Vasilisa Petrova

Vasilisa Is an artist, whose practice intertwines experimental cinema and documentary.
based in London, UK. 

Her formally adventurous films address the interplay of impermanence, cultural flux, traumatic memory and mysticism, delving into the adaptability and vulnerability of individuals and societies through her cinematic lens.


Email
























Selected Exhibitions and Screenings

2024 Onion City Experimental Film Festival, Chicago, USA
2024 Beijing International Film Festival, Siphon Experimental Film Container, China
2023 B3 Biennial of the Moving Image, Frankfurt, Germany
2023 EXiS Experimental Film and Video Festival, Seoul, South Korea
2021  New Moving Image, Caraboo Projects, The Island Gallery, Bristol, UK

Rabbits-Dogs




Rabbits-Dogs / Зайцыпсы (Excerpt)
DCP, Colour, Sound, 8'4'', 2026, Georgia / UK


A poetic exploration of personal and familial disconnection in which a tightly choreographed confrontation turns into an image of doubling, struggle, and control. 


Rabbits-Dogs is a dysfunctional relationship, unfolding in a world almost entirely stripped of naturalism.
It operates as a mystery that refuses resolution. 
Meaning is never fully granted; patterns never quite form.
In this fractured structure, the viewer is left without reassurance. 
Within this instability lies a strange pleasure-a radical, unsettling jouissance. 



...............................................................................................................................................
At rest 




At rest / В покое (Trailer)
DCP, Colour, Sound, 7'29'', 2025, Russia / UK

Trapped in a sterile and oppressive environment an aging woman confronts her unexpected pregnancy. 
At rest is a meditation on stasis and containment, time and domestic anxiety, through which the figure of the mother emerges in silence

The film explores what it means to be a woman—
specifically, a certain type of woman—
trapped by notions of heterosexual sex, fertility, and reproduction in contemporary wartime Russia.



...............................................................................................................................................

Short meditation for sleep



Short meditation for sleep (Excerpt)
DCP, Colour, Sound, 7'6'', 2025, France / UK

I made this work to remember my mother in her own words,
but her voice is too concrete, I had to remove it,
and what is left are kaleidoscopic and fragmentary lyrics for her stream of consciousness.
It’s an infinite song improvised in conditional form - what ifs, suspended hopes, perpetual sighs and speculations about the future.
This film operates on a vertical plane, where the diegetic sounds, the empty terrain and the slowly decaying loop harmonise into a nonconsecutive melodic dialogue.




..........................................................................................................................................................

Landslide




Landslide (Trailer)
Multi-Channel Installation, Colour, Sound, 15'', 2025, Georgia / France / UK

A hybrid documentary project that captures the aftermath of the 2023 Shovi landslide in western Georgia. 

An immersive work of sonic ethnography, Landslide draws on audio recordings made by a travelling sound recordist, 
embracing the overwhelming visual and auditory confusion of this impossible perspective, denying any narrative function to its images.


...............................................................................................................................................

Tidal




Tidal (Excerpt)
DCP, Colour, Sound, 9'20'', 2024, UK

A nocturnal soliloquy unfolds through Poppy, a night cleaner and phone sex operator, as she oscillates between the opposing roles, her voice revealing a haunting tale of precarious isolation and a life suspended in stasis.
The caller’s (viewer’s) gaze lingers, drifting across the imagined female form, the hazy static, and the nameless figures that fill the night with spectral presence.
Using close framings, dizzying sonic arrangement and artist’s own body, Tidal explores nudity, ambiguity, and the unstable legibility of sexual difference, testing the line between self-study and observational documentary.


For over a month, I called phone sex operators, delving into the  nature of their labour, 
where imagination reigns and anonymity fosters a fluid interplay of identities.
Poppy, uniquely open to sharing her vulnerability, became central to this exploration. 
Navigating between her role as a night cleaner and the intimate demands of her calls, she exists in a state of constant flux. 
Eventually, I found myself drawn into the enigmatic projections of her clients, piecing together her life through her voice. 
The film seeks to capture this dreamlike intersection where the boundaries between the tangible and the imaginary dissolve, 
reflecting the surreal liminality of Poppy’s dual existence.

..........................................................................................................................................................

Lake of Fire




Lake of Fire (Excerpt)
SIngle-channel installation, Colour, Sound, 10'', 2024, UK

A study in transience built from amateur home movies; mundane scenes treated as absurd rituals, turning into a dance of death.

The immersive nature of the film is defined by a collapse between the world within the frame and the processes of  filming, archiving and digital manipulation,
implying that there is an underlying violence contained within every frame.
The continual layering of images also establishes a space in which the viewer can place themselves,
no longer distanced by the illusion that this is a separate world displayed on screen.
Instead, it becomes something direct and palpable that can be dismantled through the act of viewing,
and then reconstructed again through an abstract rhythm of fractured sound and image fragments.


...............................................................................................................................................
Polyphonic Assemblage



Polyphonic Assemblage 
Single-channel installation, ultrasonic distance sensors, Arduino, Pure Data, 10'00'', 2023, UK

A  documentation of a performance in which I wore a mask fitted with ultrasonic distance sensors while interacting with pigeons. 
The birds’ movements are translated in real time into sound via Arduino and PureData, forming a shifting sonic composition.


Polyphonic Assemblage points to a field of overlapping signals-human, animal, machine, and environment- where no single element holds authorship. 
The work unfolds as a temporary alignment of these forces, producing a continually reconfigured listening space.














....................© 2026 ......................................................................................................................................