Unschooling Future

My 2023 REEL

FREE TO BROWSE, my upcoming comic book expected in 2025

FREE TO BROWSE is a comics journalism project in progress about coming of age online.

It delves into the stories of vulnerable teens, including my transgender son, for whom the internet has served as a crucial lifeline.

Contrary to the widespread belief that social media, online games and extensive “screen time” are detrimental, this work presents first-person accounts about how these same platforms have been indispensable for self-discovery, self-education, forging friendship and finding comfort.

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mp4, 00:05:10, 1920 x 1080, 29,97 fps, Adobe After Effects, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Fresco, Stable Diffusion, Midjourney, Stable Inpainting

My animated short film Animated Diaries of War: COFFEE is screening at several festivals in the US, in Europe and online! Click the purple Learn More button below for the screenings locations and times.

It’s very special to me that COFFEE is screening at the epic ArtDocFest in Riga on March 3. Please take a peek and tell me how it looked on the big screen!

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The first pages of Code and Conscience: The OpenAI Chronicles, a web comic I have experimented with to make sense of the recent happenings at OpenAI and LLMs in general.

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This essay is a first (and very rough) draft of my upcoming (comic) book Free to Browse.

Drawing from my family's experience as educational refugees (we moved countries twice to be able to legally homeschool and allow our two geeky programmer kids to further self-organize their learning) and my media expertise, I explore organic learning contexts based on autonomy and curiosity that bring out the best in all individuals involved, no matter their age, and help bridge generational gaps.

I believe we should let young minds have their digital freedom today and stop locking them up in age-restricted ghettos. Surveillance and authoritarian control are detrimental for bonding, self-discovery, developing technical chops and out-of-the-box creativity (all pretty valuable assets in the fast-paced digital age) and only reinforce ignorance, rigidity and vulnerability in the long run.

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Projecting my Children behind Glass animation on the walls of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, sound on! I keep performing my artistic protest against the inhumane practices in The Netherlands where thousands of children are being separated from their parents. If I manage to sell my artworks, most of the sales will go to families and to the Het Vergeten Kind foundation stepping up against locked facilities for children.

The Secret Word, looped animation, mp4, 00:00:20:00, 2000 x 2000, 29,97 fps, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator

Available at: https://foundation.app/@KORNIENKO/secretword/1

The Secret Word merch (T-shirts, bags, stickers and more) is available at https://society6.com/kornienko

This charity project is an artistic parody of the famous Wordle game where you have to guess the secret word, only in this Russian version, the opening word is always "Putin" and the secret word is always "War".

I got the idea to create this piece after a protester was detained in Russia for holding up a poster saying "*** *****" (symbolizing "нет войне”, “no to war”).

The middle row contains a capacious Russian swear word, which means the whole puzzle can be read as both “Putin, go f*ck yourself, war” and “Putin, why the f*ck war?” See more

On February 26, 2022, I projected my then unfinished antiwar animation A Parallel World on the walls of the Hermitage in Amsterdam, the first and only foreign dependence of the famous Hermitage Museum in St.Petersburg, Russia (they broke their ties with the Russian Hermitage shortly afterwards). I stand with Ukraine and all the brave Russians who rise against Putin's military invasion of Ukraine. I am Russian and I speak Russian to my children, but Putin is not my president. The Kremlin is not only robbing Ukrainians and Russians of their lives. The Kremlin is robbing all Russian people of a future.

Children behind Glass, looped animation, mp4, 00:00:12:10, 1920 x 1080, 29,97 fps, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Fresco, Adobe After Effects

Available at https://knownorigin.io/gallery/5413000-children-behind-glass

Children_behind Glass: An artistic protest against crippling government control over childhood.

The collection includes the main animation (a 12 second loop, mp4) and several still portraits (png), all based on Dutch Renaissance art. With this project, I want to express hope that the new renaissance unleashed in the digital realm today may help children regain their voices.