V.Efimov and A.Chernyshev
Bubbles
Interactive video installation. 2003

Welcome to the next amusement attraction from familiar guys in white shirts/ black pants. Now you may not just saw 'em or smash 'em, you can pump 'em. Like balloons, bubbles or football. You'd better pump hard, or else these black'n'white guys will hide back in the hose. Should you pump real hard - they'll float away. Don't worry, these guys are always coming back, again and again. What else could contemporary artist do than entertaining the public and puffing it? We puff them, they rise up into the sky and puff us - everyone's happy.
Here's what the artists say about their own piece: long time ago, when there was real big art, people believed in inspiration. And when real artists got inspired, their souls ascended, while their hands were creating masterpieces. To some inspiration came in easy and pleasant way, when they were asleep, like to Raphael, who has seen his Madonna in a dream. Most other had to exercise their spirit hard, like ascetics (who, according to our artists, could get off the ground powered by their ecstatic prayers). Then came Enlightenment, industrial revolution, and people started to like natural more than supernatural. And they preferred the natural resource instead of heavenly whimsy. Louis Dagerr, using optics and chemistry, learned to develop visual image right from inside the matter - and invented photography. The heroes of Romanticism discovered the power of hashish and opium and started to dig images from he depths of consciousness. So the process was set up and production launched. Mass offer adequately met mass demand. And the major resource of inspiration production was created - the public, in volumes always essential, but never enough. The artist who gathered maximum public, received maximum inspiration; and became famous - he who is overinspired, is inflated.
Everybody knows that artists love fame and money above all. Fame is an index of their inspiration, money is its material equivalent. However the art of piecework production can not get the real fame and money. This is the task for the art of the screen - that packs movie theaters with millions. And maybe pop music that gathers crowded stadiums. So after a century of mass production the art became interactive. Public mingled with artists and everybody's producing, selling and buying from each other that life-giving air of mutual animation.
That's the story. Did you notice that Chernyshev and Efimov wear not the genius blouse, but an office uniform? Apparently it's more suitable in their air production.
(Vladimir Levashov)