>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Mikhail Maksimov
Flatality, 2021
One-channel video
Dimensions variable
Courtesy of the artist

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

The work is consonant with the word “fatality,” which stands
for the final stage of finishing off the enemy, different for each character, in the fighting
game Mortal Kombat. Flatality (from the word “flat”) explores various disturbances
in the perception of space and refers to spatial experiences.
Flatality is generated from Putin`s documentaries downloaded from Kremlin website.
Flatality addresses modification of the world via physical experience: according to the
artist, “a change in one coordinate in space alters the order of creating a narrative. If we
make ourselves a home in a pipe, we will have to create linear works forever.” Within the
coordinates of the altered, “layering” consciousness, the artist develops a new type of
narrative, a “distance drama” in which the action unfolds not in time but in distance. He
also expands the space-time boundaries of the medium, which is based on the flow of time
(of the author and the viewer) and is created in the virtual space and presented in the real
one.
The vocalized direct speech reproduces patients’ evidence about pathological sensations of
space connected with a loss of volume, a flattening of the visible picture due to
derealization or with the loss of proprioceptive perception in patients with Kandinsky-
Clérambault syndrome. The almost incomprehensible, incoherently delusional descriptions
of internal states are voiced by speech synthesizers and acquire a detachedly artistic
character: “moveshki” and “Frankogols” make themselves at home in the recognizable
psychedelic style of Maksimov’s 3D animation. The artist finds a visual and spatial
correspondence with the syndromes listed, 1 using a “self-written space flattener” as a plug-
in for a 3D program for creating virtual landscapes. Flatality plunges the viewer into the
speech haze of individual psychopathologies, while also performing as a cartography of
Russian landscapes, from the Murmansk Peninsula to Tuva. A series of alternating
panoramas of flattened spaces grows from an individual’s inner experience into a
diagnostic assessment of the unsettled condition and problematic nature of existence in the
diversity of the country’s spaces. According to the artist, the subjective “inconvenience
inside one head” can be read as an objective “inconvenience inside the country,” even
though we understand that “illness is a personal matter and only health loves to be
together.”

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
More at: https://flatality.dying.fun/

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

2023 Mikhail Maksimov