Ekaterina Filippova

Stupefaction is a kind of paralysis of thought – a moment when thinking confronts what it cannot think and must remain exposed to that impossibility. In my work, I am interested in approaching making as not being advanced forward by what works, but instead by the crisis solicited as a result of something not working. Similarly to the state of language collapsing onto itself, my pieces are complete by the lack of normative action on my behalf as a maker, allowing the material itself to exhort agency and express itself.

I use material exploration as a way to dissolve the boundary between the human and the non-human, instead viewing consciousness as co-constituted at the moment of entangled creation. Whether it is traditional silversmithing techniques like white-baking or digital image generation through prompt-engineering, I seek to find action in inaction, the beauty in that which is ‘not working’. Staining silver by overheating the surface of metal metaphorically corresponds to the failures of AI image generation, where chance and mistakes allows for machine delusions, endearing, liminal misinterpretations as well as new ways of thinking, freedom, creativity, and pure expression.