Alexeï Shulgin, net-artiste renommé, animateur du site Easylife.org.

1 / Introductory machine-gun : who are you ? where are you from, and what are you doing ?
I am Alexei, male, Russian, 39, born in Moscow, live and work in Moscow and Helsinki. My work includes producing media art projects, teaching, playing music for money, organizing media art festivals.

2 / Such a martial introduction brings us to this first question : net-art is usually presented as an offensive attack based on strategic processes. After a few years of highly subversive experiences, how do you consider the ratio of force between the "commercial/corporate web" and the "net-art galaxy" ?

Well, 'net-art galaxy' in a way was developing parallel to the commercial one and has passed a similar path: from overhyped expectations to understanding state of things and the possibilities of Internet as a medium. The e-commerce crash has coincided with the 'death of net art' as it was called by some key participants. But
these are just words, again. In reality we can see a lot of people doing their things on the Internet without bothering how to call them.
I am happy to see lots of independent on-line communities, different cultures developing on the Internet, people building something positive on-line. They are not net art as we know it but I see net art as a rehearsal or a reconnaissance of many processes that we can witness today. Of course, corporate web is strong, but 'simple people' still have their tools and ways to talk and be heard.

3 / Because your art is very caustic and ironic, a lot of your works should be (or shoud they really ?) read at the second degree. Did you have nice experiences of net surfers taking things at they come at first glance ? (ex. hundreds of commands on the FuFme project ;-)

Sure, that project has attracted millions of people and many of them wanted to understand what is going on. Articles about Fu-Fme appeared in many papers/magazines (including offline) and in TV programs. There we even people damning this imaginary company for being Hell's ambassadors on Earth. The success among net surfers (as well as unsuccess among art institutions) have given me some important lessons, here are some of them :

- never present your project as an art project - people don't have much credibility to art anymore
- information on the internet can be distributed as fast as a virus - i have got hundreds of thousands of visitors a day only one month after launching the site
- pop language is THE language of today, we should learn how to use it properly.

4 / Could you tell us a bit about net-art (and more generally about web) in Russia ? Do you work with a lot of russian web-artists ? Is there any institutional helps or whatever ?

There are not so many people in Russia who would call themselves as net artists or web artists - just because there is no institutional support (as we know "net art" now can only exists in the institutional framework), but there are many active people on the internet. Lots of self-made sites, communities. Internet is extremely popular, mostly the mainstream use of it - chats, discussion groups, information search, etc. Because of the language (there are not so many Russians who know other languages) - I find Russian Internet somehow different - it's more text based, more relevant to a word-determined nature of Russian culture. There are some 'resistance', provocative, subversive, etc. sites. There are sites run by single individuals and yet extremely popular. Well it's a theme for a profound research or a long article and I'll be happy to do it for you if you find some budget for it.

5 / Could you tell us a bit about the Read_Me Festival ?

We call it 'the first international software art festival'. It's solely devoted to the theme. There is more info about its first edition at http://macros-center.ru/read_me/. Now we are working on the second edition and some other related project (that might grow bigger than Read_me itself !). We are going to launch it soon, so - stay tuned !

6 / About the Yes/No survey at the top of easylife.org : are you not disapointed by the results (yes : 56 %, no : 44%) which does not give the majority to the "contras" ? What is the survey about, and what do you personnaly answer to this enigmatic question ?

No, I find it positive : more people have chosen 'yes' ! I don't tell you what it's about - if you don't get it, then it's not for you ! Sometimes I check if the script is working, then I press any of the buttons, trying to select different ones - just not to affect the objective result.

7 / Let's talk about sex : which bond do you see between net-art and (offensive) cybersex ? (teasy question... sorry for that)

Good one. I have even made a project about that. (http://easylife.org/xxx). At some point I've realized that people on the net are much more interested in porn than in net art. That drove me to making a project in which a porn interface would lead people to net art oevres in the same way some innocent interfaces sometimes lead
to porn. You start looking at porn but end up deep in art. As I mentioned before - if you want to be heard you should know how the mainstream/pop culture works ; and porn is a very essential part of it.

8 / Beside net-art, which good adresses could you give us on the web ?

Depends on the net explorers' preferences. The beauty of the net is that it's big, - if you are looking for something - you will get it. I am pretty much in software art these days so keep on checking Read_me site - there will be tons of links there soon.

8 / Finish : five sites without which the web would'nt be the web ?

Five ingredients without which food wouldn't be food...

Paris - Moscou
Propos recueillis par mail par Alexandre Boucherot le 18.12.02