I’m really glad to have the chance to speak about this. On the one hand, this was a surprise, but on the other it’s completely logical for American society. In a certain sense it’s a paradox, because a majority is trying to protect a minority and in so doing slighting another minority that supports the majority. Well, in short, it’s absurd.

I think it’s precisely the wrong thing to be doing. Individual artists should all decide for themselves what they should do. As someone who was born and raised in the totalitarian state that was the Soviet Union, I can’t come to terms with it. An objection to any form of control is ingrained in me. When it was the Bolsheviks who were always right, I always wanted to be on the side of the Mensheviks.

I think that humanity — society as a whole and each one of us — had somehow been waiting for this. A lot of questions about life had built up. You know, from the end of 2019 to the beginning of 2020 we had a sort of revolutionary situation, in which some people couldn’t envisage any other way of living, while others were rejecting it. At that point, people didn’t really know how to go on living. This was true of countries, economies and personal relationships. Everyone was subconsciously waiting for a big event that would help to shuffle the deck.
People have now been able to make decisions about their personal relationships. They’ve decided that with what was going on, it was time to split up — or in other cases get together. The government was able to increase its control over the population. And others, such as banks, symbolically decided that as no one was repaying their loans, given the situation, they would consider forgiving debts. Many situations in the world have found answers thanks to this disaster.

I experienced this moment dramatically, and we’re still experiencing it. What has happened in the last few months has been a trigger for some real developments that are taking place now and that will continue in the coming year. How we’ll survive this I don’t know — or rather, instead of surviving, I should say that we’ll live through it. After all, otherwise you could live your whole life trying to survive only to see that your life has gone by.

The form of cinematography that I’ve been working on for the last seven years involves an immersion in the virtual world of our communication with each other online — it’s called screen life. I didn’t invent the language of screen life, but I identified it and gave it the name that’s now used around the world. I don’t have a monopoly on it; there’s an ambition to promote the idea of this new language of cinema, and I’m happy to share it with other filmmakers. So, for me the pandemic has been a godsend and a moment of truth, when the thing that I’d had to push suddenly and unexpectedly became something everyone needed. No one’s had any other choice; you haven’t been able to realize or express yourself except by talking about your life and creating works of art in the virtual world.

I haven’t actually lived in the future so I can’t really say what will happen to us, but I have a few hypotheses.

The first is that technology will have such an influence on our life that filmmaking and art in general will inevitably respond to and reflect things correctly. For example, it’s absolutely evident that we’re moving increasingly to the online space: we’re doing more things there and we’re experiencing more emotions connected to our online activities — dating, arguing, creating, politics, economics and everything else that we don’t do in the physical world. This will unquestionably influence art. We’ll be forced to describe our lives by showing computer screens, which is where the Battles Borodino and Anna Kareninas and so on are playing out these days. That’s the first thing: focusing on what happens on our screens and how we reveal ourselves there.

The second big thing that will massively change the world of narratives are stories about how different types of artificial intelligence influence our life. Today we’re already the products of search engines like Google, which create a unique informational space around us, specially built for us, and we think that that’s our life. It’s as though we’re all walking around wearing different glasses: one person has pink lenses and another has blue ones; the world looks different to each of them but in fact it’s not at all as we see it. That’s one way things are distorted. On the other hand, we’re one step away from needing to protect the rights of robots and other AI creations in the way that the American film academy is protecting the rights of minorities. After all, robots are living; they have emotions and they’re capable of reacting and therefore it will soon be time to protect their rights as well. So, for example, you won’t be able to win an Oscar if your film doesn’t have an AI character in it who ticks all the diversity boxes.

I’m currently looking at two scripts by American writers that examine the issue of relationships between robots and people — but differently from how we saw this in films like Her, for instance. There, we had the point of view of Joaquin Phoenix’s human character — here, it’s from the point of view of the robot instead. The plot involves a robot who has a problem: he’s a minority character; humans have wronged him and he tries to fight for his rights. It’s interesting, and it’s what lies ahead for us. A few years ago, we saw apes fighting for their rights in Planet of the Apes; well, robots could fight for their rights too.

I certainly understand all the possible consequences. In this case, the question of whether these are good or bad concerns me less than whether or not they’re interesting. I’m incredibly interested in what will happen to us next. As far as we can, we need to contrive to protect our own minority, humans, from disasters that could arise from the fact that technology will try to tidy us up, enhance us, improve us and subordinate us to itself. We need to try to win back our right to make choices, mistakes and so on. I think that’s an interesting task, which the next five to ten years will focus on.

У меня проблема с соцсетями. Не могу их воспринимать как процесс. Я предполагаю, что каждый пост — это некий результат процесса. И поэтому каждый раз, когда есть желание или необходимость высказывания в виде поста, у меня возникает страшный ступор: кто я есть, вот я сейчас это или что-то другое? Как правило я долго мучусь и в конце концов не понимаю, зачем вообще писал. Всё равно что в магазине одежду примерять: надеваешь пиджак и думаешь, это ты в этом пиджаке или нет, и каким ты должен быть, насколько ты похож должен быть на других. Меня это приводит в смятение. Когда история буквально про себя, возникает момент пошлости, нет игры, а есть буквальное самообнажение, и мне почему-то это тяжело даётся. Ты начинаешь говорить, кто ты такой, не через персонажа, вымышленную историю, не в шутку, а как бы очень серьёзно. Наверно, можно придумать форму выдуманного себя и в неё играть, развивать, но мне это в голову не приходило. Например, я, вот, прилетел на Луну, выложил оттуда фотографию, у меня появился друг жираф, что-то в этом духе.

On screenlifer.com we have a project called the Seven Deadly Sins of the Internet. Gluttony is uncontrolled use of content. Instagram collages are Pride. Wrath is internet hate — and so on. I don’t know whether it’s a new religion or a re-interpretation of existing writings, but online life is crying out for myth-making, and for someone to reflect it and formulate what’s right and wrong. Because right now, there’s a black hole that we’re all disappearing into.

In the physical world we know that it’s inappropriate to go up too close to people, that spitting right in front of someone isn’t right and stealing out of someone’s pocket is wrong, but on the internet, you just don’t have those concepts. They haven’t developed. Stealing someone else’s content isn’t considered bad — it’s seen as normal and even funny. Trolling someone is considered funny and cool, and not wrong. People haven’t yet made sense of this space ethically; that is, there isn’t a social contract for it. So, for the next five to ten years, screen life’s mission will be to bring together smart, talented people who can interpret this world and write texts that everyone will adopt and then this world will have some sort of boundaries at last. It’s precisely art that’s shaping these ethics.

Humans were created in the image of God in order to create and tell stories. If God created the world, that means that human beings should create a world by exercising free choice. What we’ll be forced to do — or rather, thank God that we’ll be doing this — is to create and use, and to listen to each other. I think that’s the obvious thing. Of course, ninety percent of the content will be meaningless. And I’ll tell you what will happen next — in fact it’s already taking place: the concept of meaningless content will disappear thanks to segmentation. People won’t have five million Instagram followers: they’ll have five hundred, but those will be theirs and theirs alone and you won’t be able to take them away. There will be groups, clusters, tribes and families.

This is a market place where people who want to create content on the internet or anywhere else can meet partners and investors, form teams and launch projects. It’s a platform that will be in huge demand because a large percentage of people will soon be without work. A huge number of jobs are going to disappear and people will be looking for ways to use their talents. Creating content is probably the most popular. A lot of people think they’re actors or creatives; everyone thinks they can take their photo and post it on Instagram. All that already is content creation; it’s just that people need to be able to earn at least something from it and maybe even make their living that way. That’s exactly where DreamApp comes in, by helping independent creatives to find financial backing.