We made a fully surreal AI video very angry
In the Big Dictionary of Russian Proverbs, the first meaning of the expression “to lose [one’s] face” is defined as follows: to become unlike oneself, to lose one’s distinctive, individual traits, one’s independence.
I hate Aesopian language. I prefer to speak plainly — using words to mean exactly what they say. And if that leads to draining, fruitless arguments, I prefer to stay silent. But an image in visual art is instantaneous and more capacious than a verbal metaphor. An image is born quicker than words.
When one country starts bombing another, and someone important to you — someone you’ve always seen as a moral compass — says, smiling smoothly, without a hint of doubt, “It’s okay, I hope we’ll defeat all our enemies soon,” it hits hard. So it’s okay, really — that bombs fall? Another splendid little war, huh? And what arises in your mind isn’t words, but an image. Especially when, in response to a direct question — “Are you for the war?” — they say: “I stand with ours.” (If anything, this is a composite figure.)
This series was born from that image. It is brutally, brutally surreal. But what else can I do, if not visually shatter a hateful reality into pieces? From that came the wounded angel — because an angel is an invulnerable being, one who cannot lose face by virtue of lacking a human nature. Once wounded, the angel becomes human.
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And at some point, someone asked me if I’d like to turn that image into an AI animation for an event. The event had to do with wounded angels — meaning humanitarian workers, burned out and laid off. A symbol is an elusive, ambivalent thing, unlike a sign.
I don’t make moving pictures — but my friend Yaroslava Favorsky does. So I passed the request on to her. And Yaroslava, she lives in Be’er Sheva. And that very day, an Iranian rocket hit a seven-story building in Be’er Sheva. Four people died. And Yaroslava asked me if it was okay to depict explosions.
I understood this might push the work away from its original purpose. But that Iranian campaign had thrown me into a mood so dark, for which there’s a fixed expression in modern Russian: “give me a tank.” I had no moral right to depict the explosions — but Yaroslava did. So I delegated this to her.
And so Yaroslava began making the animation while Iran was bombing Israel.
At the same time, Israel was bombing Iran. And my elder daughter — who’s friends with some Iranians — told me that a missile hit the home of an acquaintance’s parents’ neighbor. He had just built two additional floors onto his house. The Israeli strike wiped those new floors clean off. Fortunately, no one was hurt.
When you’re part of an international diaspora, when your identity is complex and layered, you simply cannot afford to call one of the warring sides “ours.”
Still, my elder daughter lives far from the zones of active conflict. And she told me the animation was too depressing.
