Absolutely Augmented Reality: Kuzma Vostrikov and Ajuan Song – In Pictures

Citing influences ranging from Rene Magritte, Yayoi Kusama and Ren Hang to surrealist filmmakers such as Michel Gondry, we asked the self-declared photoexistentialist duo, Kuzma Vostrikov and Ajuan Song, to talk us through some key images from their new book, Absolutely Augmented Reality…

Synergy of Comfortable Circumstances

The theme of a closed space, isolation several years before the coming of the virus. To become a prisoner, you have to go to jail. An office, a career, life as a spouse or loneliness all lead us to the question of free choice.

Absolutely Augmented Reality

Smoking is not just a bad habit. Smoking is a ritual. Smoking improves your image. Smoking improves your chances. Why does everyone smoke in the movies? Because it’s cheaper that way – they don’t have to write any dialogue. But for marketing today, unfortunately, one cigarette isn’t enough.

Just to Land in Tokyo

Everyone remembers the 1960s space fantasy. We were supposed to have settled every corner of the universe a long time ago. Today everyone has their own model of tourism. Some people play with computer tanks at home. Some people go to Thailand for sex. And some people put on a helmet and an oxygen tank and still dream of flying off to Mars forever, just like in the60s.

Chapter 433

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. No need to be friends with writers.

Inviolability of Sorrow

Ajuan found an old cassette tape in the attic of her house in China. On it, her former lover read poems, wept, and begged for forgiveness. The tape player ate up that sad old tape and destroyed it. But the voices of our loved ones still flash before our eyes.

Wave-Particle Duality

The arrival of the Internet reduced our need for genuine friendship and union. Radio signals came to replace physical contact. We dream of closeness, but the mask of electronic filters, our digital shell, has made us forever solitary. We don’t call our brothers and sisters. We don’t even bury them.

Antiquated lips

Who among us has never dreamed of particular lips for kissing? Andy Warhol even thought up the expression: Kissable lips. In our time, all kisses have been monetized and registered. Soon the Constitution will be amended to ban kissing. But the dream still has the right to its battle cry.

Lady with Her Belongings

The bicycle, an apparatus for transporting the body while in a seated position, is not the worst thing in hell when all the doors are locked – possibly from the outside. Coronavirus was invented according to the famous play by Jean-Paul Sartre. How surprised the prosecutors were when everything proceeded exactly according to the script.

Absolutely Augmented Reality-2

Darkness and the apocalypse are a theme to be developed not just by commercial Hollywood, but by certain academics, as well. Each of them should plant a tree, and also speak his piece about global collapse. The Nights of Cabiria would have been even darker once nuclear winter came. But each person’s fragile soul believes in a happy ending.

As told to Mike Pinnington

All images courtesy the artists. 

Absolutely Augmented Reality by Kuzma Vostrikov and Ajuan Song, published by Scheidegger-Spiess, is available now.