Pavel's artistic work is usually inspired and driven by the issues regarding our relations and feelings toward the Other, ranging from love to hate, from fear to an urgent need of getting closer. Here, the Other may be a human or an animal, but also an everyday household object or an AI agent. In relation to that, Pavel is deeply concerned by the issues of the abuse of power and the nature of violence, which he touches on in his recent artistic practice, often drawing on contemporary philosophical and psychoanalytic (lacanian) thought.
In his theater practice he focuses on combining various, often quite orthogonal and usually participatory postdramatic approaches, sometimes in the scope of the same performance. He is especially interested in exploring novel ways of interactions between a performance and its audience, and in many of his projects the audience basically becomes an indispensable part of the performance itself. For example, in one performance, the actors actively involve the audience into "crime investigation" through interviews and investigative experiments, in another, the audience publicly share the outcomes of their "conversations" with animals, and there is even a performance where there is no division between actors and spectators and everyone is playing on stage in front of everyone according to certain instructions. He also experiments with degrees of freedom for spectators to influence what they see on the stage: for instance, in one performance, the audience decides when to end it, and, in another, the spectators are offered a choice to watch either the live or recorded variant of the performance.
Pavel is devoted to using non-dramatic texts for staging, such as fictional prose, philosophical essays, personal diaries, dictionaries, etc., and the scripts of his performances often represent the mixtures of dramatic and non-dramatic texts, as well as verbatim and improvised dialogues and monologues born during rehearsals and workshops, or directly on stage. At the same time, his performances are usually anti-narrative and resemble landscapes rather than straight pavements. One of the performances that he directed, The Investigation, had been staged at the most prominent Russian experimental theater, Meyerhold center.
In his experimental approach to cinema, he is largely influenced by late Godard’s films with scripts mainly based on various quotes used in various ways to create a film dialogue. His film "Meetings. Episode 1" participated in the International Competition of Oberhausen Film Festival, the most authoritative experimental film festival in the world, and also won the main competition at the major Russian festival for experimental films "The Spirit of Fire".
He is looking for opportunities for interdisciplinary joint work towards a performance or a film with cinema labs, theatres, art centers or residencies.
In his theater practice he focuses on combining various, often quite orthogonal and usually participatory postdramatic approaches, sometimes in the scope of the same performance. He is especially interested in exploring novel ways of interactions between a performance and its audience, and in many of his projects the audience basically becomes an indispensable part of the performance itself. For example, in one performance, the actors actively involve the audience into "crime investigation" through interviews and investigative experiments, in another, the audience publicly share the outcomes of their "conversations" with animals, and there is even a performance where there is no division between actors and spectators and everyone is playing on stage in front of everyone according to certain instructions. He also experiments with degrees of freedom for spectators to influence what they see on the stage: for instance, in one performance, the audience decides when to end it, and, in another, the spectators are offered a choice to watch either the live or recorded variant of the performance.
Pavel is devoted to using non-dramatic texts for staging, such as fictional prose, philosophical essays, personal diaries, dictionaries, etc., and the scripts of his performances often represent the mixtures of dramatic and non-dramatic texts, as well as verbatim and improvised dialogues and monologues born during rehearsals and workshops, or directly on stage. At the same time, his performances are usually anti-narrative and resemble landscapes rather than straight pavements. One of the performances that he directed, The Investigation, had been staged at the most prominent Russian experimental theater, Meyerhold center.
In his experimental approach to cinema, he is largely influenced by late Godard’s films with scripts mainly based on various quotes used in various ways to create a film dialogue. His film "Meetings. Episode 1" participated in the International Competition of Oberhausen Film Festival, the most authoritative experimental film festival in the world, and also won the main competition at the major Russian festival for experimental films "The Spirit of Fire".
He is looking for opportunities for interdisciplinary joint work towards a performance or a film with cinema labs, theatres, art centers or residencies.