brooklyn NEW YORK

Critic: Ferda Kolatan, Pratt Institute GAUD
Seminar: “Design Finesse”

suckerPUNCH: Describe your project.

roman CHIKERINETS: The theme is Horror Vacui, and I decided to use and re-appropriate elements directly from nature. That said I wanted to create a sort of coat, so I skinned and stitched once living tissue and created a vegetarian sort of cloak (I guess it is more ethical to skin something that does not make too much immediate noise). Here is where “Maya met raw fruit.”

I looked at Rococo surfaces, than I moved onto attacking the living existing nature and how it is re-appropriated for human world. (an example is a fur mink or ermine coronation cloak). The mediated nature thus, now exists in it’s most excessive state and gracefully exhibits itself and becomes receptive.

sP: What or who influenced this project?:
rC: This project was influenced by: Ferda Kolatan, fruits, skin, flab of tissue, surgery, ermine coat, fur, a cat’s claw, a tassel, Rococo, a sea of arctic seals, Romanticism, Wagner, modeling software etc…

sP: What were you reading/listening to/watching while developing this project?
rC: Possession ~1981 (dir Andrzej Zulawski) , also Melancholia 2011 (Lars Von Trier)
Reading “Cyclonopedia” by Reza Negarestani, and other readings around Posthumanism.
Listened to: genetically related music classified by Pandora.

sP: Whose work is currently on your radar?
rC: Jason Hopkins, Natalie Jeremijenko, Tony Oursler, Iris Van Herpen. . . .

Additional credits and links:
This project was done while I was at Pratt Institute GAUD (for Design Finesse with Ferda Kolatan).