interface to the subject’s head. The subject eats the miniature work and then produces an evaluation, which is later compared with the actual auction price. Eventually the project is shut down — because the participants develop atrophy of the swallowing muscles, a side effect that, in the end, has nothing to do with the artworks themselves.

This work also continues my interest in questions of labor and cultural production. As I mentioned earlier, my initial impetus many years ago was the idea of imposing the apparatus of business onto culture, and then trying to think through that overlap using corporate concepts. In both Tatly and this film, I imagine what happens when the processes of art are pushed to their economic extreme — for example, when a fictional Kontemporary Art Center offers specialized services built on advanced technologies, including experiments on human subjects.

The film exists in digital form, but it has a parafictional character. Soon I’ll be exhibiting it from a full reel. There’s also a broader conversation to be had about how little this medium — analog film — is represented today, despite its complexity and sophistication. Perhaps that difficulty is exactly what draws me to it: the intricacy of the medium itself and the demands of its production.

BK: Looking at these two works, I began to think about how to define what you’re doing. One could call it a kind of right-wing accelerationism — pushing capitalism to its absolute limit. At the same time, you present it in a dystopian light, which opens it up to critique, including from the left, through the lens of production.

YP: Yes, I think that’s a fair description. Though Serj would argue that what you call dystopian is already the reality for many organizations. If a cultural institution wants to assess its contribution, it’s often forced to rely on business tools — CRM systems to track visitors, for example. But none of these tools can measure whether the institution is achieving its deeper mission, such as fostering humanity. As a result, when a cultural institution adopts business tools, it ends up reformulating its goals in terms those tools. In the process, it mutates into a business unit. In other words, its aims shift to become achievable only through those specific instruments.

BK: Do you think cultural institutions are actually forced to use these tools?

YP: I see it a bit differently. It doesn’t feel so much that business tools are imposed on cultural institutions, but that the tools themselves exert a kind of charm. They seem to promise solutions to every problem, so you rush to install, say, Asana (editor's note: CRM system). Perhaps that’s the result of ideological work. I even keep a list of phrases I’ve stumbled across or overheard — like “My family is a mastermind group.” A mastermind group is a business concept where people come together to solve problems. No one is forcing you to apply that metaphor to your family, yet it slips in almost unconsciously. The problem is that business tools are designed solely to optimize production — to raise efficiency and capitalization. When they overlap with the realm of art or everyday life, the effect is bizarre.

BK: That’s an interesting thought. You’re describing not so much coercion as aesthetic seduction — the pull of beauty or charm. It works through temptation, which is hard to resist. I’m reminded of the role of art in the early nineteenth century, when the bourgeoisie suddenly realized that through the colorfulness and appeal of paintings they could establish their own values. Now, that same logic seems to have migrated from the museum into platform capitalism.

YP: Speaking of enchantment, I can tell you about my next work,“Empire II”, which I presented in a small solo exhibition in Tallinn in 2024. I’ve always been drawn to long-duration video formats — for example, those ten-hour YouTube videos of water flowing. To me, such formats feel especially relevant today, echoing what Warhol initiated decades ago. So I decided to create an exhibition-as-reenactment of his work. I printed a small 3D model of the Empire State Building, installed it in the gallery, and streamed it on YouTube into a second room of the space, where I simultaneously sat for nine hours, performing alongside it. Some visitors joined me, others came and went. A few didn’t even believe the stream was live — especially when the footage showed people storming the Empire and staring into the camera.

BK:That’s wonderful — because in Warhol nothing happens either, but at some point a dove flies in!

Recently there have been two major exhibitions: one dedicated to Warhol’s video works, and another to Marcel Broodthaers’ experiments with film. Broodthaers, who was one of the pioneers of the video essay, devoted his exhibition to reconstructing an authentic movie camera. I think that’s what draws you as well — the technical side of broadcasting.

At the Warhol show, by contrast, all the films were presented in Full HD, essentially as remasters of his work. When you present old equipment, you get an interesting effect: the audience starts to aestheticize the machinery itself, studying it, and they stop paying attention to the film. But when you show only the video, in a new quality or format, viewers suddenly notice even the smallest action — and start applauding, say, when a dove appears. That’s when the structure of the event itself comes into focus.

In your work, I think you brilliantly combine these two approaches: on the one hand, the hardware aesthetics of Broodthaers, showing how the iPhone is staged in space; on the other, a live stream that the viewer doesn’t actually see. The result is a genuinely two-sided installation, where a kind of game unfolds between presence and absence.

YP: Yes. During the exhibition-performance I did nothing — and invited others to join me in doing nothing as well. There was already a trace of absurdity in the offer itself, since it was on a Thursday. Who can actually afford to do nothing on a weekday?

I was reminded of other examples where artists have staged similar proposals. For instance, Maria Eichhorn’s 5 Weeks, 25 Days, 175 Hours (2001), when she bought out a gallery for a month and gave its employees paid time off, instructing them to do anything except work. The gallery simply hung up a sign announcing its closure. There are also projects where clickworkers are literally paid to do nothing. This situation is absurd, because in the end, someone has to pay for this. The system never lets things go unpaid — and no matter what, the economy always wins.

In my performance, the first five hours passed quickly: I slept, read a beautiful book about Monet smoked cigarettes and had Cokes. But toward the end, time began to drag unbearably.

BK: Yes, these works fall into what is known as time-based art. It’s not simply about using video or time-based media, but about working with time itself — its capacity to be released, stretched, or slowed so that people can actually feel it.

In Empire II, the play with scale is especially striking. In the live stream, the building appears monumental, like the real Empire State Building, a skyscraper that seems immovable. But in the gallery you see it for what it is: a tiny 3D-printed model. As visitors walk past, they insert themselves into this shifting commentary on imperialism and the supposed permanence of empires or skyscrapers. In reality, it’s just a fragile cardboard-like object you could pick up in your hand — a paper tiger, nothing to be afraid of.

From your works it’s clear that you’re deeply engaged with art history. How do you approach it? Do you read extensively, or do you work more from inspiration and only later connect it back? Tell us about the mechanics of your projects and how you develop them.

YP: Yes, I think having a shared discourse is important. I want to translate history and its artificial mythologies into something more immediate—breaking down these ultra-hierarchical structures and establishing a more democratic line. I want to be able to walk up, shake hands, and say: “We’re still doing the same work here.”

Usually when you start studying art history, it begins with the evolution of styles. It’s easy to get stuck there, and art can start to feel like one vast mythological continuum where everything flows seamlessly into everything else. Another approach is to begin with broader currents of humanistic thought, or with language itself. But in either case, what I’m after is a way to open it up into a more direct, more comprehensible dialogue.

BK: In these three works, I sense a real polemic with Claire Bishop and her practice. She even appears in your work as a character — precisely because, as your professor noted, she mythologizes. I’m also very interested in Dorothea von Hantelmann, who studies pragmatism in contemporary art. Her book How to Do Things with Art is excellent.

It seems to me that you’re doing something similar: turning art history itself into a pragmatic tool, almost a mechanic. You take figures like Warhol or Broodthaers — whether consciously or not — and reframe them as game mechanics, stepping into the role of a game designer. And what’s fascinating is that you’re doing so without any actual gaming background. This is an interesting motive for your approach.

YP: Yes, I tend to enjoy unusual challenges. Why not give it a try?