Olia Lialina is a net.artist. She lives and works in Moscow. She is also
a filmcritic and filmcurator.
We talked in Ljudmila Media Lab in Ljubljana in May '97, on the first
day of the nettime conference, while the conference was in progress with
an American history lesson of the internet in the main room. We were
sitting between other escapees that were doing mail or surfing and the
friendly kitchen crew.
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"They must feel like strangers, those people who make their homepages
representing their products."
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Olia Lialina: It is complicated to be a net.artist in Moscow, because
there is no context where you can appear as such. You first must explain
what it is for an hour or two hours. I have different identities for
different places.
Q: Isn't that normal with 'net.personalities', that you are more of a
personality far away then close by? Being a net.artist you are
recognised more by people that are online and often far away and not by
your neighbor?
Olia Lialina: Yes, but also it is difficult to understand who is the
nearest neighbor, because when you communicate a lot through the net, it
seems that your nearest friends and nearest neighbors from abroad are
much closer. Now I feel since a year of this intensive net.communication
that I have more friends which I have never seen. On one side its a
problem, on another side its a reality.
Q: A reality can also be a problem. Is it pleasant?
Olia Lialina: It's pleasant. As far as I have different identities I
don't feel this problem. If my friends don't know what the internet is
in Moscow, they do know what film is, what a critic is, what an
experimental filmclub is. They know and still love me. Also I don't have
so much problems with these different activities because a year ago I
didn't stop this filmcurating in order to make net.projects. I started
to make an experimental filmarchive on the net and so it was a very soft
transition from one field to another. I started to make this archive, so
I started to search the net this way.
I started to make net.films. At first I thought how I could represent
film on the net. After some time I understood that its not necesary to
represent film itself, but if you can put your filmic way of thinking in
the net, in this environment, it is more useful, more interesting. You
can do more with both. So I tried to experiment with language, to
combine film and net.language, but now I am more concerned with
developing net.language itself. I want things to speak their own
language. For me for example net.reality is not only the cyberideology.
I think that many things from real life can exist in the net, many
feelings, many thoughts. But they should speak the language of where
they are. If something is in the net, it should speak in net.language.
[…]
Q: How do you work on developing this language?
Olia Lialina: Difficult question. What is the structure of my work, the
process? I just think what I want to do in general. If I have something
in mind, the only thing I try to do is doing it in the net. I don't have
restrictions. I don't look for a special topic which fits the net. Its
absolutely intuitive.
My english is quite poor. I stay far from discussions and articles from
theorists written about net.ideology and economy. Especially when I
started I knew absolutely nothing. When I made "My boyfriend came back
from the war", it was a pure experiment with frames and html language. I
didn't expect it would 'sound' in this context, that there was already
this context. After I heard all these theories about "My boyfriend came
back from the war", only after I started to think about myself. I worked
out my attitude.
The main thing i can say is that the net is a place for self expression
and nothing can restrict it. Of course it is not just that, but it could
be a place for self expression.
[…]
Q: Can you give examples of projects you did on the net?
Olia Lialina: I made "my boyfriend"…It was just a desire to tell this
story on the net using html language. After I made it, I realised this
story can exist on cd-rom or you can make a video out of it and show a
video-projection. Its my most succesful work, but it is not a real net
project. The fact that it can exist on cd-rom, that you can put it on a
floppy and go to any computer and show it offline, makes a difference.
After this I decided to make another project that is as close to the
internet environment as possible. I made "Anna Karenina goes to
paradise", which can't exist without search engines. Three search
engines simultaneously. This project can't exist either without one
french server, where you find a lot of pictures of trains. So it was not
only the story. It was a story again, but a story which contained
sentences not written by me, but that existed allready in the net. It's
a net.comedy in three acts. Anna looking for love, Anna looking for
train, Anna looking for paradise and an epilogue. Anna is looking for
love through Yahoo, for trains through the Magilan search engine and
Anna is looking for paradise through Alta Vista. After the epilogue
there is a conversation between Anna and the three search engines and
two browsers: Netscape and Explorer.
Also I spoiled the search engines, I captured and spoiled them. They are
all bit maps, black and white. They look absolutely not commercial, but
they work as real search engines.
Q: You mean you changed them?
Olia Lialina: (laughs) No, really spoiled, but they still work. I only
prepared an interface. All links, all cgi script exist on their servers
and they work in the normal way.
[…]
