Interview with Sputnik1985 Creator Sergei Pakhotin
Russian streetwear, printmaking, and Gosha
This is a transcript of an interview conducted and translated by Olivia Capozzalo for the podcast She’s In Russia. If you prefer to listen to the interview (in English), here you go:
Lily: So in general today, I wanted to talk about your brand of course, and also more broadly about fashion, and in particular street fashion, in Russia or in the Post-Soviet Space.
Sergei: Yes yes.
Lily: But first can you introduce yourself, however you’re comfortable
Sergei: My name is Sergei and I make the brand Sputnik. Like that?
Lily: Yep! Just so I don’t mess anything up. But it’s all simple and compact. Ok, so the first question I have…let’s not talk immediately about your brand, let’s start more broadly — can you talk a bit about the development of streetwear in Russia, as you see it? And not only in Russia but in the Post-Soviet space, or I don’t know what to call it, the Russian-speaking space? The development in say the last 10 years, what’s happening, what do we see? When did it start?
Sergei: Yeah that started about ten years ago probably, possibly later, no one knew what to wear, what can be sewn. And I ended up in that world, I started making merch from the punk subculture, when you could make merch, print your band, or something for your friends, or for a zine. Merch has been around a while, and at some point people realized they can do it themselves, and not only merch but some kind of clothing too. And do it as a brand.
I don’t know, I just don’t know, I don’t really like Russian, I’m not interested in Russian brands, overall there are just one or two maybe. The rest are all boring and uninteresting and derivative. Maybe we’re also derivative somewhere, in some ways, but it’s fine. But the rest I really minimally like..in the sense that they’re minimally interesting because you see what’s happening, everyone looks at what everyone else is doing and tries to do approximately the same thing. Right now there are several brands that are doing things on their own, but generally there was a wave a couple years ago when everyone realized that you can make money making your own brand, and they started making some t-shirts, sweatshirts, etc, but they were absolutely derivative, secondary. It was just some kind of business for people. People I know who have been doing this for a longer time, who started I don’t know five, seven years ago, some of them continue to make something really fresh, new, and some of them are doing something derivative, something probably uninteresting, to me.
Lily: And that’s specifically street brands, correct?
Sergei: Yep, yes. I don’t really know much about others. Even these streetwear brands I don’t know particularly well, since now there’s millions of them. And I don’t follow these millions because you really can’t tell the difference between them at all.
Lily: So they all have some kind of formula, like for example printing Russian text on a t-shirt?
Sergei: Exactly, yeah. They realized you can write anything you want in Cyrillic, it’s roughly speaking like hieroglyphs, something that’s not understandable for everyone else, people not in Russia I mean, and it’s interesting to everyone, it’s immediately interesting. We started writing in Russian… our prints in Russian started first and foremost because we simply don’t know English, none of us know it. We would happily also print in English, we just don’t know that language. For us it’s not a position or something, that we necessarily have to only write in Cyrillic, we’d just need to learn to write in English in school, and learn the language. That’s it.
I don’t know, probably several brands started doing more complex things, not only merch, but more complicated things. Some brands are referencing social phenomena, or some kinds of subculture, some are more aesthetic, they pay more attention to that, some people are making up their own stories, some are referencing. There’s a brand, I forget what it’s called, but they did a collaboration with the Museum of Cosmonautics, they took the story of space exploration and made some things based on that story. To me that’s an interesting project. Those are the interesting moments to me in this whole story. They’re alive because they work with what you come into contact with, something interesting to you, or something you don’t know about.
I’m not interested, for example, in brands that try to do a dark techno aesthetic that they got from Berlin and want to bring here. I’m absolutely not interested in that. I don’t come into contact with that, I don’t interact with that at all. It’s something dead, something taken from that culture and attempted to make it here. Dark techno also exists here in Russia, that’s distinctive, or maybe it’s the opposite, also derivative, but you can also reference that, you can think about that, what is happening here, how to react to what is happening around you. That’s what I mean probably, I’m interested in brands that work with those kinds of stories. Well and more and more of those kinds of brands are appearing.
Lily: But so these mass brands, there’s also a problem of quality? Or for you it’s more specifically this idea that they don’t look at what’s around them.
Sergei: Yeah, probably. Well quality of what specifically? Quality of production, as in the quality of materials, we have a situation here where you go to someone who has a brand, even if you know that person, and ask them where can I sew this product I want to make, and the person will say “I can’t tell you because it’s a kind of trade secret. And you go to factory, order something, and you see that that person sews there. So there’s some kind of rudeness there, there’s a moment of closedness, people don’t share contacts with each other. For example I started working on another level thanks to the fact that other people did share some contacts with me. I wouldn’t have been able to figure it out on my own. There are some things here that I would have had to spend a lot of time to find out. But since people shared some contacts with me, gave me some advice, that helped me move forward, to move onto another stage of development in this work.
Lily: I didn’t quite get, why do you think people don’t want to share that kind of information?
Sergei: I don’t think that, it just is that way.
Lily: No I mean why is it that way?
Sergei: Probably they’re scared that you’ll do something similar to what they’re doing and yea, they want some kind of uniqueness, and because of that they don’t share contacts, they won’t give you any hints. But not everyone is like that. Again, a category of people does exist who we communicate with and they share things, but not sharing is the overall trend.
Lily: I read somewhere that you had or have a workshop in an old factory or…
Sergei: Yes yes, I’m actually talking to you approximately from that factory. Yes we have our screen printing workshop, we print everything ourselves, just we like printing and we started with that specifically. Everything started because I just couldn’t get a job as a courier and I thought that I needed to learn to do something and I thought I’ll learn to do screen printing. and I tried printing and I’m still printing. Yea, we have our small workshop, like millions have their little workshops here, and we do our own printing. It’s an old factory, electric factory
Lily: All your prints?
Sergei: 99%. sometimes there are prints that we don’t have time to by ourselves by the deadline, so we give them to our friend production, our friend workshop, and they print it for us. That happens. But 99% we print ourselves
Lily: Can you talk a little more about the factory, about its history? What’s the deal with this factory?
Sergei: It’s an electric factory, there used to be three factories in this factory and now only one of them is left and only partially. It made photography lamps and lighting, technical lamps for lighting. And since in the 90s a lot of production was shut down, destroyed, the huge, gigantic territory of this factory was left. and a part of the building is considered now to have historical value, so it can’t be demolished. And there’s still five years to go before they start reconstruction here, when it will become some expensive real estate. Right now it’s rented out and it’s in the city center, relative to where other production areas are located, and a big area, there are a lot of renters here. Probably about 80% of this factory is people renting spaces for their workshops. Until a certain time, there were a lot of artists, musicians here, all these creative young people. Then the factory administrators started instituting some rules that were absolutely unreasonable and the majority of people moved out to another factory, it’s ten minutes away from here, it’s called Niidar, it’s the defense industry, it belongs to the Ministry of Defense, producing some kinds of locators, some secret communication systems.
But they also have a huge territory where there are spaces you can rent. And right now the majority of the creative young people from here moved there. And we stayed here. And before that we were in a workshop in a different building, it was the Moscow Experimental Knitting Factory and we were in the workshop where the t-shirts for the 1980 Olympics were printed and there was a woman who still worked there who printed those t-shirts for the 1980 Olympics and her name was, she was called Slava, like it was an abbreviation or something, she had the Soviet name Slava.
Lily: Abbreviation or it was her real name?
Sergei: Well yes, it was her real name, but in Soviet times there were names that were abbreviations. So it was her real name, she was a nice lady. At that point she wasn’t printing anymore but we got along well…
Lily: That was in a different place?
Sergei: Yes, that was at the Moscow Experimental Knitting Factory, we started there, we spent about four years there, and then we moved here, to this factory.
Lily: I’m interested, I read about your connection to punk, and you just mentioned it.. can you talk about why punk, and what that word means to you? Because it’s a word that can mean a lot of different things for different people.
Sergei: We just, well punk, the punk community when I was more actively interacting with it, was a place where there was a minimum of assholes and you could have fun, I mean do something interesting. You could do whatever you wanted, whatever was interesting to you, and it was cool. and fun. It was something like a DIY punk community, what we knew of what that was in the States, when bands recorded their own music, organized their own concerts, tours, published their own things, released cassettes, printed t-shirts, overall an absolutely independent, or more like self-reliant, autonomous kind of society, community, we could do whatever, we didn’t need any middlemen, that’s why it was cool and fun.
Lily: So that’s particularly about music right?
Sergei: No it’s social activism, meaning here you weren’t allowed to..well in Russia there existed, and probably exist several different understandings of what punk is, there are people who understand punk as a marginalized image of existence, just people who consume alcohol and have antisocial behavior. I was more interested in the subculture of punk that had the aspect of social activism, that included anti-fascist initiatives, Food Not Bombs, feminist initiatives, various ones, it was really a spectrum of social activity. Whoever was more into one aspect just did that. Just it was an alternative to the punk that suggested that you just drink and do nothing.
Lily: And you found that community while still in Belarus?
Sergei: Yes exactly, in 2000, probably in 2002 or 2000, I got interested in that and I found some listing in a music newspaper. I was subscribed to a music newspaper and there were listings for dating, but there were also various other kinds of listings. and there I saw the word “Zine,” I had no idea what the word “zine” meant, sure you all understand what Zine means, but for me, I had no idea, I just wrote to a person, I put some money in an envelope, sent it and waited for what would come to me in return. Not knowing what a zine was at all. and I received a xeroxed, self-published magazine and it just was so cool.. that I could also do it and that you could tell people about what’s interesting to you, tell it yourself, make it beautiful, gluе it all together and share it, spread it around, just like I got one.
And there were a whole bunch of contacts, there were flyers with contacts and I was writing just everyone. And I lived in a small town, a really small town, a population of 12,000, and the post office and everyone was always surprised when I got a letter from Malaysia or from the Czech Republic or from somewhere else, because there that rarely happened, that kind of thing doesn’t often happen. So yea, that’s the moment when you can do everything yourself and with a kind of community, being in that community.
Lily: You started making your own zines?
Sergei: Yes, yes of course, I started making my own, I published zines, cut out and glued images and…yea we published them there in Belarus. Also with a friend [comrade] we published different …basically not everyone had a record player, with records, and generally it wasn’t that cheap to buy a record. and we agreed with American bands to distribute their recordings, that came out in the states, for example Code 13 or Destroyed … we agreed that we would give them out on tape cassettes here, In Belarus. Cassettes were accessible to everyone, I mean the cost of a cassette was accessible to everyone, everyone could listen to that music.
So we distributed different foreign bands that way, and also local bands that played, that we were friends with. But there were actually a lot of people who did that, published/distributed zines, recordings, did Food Not Bombs, tried to squat here, although that’s really a failed idea here, to squat here, because it’s a different situation here, different conditions. You need it to be that you don’t have anywhere to live and you don’t tell anyone about it, when you squat, but squatting really isn’t only a place to live, but there’s some kind of social activity happening. But that’s not possible here, because then everyone would find out about it quickly and it would be shut down. That’s why here that’s not really possible. At least at that time.
Lily: And how old were you then?
Sergei: Well if it was 2002, then I was 17.
Lily: Ah…that’s really cool. And when you moved to Moscow was it via that kind of community, did you meet someone, or how did that happen?
Sergei: Yep, well I have a twin brother, and he moved to Moscow a bit before me. and then I moved. And we worked at a book warehouse and lived there, we worked as loaders at this book warehouse and lived there for some time and yea here we interacted with the community of punks, punk/ hardcore society, they’d probably be called then. Yea with that crowd, definitely. Because it was people with interests that are close to yours and the people are close to you. from the beginning you have some .. some moments of intersection, of overlap. and yea, so when I moved to Moscow I was communicating with that community, and I continue to do some activism here in Moscow, it’s been a long time.
Lily: Yeah I wanted to ask, you’ve been in Moscow a while now and you find it important or good or interesting to be in Moscow in particular, in Russia and that’s it, or ?
Sergei: No no, I think it’s.. the thing is at a certain point I realized that I’m absolutely here by inertia, that there’s really no point in being here, at some point I realized that I am just existing here by inertia, I can leave, go somewhere else and live in another place I have absolutely no ties keeping me here. But yea, I left for Sebastopol and lived there for just a little while, that’s Crimea, near the sea. I tried to save money but anyway it didn’t happen and I decided I would go there anyway and I lived with my friend who was also from the punk/hardcore community for three months, we lived for three months in his apartment and I don’t know somehow made some money so we had enough for food and well we rode in the sea, and spent time near the sea, and we also rode around in the mountains. and then I just came back here and tried to find work and learned how to do screen printing. Yea, it wasn’t that long ago, in principle, if i wasn’t doing what i’m doing right now I probably wouldn’t live here, there isn’t really a purpose, a reason to me living in Moscow, except for doing what I am doing right now.
Lily: So you yourself are doing the screen printing to this day?
Sergei: Well, part of it I print myself, yes, but it’s just that I need to be located here, to organize, well not to organize, but just to work here, I’m tied to this place, I can’t work remotely, I need to be here. Yea, not because I need to control everything, but just to do anything. I’m not here as a supervisor, I do actually do some work. Whatever needs to be done I do it, if we need to unload something, something was brought, then I unload it, if we need to prepare stencils for screen printing, I’ll prepare them, if we need to print, I also print. But there is a person now who prints constantly, and I print periodically.
Lily: So it seems like the company or brand or.. however you want to call it, hasn’t grown intensely.. i mean it’s not like a whole lot of people work there?
Sergei: Welll I think since the time when I did it all myself and now, there are 13 of us, I see that as growth. I started doing it alone and then it became 13 people doing it. I think for a smallish brand or for a smallish group that’s pretty ok.
Lily: Yes yes, that is very ok, I just for a second thought it was just the two of you, I didn’t realize it was 13 people, yes that’s a lot. That’s cool, yea. You said earlier that it’s better to take, to look around where you are, to look at what you understand and use that to…well express yourself through that. and i just was wondering if you could give some examples of how that idea is …
Sergei: I get it, how that idea is realized in clothing. I don’t think it’s better, every person decides what is better for them. i just think it’s more interesting, for me at least it’s more interesting, right, there are some kinds of cultural codes, and you understand them and they work and you can interact with them.
I don’t know we also had some prints that were … i don’t know about some events that happened around us. we did some minimalistic prints where it was written “we were born to make fairytales come true [Мы рождены чтоб сказку сделать былью”], right that’s the.. the anthem of aviators, but when it’s specifically in the context around you it can be interpreted absolutely differently. Maybe i can be interpreted as patriotic, with some kind of patriotic reference, or maybe it can be interpreted as a kind of absurd, “we were born to make fairytales come true” something of the absurd, or some kind of nightmare becomes true, i mean you can interpret it in different ways. and in the beginning we understood that those kinds of prints, they’re probably cool because they can be interpreted differently and they reference some reality that surrounds us. and i don’t know we did a print of Swan Lake , which they showed in 1991, instead of showing what was happening in the country, to avoid, I don’t know, some kind of scary situation, all the TV channels showed Swan Lake. It’s unclear why they decided to show Swan Lake, when there are these important political moments in the country, they started showing Swan Lake. But I think in principle it’s still relevant now, when some important event takes place, they can show you really anything as long as it’s not what’s actually happening. and you can interpret that absolutely in your own way, I mean, so yea probably some of our prints do work with the reality that is surrounding us. Well not all of them probably, there are some that are just.. beautiful. But beautiful is also good *laugh*
Lily: Yes. Thank you, you understood my question. Yes
Sergei: I didn’t understand, did I not answer it correctly?
Lily: No you got it, it’s all good. I was just having trouble expressing myself. Hm. Yes so these events, they’re important specifically, well both examples you gave, they’re important not only in Russia, but more broadly in the former Soviet space. And I wanted to ask, in a previous interview you talked about the term post-soviet. and that right now it feels like a trend of some sort, and I don’t know, maybe that makes it lose its meaning. Do you think the term helps to express some kind of concrete style, or tendency or?
Sergei: It helps to sell all of that, helps people who use that term. That term, like the term underground, and the term subculture, and right now the really popular topic of feminism, they just help to sell, so the only thing it stimulates is sales for those who use that term. People need some kind of tag that they can label something to attract attention. So you can say something is “post-Soviet” and everyone will light up and come look at what this post-Soviet thing is. and everyone thinks it’s something, somehow, how to say it, ugly, right, some kind of style that’s strange, raw, something crooked, something you don’t understand, and everyone thinks “yes yes,” meaning there’s a trend for that and everyone’s like “post-Soviet” and that’s it and immediately everyone starts checking their bank account balances, how much money they have, I mean all these terms they’re already so often used with the goal of increasing sales that they at this point don’t mean anything except the amount in your account, and that’s it.
Lily: Haa, so overall it doesn’t describe anything concrete ? Because it’s too.. empty.
Sergei: Yea, I mean at some point it probably described something concrete, but then it became this trend and just really anything could be called post-Soviet and if you call it that it gets more attention and it sells more, and that’s it.
Lily: Ok I want to ask a bit more about perception. Ok so in the West. or not only in the west, but just outside of Russia.. or outside of the post-soviet space, outside the former USSR, the perception again of prints, lettering in Russian or a style that we call streetwear, street style, you’re talking about how people promote all of that both in Russia and outside of it, but I want to talk in a little more detail about why you think cyrillic is that interesting to people who are *not* from that culture, who are outside of it, who do not understand why Swan Lake is printed there…
Sergei: Yea exactly, because they don’t understand, the question is about something unknown something… although I don’t know..no one understands what’s written in Russian on those t-shirts, they’re just like woah Cyrillic. It’s an aesthetic, I mean visually it probably looks beautiful because it’s not understandable, and more generally a trend exists that, maybe some people understand it, in the sense that it’s post-soviet i mean, but probably the majority just know it’s a trend because it’s popular and people buy it. And it’s popular probably because it’s something wild, unknown, well as I see it, in their imagination, it’s something strange, not understandable, and like.. from Russia, yea, cool it’s from Russia. Probably something like that. Just that it’s something strange and unclear, it seems like.
Lily: Yes yes. and how do you think the situation right now affects people’s perceptions? i mean the political situation, specifically in the West about Russia
Sergei: I don’t know, honestly, how it affects all that?
Lily: Well because it is sort of, just a little contradictory seeming, at least on the surface, that, for example, there’s a bad, negative situation between the countries there’s bad relations, and the mainstream media in both countries writes pretty negatively about the other one and so what does it mean that people for example in America think that clothes for example by Gosha Rubchinskiy are really cool and interesting ..
Sergei: Well the story with Gosha Rubchinskiy is a little bit different, he’s more related to fashion, but I think that for example, I don’t know, but it seems cool, i think
Right now I think in contrast it’s actually interesting, for example, you have a neighbor who hangs the confederate flag and you go out in a t-shirt with Russian writing and he already hates you and you’re like “excellent. get yours, and well take that, feed on your hate “ and that’s it. But I don’t know why people buy them. To be honest, I think there’s no way to tell. I mean, these people who hung the confederate flag, they’re going to continue hanging the confederate flag and listening to right-wing country and, i don’t know, wear caps. But there are people who understand that… well possibly they just don’t care, maybe they just don’t care about politics, maybe they understand that’s all bullshit and what’s the difference. I don’t even know. If i spoke specifically with certain people, maybe i could figure out come to a conclusion, but in general it’s unclear. i think nobody really cares, to be honest. The internet erased all those borders and people who try to convince us that those borders exists …they try to convince us, but for the majority of people, borders don’t really exist because the internet exists, so certain borders are…conditional.
Lily: Well yea, well I just thought, it seemed like that possibly the politically negative situation actually helps to increase general interest in Russia actually. I mean the negativity and all the stereotypes… or maybe not stereotypes, but just surface understanding, only the government is written about in mainstream media, not people. and I just think possibly maybe that helps increase interest for people in the west towards, for example, something like fashion or art, or something else that happens among people, not within the government, I don’t know. There definitely is what you said about something wild, something not understandable, something else, but you could also say that about China, and we have a totally different relationship to that, to the Chinese letters, it’s absolutely different. So it’s not only that it’s different, it seems it’s specifically from that culture, Russian or Soviet, I don’t know why it’s interesting to people, I don’t know why it’s interesting to me, so I’m just asking.
Sergei: Yea, maybe also that tag “post-soviet” declares, asserts a kind of empire, and immense empire that existed, and so it’s interesting probably, people are interested in what is happening in the remains of that empire here. Maybe that’s what it is, I don’t know. Maybe it wasn’t worth asking me that question because I can only conjecture why it is interesting, these are just my proposals. It doesn’t happen that I think that people in the states have this image of Russia that there are bears walking around the streets here, no of course, as I was saying, there are no borders, the internet exists, everyone knows each other, just I don’t know, it’s like you get this part of some other culture in the form of a t-shirt, a part of another culture, and it’s interesting how it’s interesting, how that culture works, what’s happening there, how does it happen, and from that probably some kind of interest forms. Like you have some kind of…you’re involved, well not involved, but you have some part of that culture in the form of a t-shirt or something else. I don’t know. I’m just supposing.
Lily: I want to go back a bit to…well you said about Gosha Rubchinskiy that he’s more fashion, what do you mean by that?
Sergei: I just, yea probably, I don’t know, Gosha Rubchinskiy, well yes, probably. As I see it, at some point, he became the.. well it’s as the term post-soviet was brought to some kind of climax, take from that culture absolutely everything that is requested by consumers, take it and bring it to its maximum and present it. for example you have these stretched long sweaters that people wore because you were always bought clothes to grow into, you didn’t buy clothes for yourself every season, for example in the 90s, or in the soviet union people didn’t have as many opportunities to buy. You bought something to grow into it, so you wore a sweater that you’re going to wear in a year or two, so you bought it long, and that’s why you looked a little strange, right, a little bag-like, in a hung sweater. So all those attributes, all the visual aspects were taken by gosha and brought to the extreme, to the max, and presented in the form of that brand. probably. Well there was a huge demand for that and so why not. He did it.
Lily: Ok, but what does that mean that he’s more fashion? You consider your selves not…
Sergei: Well he’s an artist, yes..well we’re a ..we’re not like a brand, we’re like people who print merch, and he’s like an artist, he’s a more creative person, I can call him an artist, right, an artiste. And I’m not, we’re not, we’re more craftspeople. So like he’s an artist, and we have nothing in common with artists, we’re not creative people.
Lily: Woah, I don’t know, that’s really surprising that you say that. I’m also interested to know, Gosha Rubchinskiy is probably…well in high fashion in America he’s the most well-known figure from Russia probably, his name is known, not among normal people, but in high fashion, and all these famous people wear his clothes, etc. And i’m always curious to know what people, other designers, who maybe also make streetwear in Russia think about him, do you think he’s doing it right or…it seems like you have a positive relationship towards him.
Sergei: Yes of course, just I understand him, I think of him as an artist, and that’s not my field to judge in that environment, he’s an artist, a designer, a creative person, and in that environment, in that sphere I can’t judge because I’m not that person, I’m not related to that world, I can’t judge that world. I have no negative feelings towards him, i mean to his brand, absolutely not. I mean he’s just an artist, he sees it that way probably, and makes it that way. But i don’t. We just do merch, and he does fashion.
Lily: Yeaaah I think, and I think a lot of people would say, that you also do fashion. but that’s very interesting. Merch, ok.
Sergei: Well yea, so you can… damn, I subscribed to a bunch of those companies in the States who print, who do screen printing, to learn something, you can ask them, they sometimes answer, help with some technical issues, and a few of those companies have their own merch just for their printing studio, they’re 5 grown ladies, and 5 grown men, and they have their own merch, damn it’s really cool. It’s not even like a business that brings in a lot of cash, just a thing they do, that they like, that they enjoy doing, and they have cool merch and i always like their merch, I find it pleasant, and write to them, oh you’re merch is so cool, or order it even. and it’s always … well we do that too, something of our own, and it would be cool, if people found it pleasant that we’re doing something interesting somewhere and you can order it like merch, so just like a fan paraphernalia of some sort, it’s just nice, at least to me.
Lily: ok so it’s less important that it’s a t-shirt or a sweatshirt or …it’s more important that…well what differentiates merch from?
Sergei: Well you feel a kind of involvement with some group of people, right, so you like some group [band], for example I like this screen printing studio in Arizona, right, i don’t remember what they’re called, they do everything really cool, not even in terms of quality, the quality is also good, but just some kind of human element that’s really important there, you feel that they’re just these good grownup aunties. i don’t know of course maybe in their free time they… i don’t know, maybe they have some kind of strange political views or something, but it seems like not, and just overall it’s just this good group of people making some interesting things, in terms of design and you think oh cool, i like that , and the people themselves. the most important thing is that there are decent people behind it all, you feel that there are good people behind the thing, and you think, i’ll definitely buy it, for sure i’ll write to them and if i can i’ll buy their merch. like, why not, it’s just nice that somewhere far away are these people and you’re wearing their merch
Lily: So everything that you do is merch from you brand?
Sergei: Yes yes, we try to make merch, so that something is left, some moment, not like a brand, but just merch, we print. we also print merch for various groups, we also do that for them
Lily: That’s like when you do collaborations?
Sergei: Yep, collaboratively, for example some band is going on tour, someone we know or someone we don’t know, but an interesting group and we agree with them to print them a set of t-shirts for their tour. Like someone said, I remember there was some kind of news, I don’t remember about whom, but that someone was printing on Gildan t-shirts, and everyone started talking about it, it was some big person who was printing on Gildans in the states, i don’t remember, and everyone was pissed, why did he print on Gildans. Jeez, that was very revealing actually, that it’s not important what you print on. what’s important is the story behind it, the person behind it. if you’re good, you’re interesting then…if you’re a decent person then it doesn’t matter what you print on. you can print on a gold t-shirt, really would not make sense, but yea it’s indicative, it’s telling, it’s specifically related to merch, that the most important thing is what’s behind it. That there’s some kind of story behind it.
Lily: Ok i got it. Ok well…i understand we don’t have a lot more time and also i ..still haven’t eaten breakfast. *laughing* well can I ask one last question?
Sergei: Yes of course, I’m still here
Lily: I’m looking at my questions. we already talked about a lot of things that I wanted to ask about, it just happened naturally, so I didn’t even have to ask, you just told me yourself. Ok here’s a question, also in some interview, it was an interview with Sportswear international, you said that…as I understood it you said that your brand recently became less political because as the country has become more divided…
Sergei: Well in part yes because in general it has become that people quickly right away put labels on you and “understand” how to handle you based on that label. so roughly speaking, you say you’re in favor of the authorities, and you get some label, you say you’re against, and you get another label. But here, in our prints, there should be some kind of subtle irony. In the prints that are on political topics, there should be a subtle kind of… you can very subtly gently joke, so then it will work, otherwise it will work like propaganda or from the other side, just being against the authorities, roughly speaking, right? but we don’t make propaganda, right?
So here you have to make jokes very subtly. not because there’s fear, but because we’re not a mouthpiece for propaganda, not in any direction, not in one or the other, and we never will be, so you need to make fun of them, of all of them. They’re all so very serious, snobs, and they don’t understand humor at all, so you can make fun of everyone, meaning there should be some kind of irony. because everyone’s so serious, even amongst a lot of brands, that really seriously relate to the fact that they are making some kind of culture or something else and well.. i don’t know, overall, i’m against that, I’m for humor and irony and
Lily: Oh I like that. But how does it work then that… oh the door is opening, one second..
Sergei: Did someone bring you breakfast?
Lily: No. That would be good. Did you bring me breakfast, Smith? *laughing* one second, I don’t want there to be sounds. ah never mind there can be some sounds. umm ok about humor I understood everything. I’m just wondering, has anything changed in your approach then or you always tried to do that, to not create propaganda, but to joke instead..
Sergei: Yes of course yes, just now you need to do that even more subtly, you need to search for some kinds of things that might be.. well for example, how we had the “we were born to make fairytales come true” we also had “Through thunderstorms shone on us the sun of freedom” so also some kinds of prints that are ambiguous, you can read them patriotically, or on the other hand you can understand them… well if you look at the situation, then you can understand that these prints are funny, that they’re about the absurd happening around you, about some horror and absurd in the situation happening around you. so you can understand it in absolutely different ways. and probably you need to do it in that same vein. it’s not that we’re saying that’s it, we don’t have any position in relation to what’s happening. No of course we have a position in relation to what’s happening, just you need to gently mock what’s happening, somehow more qualitatively notice that situation.
Lily: The one about the fairytale was that recent?
Sergei: No, that i think came out in the spring, or no that came out…i don’t remember when it came out, we were born to make fairytales come true, i don’t remember when it came out, to be honest, but it was, damn i really don’t remember, probably last…spring, i think last spring, i don’t remember.
Lily: I just wanted to ask, from your more recent inscriptions can you talk about one…or was the sun one from your recents ?
Sergei: Oh from our most recent was that one.. the Russian arc collection, that was our second to last collection that we had, we still have it now, that was Russian arc…
Lily: The song by Monetochka?
Sergei: The song, well the song Russian arc didn’t exist at the time, there was, there is, a work by Pimen Karpov, a Russian writer at in the beginning of the 20s, and he had this book, this work that’s called Russian arc. and we were referencing that mostly. On these prints, on all of them were embroidery, prints, silicone tags, of the geodata of Solovetsky, solovki, where the Solovetsky camp was, where they sent people to the GULAGs, that system of northern camps, well that was a reference to those camps, to that political topic. So yea we printed geodata and the Russian ark on these t-shirts. Like an image of a wagon, a Russian arc, because people were transported in these wagons, a lot of educated, i don’t know, scientists, a whole bunch of people who could have made all this… and regular people also, just a huge part of the populations was taken there, not only to Solovki, but in general to those camps.
And then someone wrote me that Monetochka released a track called Russian Ark. but since she studies there, at VGEEK [Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography] or where does she study, she was making a reference to Sakurov, to a film by Sakurov “Russian Ark” and we on the other hand were referencing Pimen Karpov. Before that I hadn’t even watched Russian arc, i watched it a week ago, after I watched an interview with him, I watched the film Russian Ark, before that I hadn’t seen it and actually before i was told about the reference to Sakurov, I didn’t even know he had a film called that. It was just a work by Pimen Karpov. But i don’t think we.. we argue who made it first Monetochka or us, but that’s totally not important to me. Sometimes there are things that are just on the surface and they are realized in several…in several variations. So maybe that’s one of those, or maybe not. But the frequency isn’t important, I mean who did it first in this case is absolutely not important…for me. We can ask Monetochka.
Lily: When I interview her
Sergei: I’ll send a message, maybe she’ll answer us in a direct message. we’ll ask like “tell us is it important who made Russian Ark first?”
Lily: go for it *laugh*
Sergei: And I’ll send you the result, if she answers. But I hope she answers
Lily: *laughing* ok, thank you. Well, damn, that was really great, thank you, just it was really interesting for me to speak with you
Sergei: Thank you, for me too.
