Ashraellen

Research core

Ashraellen is not quite a name; it is, rather, a way of seeing.

It is a lifelong artistic-philosophical inquiry into meaning, perception, self-deception, inner freedom and the human loss of contact with reality. The work is grounded in the author’s ability to see meanings within meanings, structures within structures, and intersections where a chance phrase, an everyday scene, a personal reaction or a cultural form can reveal a deeper mechanism of human experience.

Ashraellen does not begin with the production of content. Books, essays, novels, videos, sound works, satire, symbolic readings, public formulations and the multilingual archive are different ways of giving form to and preserving one sustained inquiry.

The inquiry is pursued first of all for the sake of the author’s own understanding. Its task is not to confirm a theory chosen in advance or to persuade an audience, but to record honestly the understanding that has been reached now and to continue moving from there. An answer found here does not close the question: it changes the point from which the next question arises.

For this reason, books, texts and other works are not treated as final formulations of a system. Each preserves a particular state of the inquiry — even if the author’s understanding later changes.

At the centre of the project is the observation of how a person replaces direct perception with interpretation; how pain becomes a worldview; how fear turns into conviction; how language, ideology, religion, digital pressure or personal trauma begin to think in place of the person.

Ashraellen does not offer a finished system of truth and does not claim the role of an all-powerful guru, messiah or teacher.

The author’s position is closer to that of an observer and a recorder of intersections — an attempt to recognise and give form to something through which a person may recognise mechanisms that are already at work within them.

In this sense, Ashraellen is an independent artistic research practice, a literary-philosophical archive and a multilingual public platform for the exploration of meaning, perception, attention, exhaustion, inner freedom and the contemporary loss of contact with reality.

About the author

Ashraellen is the authorial and working name of Nikolai Kostyshev, a writer, philosopher and independent artistic researcher working from Poland.

Russian is Nikolai Kostyshev’s (Ashraellen’s) primary language of thought and writing: the language in which the original meanings, rhythm and inner pressure of the work arise. Other language versions are created not through mechanical word-for-word substitution, but through careful literary transcreation — an attempt to carry a work, an idea or a statement into another linguistic environment while preserving, as fully as possible, its meaning, intonation and authorial presence.

The practical need to preserve the author’s voice across languages has, over time, become one of the independent parallel directions of research.

How the field of work expanded

Literary practice gradually carried the inquiry beyond the boundaries of an individual work. Work on large texts showed that the same question may require different forms — a novel, a short text, an image, sound, or public observation.

Multilingual publication raised a practical question: what must be preserved when a text passes through another language and AI so that the author does not disappear together with the words? The working framework VOICEPRINT grew from the internal need to solve this problem — first and foremost as a tool for the author’s own multilingual and authorial practice.

Long-term work with AI revealed another internal need: to preserve decisions, their provenance, context, uncertainty and the current state of a project across separate chats and sessions. MY MEMORY grew from this need; its current internal framework, MMS 2.0, is used to maintain continuity in the author’s own long-term work.

Neither direction began as a product conceived in advance or as an attempt to claim technical novelty. Both grew from concrete tasks inside the main authorial practice and continue to be used primarily as supporting tools for that practice.

Method of observation

The method is based on observation and the recording of nodes of meaning. It does not begin with a thesis to be proved or a system to be built. It begins where a node of meaning emerges in an experience, a phrase, a reaction, a scene, a fear, a pain or an unexpected coincidence.

Artistic form is not decoration here. It becomes a way of knowing. A novel functions as a long-form research instrument; essays and formulations record observations at moments of clarity; video and public response provide field material; visual images address layers of perception in which meaning has not yet become a concept.

Reader response may point to a recurring mechanism, but by itself it is not proof of that mechanism’s universality. It becomes part of the material with which the inquiry continues to work.

Professional frames

Selected literary and artistic works

The works below show several different sides of Ashraellen’s literary and artistic-research practice. The complete body of literary work is gathered separately.

All books and literary projects →

Public forms of the project

Ashraellen develops not as a single media channel, but through several interconnected public forms. Each reveals the shared research field in its own register.

Other research and public projects →

Internal working infrastructure

Some of Ashraellen’s tools are created inside the practice itself when an existing way of working no longer solves a concrete task with sufficient precision. This is how internal working frameworks emerged for preserving authorial presence in multilingual AI-assisted work and for preserving project context over time.

VOICEPRINT helps organise work with meaning and authorial voice across languages and AI. MY MEMORY / MMS 2.0 helps preserve decisions, their provenance and the current state of long-term projects across separate sessions. Both directions continue to develop for internal needs and are not currently treated as a separate public part of Ashraellen’s activity.

How the work is developing today

Literary and philosophical practice remains the foundation of Ashraellen’s work. At the same time, multilingual publication and archiving continue, along with public artistic forms and the development of internal infrastructure needed to preserve authorial voice and continuity in long-term work.

Internal tools serve this practice rather than forming a separate public line. Their development is determined by concrete working needs and does not require turning every solution that emerges into a standalone product.

Infrastructure

Production infrastructure is necessary because the research already exists in different forms and languages and needs a stable structure that allows the work to be brought to completion, preserved, transcreated and shared with an audience.

Development aim

The aim is not to produce as many separate publications as possible or to turn every emerging direction into a standalone product. What matters is preserving the possibility of continuing the work as a unified practice — writing, researching, recording observations, carrying them across forms and languages, and preserving the accumulated context over time.

Infrastructure development matters insofar as it helps this work remain continuous, recognisable and true to its authorial identity.

Collaboration and support

Ashraellen is open to publishing collaboration, cultural programmes, residencies, grant support, research and institutional partnerships, private patronage and other substantive forms of collaboration that genuinely intersect with the existing practice.

Support makes it possible to secure sustained working time, complete major texts, prepare publications, develop the multilingual archive, research directions and the necessary infrastructure, while preserving quality without the constant rupture between creative work and outside employment.

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