25/09/2026
A Step Further Leads to Innate Instinct by Philip Tsetinis (2024-ongoing)
The series examines human behavior during acute states of exception, the exact threshold where social order and civilizational habitus temporarily collapse. Rooted in socio-cultural observations, Tsetinis creates physically realized stagings that simulate everyday situations, only to deliberately rupture them through disruptive events. These works operate as visual studies of losing control, marking the precise transition from socially regulated actions to archaic survival reflexes, presenting instinct as a radical, situationally triggered response to structural fractures.
Set in an era defined by post-factual aesthetics, the project stands as an epistemic space of experience. The photographic image does not serve as documentary evidence, but as an instrument to destabilize perception, captured in a singular, unrepeatable moment on analogue 4x5-inch large-format film.
Philip Tsetinis
Born in 1993, Tsetinis's practice centers on the socio-cultural investigation of human existential conditions at the fractures of societal, technological, and biological systems. He analyzes critical transitions where external stimuli force individuals into transformation, ranging from gradual evolutionary adaptation to the abrupt collapse of rational control.
Countering the disembodiment of digital image cultures, he formulates a hyper-physical ontology of the image, approaching photography as an epistemic space to destabilize perception and challenge assumptions of visibility and credibility in a post-factual era. He lives and works in Vienna.
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