What Ends When the Symbols Shatter

Interview with Filip Custic

Known for blurring the lines between the physical and digital, Filip Custic continues to redefine identity and technology through performance, sculpture, and immersive interventions. In January 2025, as part of The Mandrake’s Artist in Residence programme, he brought this exploration to London, using the city itself as both a stage and a collaborator.

As Head Curator of the Artist in Residence programme at The Mandrake, I had the opportunity to witness and document Custic’s journey firsthand. At the heart of his performance was ‘filip jugando al cristal’, a sculptural piece that evolved in real time as Custic adapted to unexpected material challenges. With glass as a central element, the work became a meditation on vulnerability, transformation, and adaptation—themes mirrored in the unpredictability of the urban landscape. Culminating in a large-scale digital takeover on Oxford Street with W1 Curates, Custic’s intervention invited the public to question their perception of identity, control, and human presence in an era of hyperconnectivity.

Your performances often reclaim public space, transforming familiar urban environments into stages for artistic intervention. Your interventions feel like a direct challenge to consumerist culture, where cities have become saturated with advertisements and branding. Whether it’s a billboard layered with advertising, or a body placed in the middle of a busy street, what draws you to disrupt everyday reality? Do you see your work as a rebellion against these structures, or are you more interested in playing with their aesthetics?

I love messing with the everyday—taking something super familiar and making it feel weird. Cities are basically giant billboards at this point, telling us what to buy, who to be, how to live. So I like slipping into those spaces, disrupting them, almost like a glitch in the system. It’s not about fighting against consumerism in a dramatic way, but more about playing with it—using its own aesthetics to question itself. If ads can sell you a product, why not use the same tools to sell an idea? Or at least make people pause for a second and see their world differently. Plus, there’s something fun about putting yourself in the middle of all that chaos
and watching how people react.

“I think my work plays with that tension—between being seen as something artificial and actually feeling everything in a very raw, physical way.”

Your performances often create the illusion of something artificial, whether through digital aesthetics, your sculptural extensions like your helmet, or the meticulously curated, almost impossibly pristine appearance of your apparel. In London, this illusion was heightened as you moved through the city, nearly fully undressed in freezing temperatures, yet many likely saw you as something beyond human, almost machine-like. Do you think this detachment from reality, where people perceive you as an object rather than a vulnerable body, reflects how technology distances us from real human experience? And how do you navigate this paradox in your work, where you appear synthetic, yet push your physical self to its absolute limits?

I think my work plays with that tension—between being seen as something artificial and actually feeling everything in a very raw, physical way. When I walked almost naked through freezing London, people might perceived me as something beyond human like a robot but in reality, I’m pushing my body to its absolute limit. That paradox really fascinates me. Technology has shaped how we see ourselves and others—it creates distance, curates perception, but also expands identity. I like existing in that in-between space, where the body becomes both an object and a subject. In a way, we’re all becoming hybrids, merging with our digital selves. Donna Haraway talks about this idea of the cyborg, and I think that’s where we’re headed—blurring the lines between what’s human and what’s synthetic. My work just makes that process more visible. Ultimately, I’m interested in what happens when we fully embrace this hybridity—not as a loss of humanity, but as an expansion of what it means to be human in the digital age.

Do you see endurance, both physical and emotional, as an integral part of your practice? 

Absolutely. Pushing my body and mind to their limits is a big part of my work. I see endurance as a way to test boundaries—of myself and of what an audience expects. When I put myself in uncomfortable or extreme situations, it’s not just about suffering; it’s about transformation. How does the body adapt? How does the mind reframe the experience? There’s something raw and real about endurance. It strips everything down to the essentials. I like that tension between appearing almost synthetic, pristine, controlled—while underneath, there’s struggle, exhaustion, and vulnerability. That contrast fascinates me. It’s like turning yourself into both the experiment and the subject at the same time.

“I like existing in that in-between space, where the body becomes both an object and a subject”

Screenshot

For your residency at The Mandrake Hotel in London, the original concept for your sculpture didn’t work as planned, forcing you to rethink and reshape the piece. What’s striking is that glass, one of the key materials in this sculpture, is itself a powerful metaphor for fragility, there’s something almost fated about this moment, as if the piece was destined to challenge your control over it. Did this experience shift your perception of vulnerability, not just as a concept, but as something embedded in the physicality of your materials? And in that moment, did you feel like you were fighting against the fragility, or surrendering to it?

With this piece, I have reflected on the idea of being a “broken toy,” that feeling that we all carry a fractured part of ourselves that we tend to hide. I take pride in expressing all these facets—both achievements and wounds—because, in reality, I don’t believe in failure; everything is a learning process. However, I want to romanticise what is broken to explore how ideas transform as they are built. Often, an initial idea evolves into something else, but it can also resonate within oneself in unexpected ways. I am drawn to the metaphor of glass for its fragility and beauty, elements I have explored throughout my work, just like mirrors and other recurring materials in my art. Glass, with its purity and delicacy, becomes almost surgical as it penetrates my body in
a precious way. I will never fight against fragility, because I consider it a superpower: being sensitive to
everything around us shapes us, allows us to adapt. It is a capacity for transformation, like that of a shapeshifter, a constant metamorphosis in the face of life’s adversities.

“I will never fight against fragility, because I consider it a superpower: being sensitive to everything around us shapes us, allows us to adapt.”

What’s next?

Over the past few months, I’ve been in constant motion, applying new learnings and pushing my creative boundaries. This period has been amazing, opening doors to ideas I’m eager to bring to life. A big focus for me moving forward is exploring AI—AI-generated video and photography in particular. I see it as a playground where I can experiment freely, breaking traditional structures and redefining how we perceive images and narratives. AI offers a kind of unpredictability that excites me, a way to collaborate with technology rather than just use it as a tool. I’m curious to see how these new mediums will reshape my creative language and how they will integrate with the themes I’ve been working on.

Filip Custic’s London residency was more than a performance, it was a collision between control and unpredictability, physical endurance and digital illusion. Through his interaction with material fragility and public space, he embraced vulnerability as both challenge and artistic language. His time in London may be over, but its impact lingers. How do we navigate the tension between hyper-controlled digital aesthetics and the messiness of real life? Where does the human end and the machine begin? As Filip Custic moves forward, exploring AI, identity, and the body’s evolving relationship with technology – his London experience stands as a
pivotal moment in an ever-expanding artistic dialogue.

What Ends When the Symbols Shatter

Credits:
Artist: Filip Custic / @filipcustic
Interview: Maguelone Marcenac / @scanadully
Editor: Maria Abramenko  / @mariabramenko
Assistant: Annalisa Fabbrucci / @annalisa_fabbrucci

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