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Dañila Kostil

@_pattern_recognition_

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Observing my own patterns…

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It was an honor to exhibit in a group show alongside Subodh Gupta’s legendary installation, Hungry God.

My Kintsuzen Calendar practice was presented as a series of crucifixions in response to the extraordinary location: l’Église Sainte-Marie-Madeleine in Lille, France.

@esa_dunkerque.tourcoing @subodhguptastudio

#patternrecognition #cyanotype #drugfree #drugaddiction #addiction taken in Église Sainte-Marie-Madeleine (Lille) by @_pattern_recognition_

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5 months ago

April 30th, May 2nd & 3rd – No. 22, 23, 24 / 88. – Survival instinct kills

“Survival Instinct Kills” is a completely serious title. Our survival instinct is very powerful, often overriding everything else, and it can operate automatically when we are not aware of it.

In addiction, it becomes connected in a deeply absurd way. Precisely because we are not always aware of how powerfully addiction can hijack the brain’s systems of motivation and reward, it can take over and lead us into things that are the exact opposite of survival — things that can become genuinely life-threatening.

A person struggling with addiction regularly experiences craving. Craving is not just desire — it is a powerful urge that can narrow attention, intensify discomfort, and make immediate relief feel almost like survival. The mind starts searching for solutions, and under that pressure it often floods the person with the worst possible scenarios: if the object of addiction is not available, things will get even worse than they are now.

The mind is like that — constantly running films for us. And when serious discomfort is at stake, it projects a future that feels far worse than what would actually happen if we simply stayed with the feeling.

Years later, it seems fuckn simple. From my own experience, I can see how easily I was misled by my own nervous system and mind, like a little donkey.

What an absurdity — for me, as a film director, to be manipulated by the cheap movies created by my own mind.

“Oh my God, even worse feelings are coming. I have to get high — otherwise I’ll die.” That’s the pseudo-survival instinct talking, and we follow.

The principle is simple: we regulate many of our instincts quite well, and this one is not impossible either. If we observe it again and again, we begin to realize that the danger is not as great as it feels. It is just a matter of practice.

#patternrecognition #cyanotype #addiction #recovery taken in London, United Kingdom by @_pattern_recognition_

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6 months ago

April 26th & 27th – No. 20 / 88. & 21 / 88. – My worth.

Just posting this old diary note this time. I think this stage of recognizing self-worth is unavoidable in any inner process, whatever that process may be.

‘I am worth more than this. I am worth more than this. I am worth more than this — more than sitting here, anxious over nothing, over the past, or over the future. I am worth more than this happening to me. So much more than this.

My love is worth a great deal. My attention is worth a lot. My devotion, my unconditional willingness to help, my resilience — all of it has great value. My personality is worth much more than this. I am worth a great deal in my humanity, my empathy, and my openness. I am worth much more than anything that is happening to me this time.

I’m sure that I am worth more than this.

My endless, inexhaustible optimism is worth a great deal. My unbeatable will to live is worth a great deal. My heart, my soul, and my sensitivity carry immense value.

To myself, right now I am worth more than anything and anyone.’

Next post: May 3rd.

#patternrecognition #cyanotype #drugabuse #addiction #addictionrecovery taken in London, United Kingdom by @_pattern_recognition_

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6 months ago

April 22nd – No. 19 / 88 – Costcutters

Almost exactly two years ago, I created a piece for an art school exam. Somehow I never posted it, even though it is closely connected to this whole theme and remains both a trace of, and a part of, the process I went through.

Looking back from a distance of two years, I can clearly feel that back then I was still seeing my own problem in almost everything. It seemed to be lurking everywhere, and this piece is a perfect imprint of that.

I’m glad it can finally get out of my system on both of my platforms.

It feels good.

Planned next post: April 26th only on @_pattern_recognition_

#patternrecognition #drugabuse #drugaddiction #coca #conceptualart taken in London, United Kingdom by @_pattern_recognition_

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6 months ago

April 13th – No. 18 / 88 – Feeling a punt kick and holding on to my keep!

This time, my reflection is focused strictly on the present. I’m also using my new book, The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, to help explain how I feel in this moment.

punt kick  n. a quiet jolt of recognition that it’s time to become a better version of yourself, sensing that all the strategies that brought you this far are no longer working — that it’s not enough anymore to be cute, nice, righteous, or tough — as if you’ve entered a new phase in the game of life, moving forward with a completely different token.

From Dutch puntstuk, “railway frog,” the part of a railway switch where two rails intersect. Sometimes you can feel a little kick when your train passes over it, as if the world is trying to signal that you’re missing a turn, having traveled too far on the same old track.

keep  n. an important part of your personality that others seldom see — a secret flaw, a hidden talent, a trauma that never comes up, dreams you never mention — that remains a vital part of who you are even if nobody knows it’s there, like the sprawling archives in the attics of museums, packed with works far too priceless to risk displaying to the public.
From keep, the innermost tower of a castle.

The names of these feelings are made up by John Koenig, but the feelings them selves are pretty real.

It’s been a very hard week.

Next post on 22nd of April. taken in London, United Kingdom by @_pattern_recognition_

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6 months ago

April 12th – No. 17 / 88 – Letter to Danila2019

Dear Danila2019,

What’s up, buddy? How are you?

It’s me. Guess what — I’m forty-one now. All good. Still standing. Living in London again. Unbelievable, right?

So, I’m doing this year-long art project, and on the same dates you got fucked up, I’m writing about the years of my recovery now at 2026. My method is simple: I just check our iCloud on those exact dates, and if I see dozens of random photos, GIFs, or screenshots taken at 4, 5, or 6 a.m., I know it was you — probably stuck in the loop, probably high as the Eiffel Tower on top of Mount Everest. No offense. No regrets either, by the way. We only regret what we haven’t done, not what we have done, right?

I feel for you on this day. I know that actually you feel very lonely right now, probably anxious, maybe in pain too, you just don’t know about it because of the emotional numbness. I’m here for you, if you believe in me. And about those gifs I just found in the Photos app — the ones you are creating ‘now’ — I’m adding one of them to today’s post, as a weird, ‘eloquent evidence’ of those times.

I know the question comes to your mind straight away… Nah, I’m not doing it anymore. You’re not going to believe it, but I’m alcohol-free now too. I’m doing this nervous-system hygiene thing. After all those years we spent secretly doing drugs, it’s pretty necessary — and well deserved by our poor nervous system. Cool, right? I feel good, by the way. You should try it earlier than you actually will.

Just so you know, I wouldn’t change a thing. Stay cool, stay weird, and please do your best not to hurt anyone.

Big love,

Danila2026

Next post on Apri 13th.

#cyanotype #drugaddiction #patternrecognition #photographic #cyanotypeprint taken in London, United Kingdom by @_pattern_recognition_

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6 months ago

April 4th – No. 16 / 88 – Soviet Inner Child

One important thing connected to this date is that it has now been exactly a year since I started working with my current therapist. Among other things, we’ve been working with my stubborn, sensitive, mischievous inner child.

Tatyana plays such an important role in my process because she is the first psychologist I’ve worked with in my native language. Before that, I only did therapy in Hungarian. And I don’t want to take anything away from my previous therapists — all five of them contributed to where I am today.

Why is this important?

Until a year ago, whenever childhood or the inner child came up in therapy — and of course it always does — it felt strange to explore the mysteries of my Russian childhood with a Hungarian therapist. In guided meditations, I revisited our house and yard in Crimea, old books, childhood friends, and most importantly, my family. But I often got stuck because I also had to translate what I was seeing or hearing. And that was only the surface of the language issue.

In my very last therapy sessions in Hungarian, the question came up: what if this is the missing piece? I was already doing quite well, but something still felt missing.

And it turned out to be exactly that.

Before the age of twelve, I didn’t speak Hungarian at all, so everything that shaped me before then could be explored much more deeply in Russian. It is also my personal experience that every language learned at a native level comes with certain different personality layers. So if someone like me needs to go back and dig deep, the language of childhood matters.

Therapy reaches deeper that way. My Soviet inner child had to be spoken to in Russian — negotiated with, reassured, and finally calmed down. Because it wasn’t only adult Danila who had problems with the world.

Looking at this little captain in the second slide of the post — yes, that’s me — would you trust him to fly the plane your adult self is sitting in? Exactly. And yet he still keeps sneaking into the cockpit, grabbing the controls, and that usually leads to turbulence — or even an emergency landing.

Bon voyage!

Next post on April 11th.

#cyanotype taken in London, United Kingdom by @_pattern_recognition_

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6 months ago

March 25. – No. 15 / 88. – Probably the most important day of the year

Today was supposed to be an important day for personal reasons.

I had been waiting for March 25th itself for a while, as if the date had earned some special status on its own. But life moved the reason for its importance to another day, and suddenly the importance moved with it.

Silly, isn’t it, if you think about it.

So the day itself was never important. It was just a date. A completely ordinary square on the calendar with good PR.

The importance was something I gave to it. And once the reason shifted, the magic was over.

It sounds obvious, almost annoyingly obvious, but I think that’s exactly why it matters.

Making a day important for yourself is a privilege.
And also a responsibility.

Because if I can turn one ordinary day into something emotionally loaded, intellectually loaded, or both — meaningful, and worth waiting for — then I can probably do that with other days too.

Maybe even with today.
Maybe even with most days.

And if that’s true, then important days are not that rare after all.
They can be made, even on a day-by-day basis.

On this same date, eight years ago, the little baggie on the print was emptied. I do not regret my path — a big adventure, just a little too long. Still, it is a little sad to realize that 8 years ago I did not know how to give this very same date a greater kind of importance.

…but not like today. So whatever life rearranges, today will remain the most important day for me.

The posted photo of the first thing I saw this morning, I think, proves my point.

Next reflection on April 4th.

#patternrecognition #cyanotypeprint #cyanotype #photographicart #drugaddiction taken in Le Bourg-d'Oisans by @_pattern_recognition_

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7 months ago

March 19. – No. 14 / 88.

Interestingly, when I typed this date into my phone’s photo search — without specifying a year — a lot of art works came up. A clear pattern became visible: more and more creative work appearing over time. Year after year, on this exact date, there are more and more photos of stuff I’ve photographed, printed, drawn or painted — increasingly frequent. And in fact, today I’m doing the same thing again.

So for this post, I’ll also include a few pieces that were created on this day — because that’s what makes today’s reflection complete.

So what role does the creative process play in the life of a neurodivergent person — and in my case, someone with an addictive personality?

Instagram offers countless “pearls of wisdom” on this topic, for example: “The opposite of depression is not joy, it’s expression.”

Cool — but why?

Addiction was never just about the substance. It was about escaping, amplifying, or numbing what I was feeling. And oh god — I am a “feeling factory” (also an ‘overthinking machine’, but that’s a different story). Expression, in a different way, does something similar — but without disconnecting me from myself.

When I work, something that would otherwise stay inside starts to move. Thoughts, tension, emotions that would normally loop or build up begin to take form. And once they take form, they are no longer just happening inside of me, hard to explore — after expression I can relate to them. The invisible becomes visible and discoverable.

Instead of being overwhelmed by something, I can observe it. Instead of escaping it, I can shape it. Instead of suppressing it, I can let it exist outside of me for a moment.

A work you enjoy has a regulating effect. It slows things down or channels energy in a way that doesn’t escalate into something destructive. It gives structure without control, and unlimited space without losing direction.

It’s not that expression is the opposite of depression or addiction. It’s that without expression, everything stays inside — unprocessed, unnamed, unresolved — and sooner or later it will look for another way out.

Next post on March 25th.

#cyanotype #patternrecognition #drugaddiction taken in Megeve Mont Blanc by @_pattern_recognition_

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7 months ago

March 12. – No. 13 / 88. Today is just a random day. March 12th mostly has been a random, nothing-special, even boring day in the past eight years as well. Yet it still became part of this artwork for an obvious reason.

Perhaps the boredom is what I have to start to examine this with.

Today I understand boredom differently. Allowing boredom — and even needing boredom — is something I consciously remind myself of whenever I notice it happening. In those moments something important is taking place. Without it, the experience of freedom feels incomplete. Without it, I believe there is no real subconscious, and intuitional creative process.

When I don’t allow myself to experience boredom, I start to overthink too much — as if I were constantly putting my own mind in a cage and trying to control the uncontrolable by it’s nature.

Boredom requires surrender.

And when that surrender is practiced consciously — when I allow myself to be bored on purpose — surrender meets discipline. If I happen doing something meanwhile in my experience, this is often the moment when I enter a state of flow.

In that state, attention becomes effortless and time begins to lose its usual structure. Thoughts, actions, and intuition start to move together, and the process of creation feels less like control and more like participation in something that is already unfolding by itself.

Well ideally, but it wasn’t like this always.

What felt very strange in the past was that the creative process itself became a trigger. As soon as I sensed that I was getting close to a state of flow, I would feel triggered. I experienced it as something difficult to hold, but pleasant and stimulating, and once the stimulation appeared, I wanted more of it, and felt bad without it — that was the pattern.

Again and again it worked almost like a chain reaction: a brief taste of the pleasant feeling of flow, the inability to sustain it, feeling bad without more of it, the growing desire for further stimulation, and finally substance use— on a completely ordinary, insignificant, boring March 12th.

Next post on March 19th.

#patternrecognition #drugaddiction #cyanotype #photographicart #drugabuse taken in Megeve Mont Blanc by @_pattern_recognition_

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7 months ago

March 8. – No. 12 of 88

March 8th, 2026 — Today, just like then, it is Women’s Day. When I think about women, I naturally think about my relationships. And when I think about my relationships today, I open a door behind which there are not only memories of joy, love and nostalgia, but also a great deal of shame, guilt and pain.

Being in a relationship with someone carrying unresolved addictive patterns is not easy. I can only speak from my own experience and from what I understand now, many years later.

For a long time I believed that because a relationship involves two people, its dynamics must also be equally shared. Today I see this differently.

For years I was a constant factor in my relationships: a person with an addictive personality moving through different stages of life, with emotional intelligence that developed slowly until my mid-thirties (I’m 41 now).

My relationships were very different, yet certain patterns appeared again and again. I often chose partners who were more emotionally regulated than I was. At times the relationship itself became the object of my dependency, and too often I was unable to remain faithful.

Looking back, I can recognize a dynamic that appeared more than once. When one person struggles with impulsivity and instability, a relationship can slowly shift into unequal roles. One person begins to rely more and more on the other, while the other tries — sometimes with care, sometimes with frustration — to hold things together.

These roles rarely form consciously. They grow gradually, often without either person fully realizing it.

Addiction and impulsivity make such dynamics even harder to navigate. Only with distance do I understand how much pain this caused to the people close to me, and to myself.

The most important realization for me today is that the struggle with addiction and impulsivity was always my responsibility. The swings and consequences were mine to face and to work through.

Relationships involve two people, but the instability created by addiction cannot simply be shared equally. Taking responsibility for that may be one step toward a truly equal adult position.

Next post on March 12th. by @_pattern_recognition_

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7 months ago

February 24. - No. 11 of 88

[Cyanotype prints on raw canvas, 7 cm x 10 cm]

The Calendar series represents one year of the most severe periods of drug use in my life. I reconstructed it from the photos on my phone, messages, journal notes and bank card withdrawals, and created a one-year calendar marking my hard days down to the exact date.

24th of February 2026 – The day before my mother’s birthday, just as it was 8 years ago.

Today it’s no longer surprising to me that in the past I would already be tense the day before, anxious about having to be present the next day, to perform and meet expectations — even if I didn’t feel like it. “Pre-celebrating” was always a pattern. Before some big, important event, before leaving for a holiday, or the day before a big party, I would usually overstimulate myself, unable to calm myself down, and the evening would regularly end in substance use. Then the next day, hungover, I would somehow just survive the event itself.

Spending time with my mother has always counted as an extra difficulty. When I was seeing a Shaolin coach a few years ago, he suggested that I still hadn’t separated from my parents. I asked him, how can you tell? He said that if they trigger extreme emotions in me — even when I don’t want them to — oversensitivity, sudden anger, bursts of love, and so on, that’s a sign.

I am still practicing emotional distancing from my own mother. Without it, I wouldn’t be where I am now. It’s part of my process.

The next post will be on March 8th.

#patternrecognition #cyanotype #addictionrecovery #addiction #addictionawareness by @_pattern_recognition_

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8 months ago