Artem Skiy

EB: Artem, to begin, could you introduce yourself to the Brazilian audience? How did your journey in film begin and how did it eventually lead you to Tokyo?

 

Since I was a kid I’ve been interested in art and film, but somehow I’ve been ignoring it as a viable career choice until I was about 30. I grew up in Russia and we’re very pragmatic over there, the job has to be a “job” not some kind of “art thing”. At 20, I moved to Vancouver, Canada and bounced around a bunch of different jobs. I was kind of lost, but I didn’t care, I was young and life was good. Then as soon as I got my Canadian citizenship I applied for a Working Holiday visa and moved to Japan for a year. I fell in love with Tokyo city and that love never went away. I found ways to prolong my stay in Japan but it was not sustainable and I was getting older and couldn’t keep doing minimum wage jobs forever. So at 25 I was back in Vancouver and lost again. I took a bunch of personality tests and went to career counsellors to find out what to do, still ignoring my filmmaking hobby as a career option. I studied and took a bunch of tests to get the GED, since I didn’t graduate high school yet, then I went to college, only to quit it a year later, I just couldn’t fit in. Vancouver Film School got on my radar with their Visual Effects program as I had a lot of friends who were doing it, and for me this was a perfect “safe” place where I could do art and be in the film industry while avoiding the risks of normal filmmaking freelance lifestyle. So I borrowed all the money I could from everywhere to pay for the school. The crazy thing is, the first few months in and I already knew it wasn’t for me and I wouldn’t be doing it my whole life. But I just paid a crazy amount of money so I needed to go through with it. I finished the school, kind of, I actually failed because I didn’t have enough marks and I didn’t get my diploma, but it’s a long story. Anyway, I had a good demo reel and got a job at a VFX house and started working on feature films as a VFX compositor. In my free time I’d still shoot and edit my own little hobby films. An opportunity came along to volunteer as a PA (Production Assistant) on a local music video shoot, that was my first time on a film set ever, and I absolutely loved everything about it! The hustle and professionalism and the army-like attitude, it was amazing! I knew I wanted to be on set. I started volunteering as various assistants in different departments, it was great! Oh yeah I was also flying back to Tokyo every chance I got between my VFX contracts. I got in touch with some film people in Tokyo, they saw my personal work and they liked it and introduced me to more people. I got my first paid project as a filmmaker that way. Then the ball started to roll and more projects started to come in. I was shooting, directing, editing, doing VFX, sound mix etc. After a couple of years I was making just barely enough to pay for my room in a sharehouse. So I made the switch to be a filmmaker, I was about 30 by that time. Now 10 years later I’m still here, still bouncing around a bit, doing film, art and music, and I’m loving it. 

 

EB: You have a background in visual effects and commercial directing. How have those experiences shaped your personal work as a filmmaker?

 

VFX and commercials go hand in hand together as they are all about the visual candy. I love things that catch your attention and keep you there, so VFX was always a good tool to get there. My attitude to my personal work is changing though. I’m putting less attention on visual impact and more attention on the story. We all remember iconic images but meaningful stories get to a deeper level. Especially now with AI, I feel like the value of visual impact is disappearing as we are bombarded with beautiful unbelievable imagery which is so cheap to produce for anyone even without any experience. I’m 100% sure the AI will replace humans in storytelling too, but who cares, just personally speaking I’m really into storytelling these days, so I’ll do them for my own enjoyment anyway. 

 

EB: Proxy feels like a return to narrative experimentation for you. What drew you to this project and what ideas were you most interested in exploring?

 

It started with my Japanese friend, whom I knew for many years, revealing to me that she’s a prostitute. I was surprised and had a million questions. Right away I knew I needed to record the interview with her, not knowing what would come out of it, maybe it’s dark, maybe it’s sad, maybe it’s crazy in some ways I never imagined, whatever it is, it would be valuable and interesting stuff. As you heard in the film, there was nothing dark or crazy that came out of that interview. She seems to have enjoyed her job and was personally quite proud of it. The whole interview was about 2 hours long, I cut it down to just a couple minutes and that’s what you’ve heard in the film.

I have lots of visual experiments on my computer so I wanted to come up with some concept that matches the interview content and those visuals to put together a short film. The concept drove the film's direction. 

 

EB: The film presents itself as an interview but quickly dissolves into something more abstract and surreal. What was the structure or logic guiding the fragmentation of this narrative?

 

The concept for the film was the birth of conscious AI, which is reconstructing personalities of people from all the data that is out there, to interview them and to learn about humans. I know the film is very experimental in nature to deduce that detailed concept for the viewer but for myself, having that concept figured out and locked was essential to keeping things on track and stylistically consistent. 

 

EB: You describe Proxy as a meditation on AI, digital consciousness, and fragmented identity. To you, is the presence in the film trying to understand the woman or itself?

 

The presence in the film (the male voice) is the AI which is trying to learn about humans in general, therefore it’s reconstructing various people from all the data that is in the clouds. This time it was a random woman in Tokyo, next time it will be someone else. The reason the identity is fragmented is because the data would not represent anyone fully, so the picture will always be blurry and unclear. 

 

EB: Visually, the film is incredibly precise yet ethereal. How did you approach the aesthetic of Proxy to reflect themes of digital memory and emotional disconnection?

 

The concept was driving the film’s direction, without it, we’d be lost. We have so many things we wanted to put into the film, but the concept dictated what is acceptable and what is rejected. For example, what would AI look like? I thought it would be something organic and ever-changing with a very slight digital feel. Hence that visual of the vertical line when the voice speaks. As for the images of the woman and her world, in the concept, it had to be compiled from the fragmented data, so point clouds and nerfs and splats were very appropriate visuals. 

 

EB: How do you personally relate to the concept of fragmented identity, especially as someone navigating multiple cultures and artistic disciplines?

 

Wow that’s a good question. I like philosophy a lot, so the way I look at the world and myself might be somewhat weird. I think there is no one me. Firstly, I change depending on the chemicals in my brain. If I didn’t have my coffee in the morning I would be a different person. My chemicals also change depending on my life-style and my age and an unlimited amount of factors over which I have zero control. So even I don’t know who I am. Now moving out from here it gets worse haha! Nobody in the world knows 100% of what I do and what I think and how I feel, they only know a tiny little bit of what is visible to them and that tiny bit is going through the filter of their own limited flawed brain which is also affected by chemicals. So the real me, if it ever existed, is being lost very quickly among all these other physical processes that run the world. From this interview you’d know something about me that nobody else does, that’s a little fragment of my identity. 

 

EB: Do you see Proxy as speculative, poetic, critical, or all of the above?

 

I think it’s poetic. 

 

EB: What role does technology play in your creative process beyond being a theme? Do you use emerging tools like AI in the production itself?

 

Yes, I use AI all the time for all sorts of things. AI is really good at spotting patterns, so I use it to organize my thoughts. I use AI to work out a concept, to find a common theme among seemingly unrelated things. Visually I use it to help me stretch my imagination of what is possible. And I have used AI generated videos in commercial work as well. 

 

EB: The digital ghost in Proxy seems as much a projection of the viewer as of the character. How do you think about the audience's position when crafting works like this?

 

With this concept the audience is experiencing the POV of the presence (the AI). 

 

EB: In a time when everything is archived, replicated, and stored in the cloud, do you believe there is still space for mystery in cinema?

 

Not sure if I understand the question correctly, but if the angle is “everything has been done, so can something new  be made?” then the answer is definitely yes. The art is the answer to current situation, whether it’s world affairs or cultural or personal, it doesn’t matter, that situation is always going to change, hence we will always need new art to speak to us. 

 

EB: What are you currently working on? Are there new narratives or mediums you are interested in exploring next?

Recently I’ve been possessed by light art installations, interactive art and music festival stage lighting. It’s a huge side-quest from filmmaking, but I’m feeling like a kid exploring this new world, it’s super fun! My ChatGPT therapist told me to take each project 4 months at the time, so in a couple of months I’ll be back at my computer writing the next film and 4 months after that it’ll be something else again, let’s see.