As he said in an interview for Gazeta Wyborcza:
The feeling I experience most strongly is anxiety. I seek to convey that in my films. Anxiety is different from fear; it’s more metaphysical and difficult to translate into rational thinking and words. This is why art is such a good way to express it.
Popakul lists the Polish School of Posters, Japanese posters, independent black-and-white comic books, the teenage movies of Harmony Korine and Todd Solondz amongst the things that inspire him, but he was also influenced by television plays that he watched with his mother as a kid. As he said, it taught him that plain staging is no obstacle to supple storytelling.
Asked about his plans for the future, the artist replies:
I would like to do a film about a group of green anarchists who read the manifesto of Unabomber (Ted Kaczynski) and come to the conclusion he was right about some things. I suppose the film would be controversial and politically incorrect, but in art everything is allowed. I would like the viewers to consider some matters in the safe setting of cinema. Ah, there is also my childhood dream to make a film featuring giant robots. Maybe I'll join these two projects and do ‘Green anarchists against giant robots’?
As a musician Popakul functions under the pseudonym Astma. He himself classifies his music as ‘techno art brut’ and ‘doom dada’. He has been collaborating with Justyna Banaszczyk (FOQL) on several projects – the noise projects Void and Beath, the electroclash Ebola Collective, and the improvisation trio Osty.
His debut album – Anekumena – was released in 2016 on an SD card in the label Audile Snow. His second record, Koniec Antropocenu (End of the Anthropocene), was published by Pointless Geometry on tape. In 2019 the label IA released Astma’s third album – Mountain Scream. Popakul also creates music videos (for the label Brutaż, amongst others) and record covers (for Pointless Geometry).