INTERVIEW WITH MYSELF
Why did you want to approach this project through a workshop series?
I wanted to explore and test methodologies of queer migrant performance dramaturgy, specifically around the theme of home, with other artists who share similar backgrounds and interests. Firstly, I needed dedicated time and space for experimentation on this topic. Secondly, and equally important, I did not want to do it alone. I wanted to work in dialogue with artists from different disciplines, to foster conversations and create a feedback loop.
I was curious about how certain methods might translate across artistic practices and approaches. Would the methods I propose be useful for others? Would a structured workshop format prove limiting or generative? These were the questions I hoped to engage with throughout the process. I wanted to stay in active conversation around them as we worked.
How did you design the workshops? How did you choose which tasks to focus on?
Designing the workshops was initially quite challenging. I had experience leading workshops before, but always in an educational context, from a teacher’s perspective, proposing a methodology for participants to learn from. This project was different. My goal was to work as horizontally as possible. Although I was the one designing the tasks, I approached them as a co-participant, equally invested in learning through doing and discussing.
The aim was not to produce finished outcomes but to test and question each methodological proposal to understand its effect on the creative process, its limits, and its potential. With four other artists responding to the same prompt, I was exposed to four different perspectives. This revealed aspects of creative processes I had not noticed before. It also created space for mutual learning.
Each workshop was designed sequentially rather than all at once. I did not begin with a complete plan. Instead, I let the first workshop unfold and used our conversations and interests to guide the design of the next. This approach allowed the series to evolve organically - each session influenced by the last, like a chain reaction responding to our shared process in real time.
The difficulty at the start stemmed not only from a lack of experience with this kind of collaborative, non-hierarchical model, but also from uncertainty about my own entry point. I began with familiar territory (objects and storytelling) as a place of comfort. From there, it became easier to design subsequent sessions, following the direction shaped by our ongoing feedback and evolving interests.
In terms of structure, I intentionally included a variety of tasks and mixed them within the same session to create dynamic shifts. I used short brainstorming exercises to start conceptual discussions, and I always incorporated writing tasks, perhaps selfishly, since writing is my main medium, but also to see how it would work for artists in other disciplines. I also included more open-ended, performative tasks. These did not necessarily require performance in a traditional sense but encouraged some form of presentation. The constant shift between methods and mediums was a deliberate strategy to explore how rhythm and variation influence creative flow.
The documentation was another crucial part built into each workshop. I wanted to see what documentation tools we can use, and how, and how those tools might limit us. But my main goal in documentation was not just to audio-, photo-, or video-record process, but to document reflection on this process. I insisted that each artist makes methodological commentary right after completing a task. I would say, that this part, perhaps, was the most important for me in this project - creation of a continuous methodological feedback loop from five different artistic perspectives. To me the value of this project lies in the ability to trace and follow creative processes and theme development alongside these commentaries.
How did you choose your artists and what was the open call process?
For this project, I specifically wanted to work with queer migrant artists. This was essential due to the lens I had chosen for the exploration. The resulting works did not need to explicitly address queer or migrant issues - their queerness and migrant experience were inherent in who was making the work. In this context, home was approached through the lens of queer migrant identity, regardless of content.
I was looking for practicing artists with an active and committed artistic background, who could fully engage with the workshop process. Another important criteria was a genuine interest in the theme of home. I wanted to collaborate with people who had already reflected on or worked with this theme in their own practices. Since I had been engaging with it for several years, it was important to start from a shared depth of experience and understanding. Finally, I considered artistic merit. All the selected artists had strong and diverse practices, and their unique voices were crucial in shaping our working environment.
How did the workshops help you personally in creating your performance?
What helped me most was being surrounded by other artists and engaging in constant dialogue. Their presence, feedback, and perspectives revealed nuances of creative process that I had not previously noticed. Another key factor was learning to trust the process. I had to let go of control. I could not predict or dictate outcomes from the start.
This was a new dramaturgical experience for me. Normally, I draft a complete plan, from start to finish, and then move into the details. Here, the process unfolded organically. Details came first, slowly, piece by piece, like knitting a scarf or building a nest. It became a layered, collective weaving of reflections, comments, and moments shared with others.
What challenges did you experience in designing and conducting the workshops?
The biggest challenge was balancing control versus flow, and confronting my own habits. I often reverted to techniques I have used for years instead of taking the risk of trying something completely new. I observed similar tendencies in the other artists, an understandable pull toward the familiar.
However, the collaborative environment helped counter this. Being in dialogue with others pushed all of us to experiment a bit more openly and to support one another in stepping outside our comfort zones.
What do you think worked best and what did not work?
What worked best was the openness of the participants. Everyone was willing to try things without questioning the purpose upfront. We embraced a "do first, reflect after" approach, which kept the energy flowing. Nothing was dismissed prematurely and everything was open to analysis.
What did not work was the timeframe. Like many projects, time and budget constraints limited the depth we could reach. Ideally, a project exploring methodologies should have space to breathe. We often felt rushed, and I noticed that the pressure to produce results, finished or at least clear work-in-progress, remained present.
Even in the documentation, there was an impulse to make things legible, understandable, presentable. This mindset of efficiency and productivity, while understandable, ultimately shaped the process. It is incredibly difficult to document a process authentically, let alone share it, without it becoming distorted by the desire for clarity or coherence.
How would you improve it or what changes would you make?
If I could, I would give the project more time. I would slow everything down paying attention to the moments in-between, where ideas often begin to form. I would reflect more intentionally on slowness and let the process unfold without rushing toward outcomes.
If I could, I would grow plants, real ones, rather than planting already-bloomed flowers into new soil and pretending they grew there naturally overnight. The process, like plants, needs nurturing, time, and space to grow organically.
How do you plan to develop these methods further?
I plan to revisit the material bank created during the workshops, including the comments and reflections from participants. I want to continue translating and shaping that material into new formats, developing it further through dramaturgical reflection. This includes not just archiving or documenting, but finding creative, performative ways of sharing the processes we went through.
KOSCHEI'S DAUGHTER
As an artistic researcher, I have spent years exploring migrant dramaturgies of belonging, and being focused on trying to determine what “home” means for queer refugees. It is a personal question, of course, rooted in almost desperate need to define the answer for myself. The majority of my research participants either see home in other people, or do not see it at all. For them, it is never about a physical space, be it a country, a city, or a house. However, unlike my interviewees, my understanding of home is still attached to a place. Not necessarily to a specific one, but to an idea of it. A place that can actively affect a person. A place that can hold you, or lose you, or even change you.
When I think of a place that lost me, my motherland, Russia, comes to mind. It is, however, the same place that still holds me as well. Famous for holding people against their will, it grips me by my roots, my family ties, my friendships, and memories. What I am describing are people and stories, but are there any actual places that still hold me? My former apartment? My childhood home? As French historian Pierre Nora argues, memory attaches itself to physical spaces only when the living connection begins to fade (Nora 1989). Following Nora’s logic, I feel like I am trying to attach symbolic meaning to certain places as a way to preserve memories that are no longer sustained by everyday life. Perhaps what I strive to remember as “home” is already a form of nostalgia. If so, then what is it exactly that still holds me?
Someone once told me that they could never leave Russia because the graves of their parents were there. I did not understand it, at all. Why should I be tied to someone’s graves? “But who is going to take care of them?” asked that same person. I thought that it was extremely unfair - why should I care about the dead until I, myself, die? Why is it so inherent in my cultural code to wait and suffer, suffer and wait? As writer Svetlana Alexievich notes, life in post-soviet countries is shaped by a shared experience of endurance – an idea of necessary suffering passed down from generation to generation (Alexievich 2016). In Russian, there is a word related to this: ‘terpet’ - to wait, to endure, to suffer. My country still holds me with this command: ‘terpi’ - wait, endure, suffer. But if I am still being held, can I truly say that my homeland has lost me? Maybe the physical space that is my country has lost the physical being that is my body, but the idea of it still holds my soul, tied to the roots growing through my ancestors’ graves. The state which reminds me of professor Svetlana Boym’s thoughts about exile not breaking our idea of home, but changing it into something like a ghost, something we imagine and long for but can no longer truly have (Boym 2001). And maybe I do not even want to have it anymore, but the haunting persists.
No matter where I physically am, Russia is still somehow ever-present. It is a place that holds me, it is a place that lost me, but is it also a place that changed me? No. Being outside did. Growing up as a queer person in a country where queerness is not just invisible, but punished, made me learn the word ‘terpi’ not only as a citizen, but as a body that did not belong. Only after I had left my homeland did I realize that survival was not the same as living. That queerness, when not criminalized, could be something joyful, something expansive. Thus, every “outside” place changed me, shaped me, glued all the pieces of me into one – until I became a collage of everywhere I have lived, loved, and breathed. I am, as critical theorist Homi K. Bhabha puts it, “in-between” - a product of the third space, formed not despite displacement, but through it (Bhabha 1994). And I feel almost whole, almost complete, almost home. But my soul…
There is a folk Russian fairytale about Koschei the Deathless. Undead king. He put his death into a needle, and the needle into a duck, and the duck into a rabbit, and the rabbit into a wooden chest, and he buried this chest under a large oak tree. Whoever gets to the needle and breaks it, will find Koschei’s death, and, thus, will defeat death itself.
The story resonates. My needle in a duck in a rabbit in a chest is still under some Russian oak tree, probably, in the graveyard of my ancestors. And I can be almost whole, almost complete, almost home. But my soul… But my death… Is still there.
Bibliography
Alexievich, Svetlana. Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets. Translated by Bela Shayevich. Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2016.
Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. Routledge, 1994.
Boym, Svetlana. The Future of Nostalgia. Basic Books, 2001.
Nora, Pierre. “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire.” Representations, vol. 26, 1989, pp. 7–24.
*This text was developed from a draft made during one of the workshop writing tasks, and was later published in Gazeta Sasha
HOME AS AN ECOSYSTEM: THE ECOLOGY OF QUEER MIGRANT NARRATIVES
As a dramaturge exploring themes of "otherness," "belonging," and "home searching" in queer migrant performance, I have recently started to wonder if an ecological lens might offer me a new way to frame these concepts. I have always associated ecological thinking primarily with non-human-centric art. However, when I started thinking about it in the context of my own research interest, I quickly discovered parallels between queer migrant experience and certain natural processes. My changing perspective made me start considering various ways in which queer migrants navigate new environments.
The first thing I noticed was the parallels between queer migrant experiences and the natural processes of survival and adaptability. Species evolve to adapt to the changing ecosystems. In the same way, queer migrants must continuously adjust to fit the new social, cultural, and legal circumstances. Thinking about "home" as a dynamic ecosystem rather than something fixed made me reflect on how cultural and socio-political forces influence queer migrants’ experiences. This line of thinking resonated with the ideas of Catriona Mortimer-Sandilands and Bruce Erickson, scholars whose work intersects environmental studies and queer theory. In Queer Ecologies: Sex, Nature, Politics, Desire (2010), they argue that both queerness and environmentalism confront normativity with fluidity (Mortimer-Sandilands 2010). Thus, queer migrants can be seen as agents of transformation, as they are changing and reprogramming their identities to fit into unfamiliar and often hostile environments.
One concept that I found especially compelling is liminality. In Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society (1974), anthropologist Victor Turner defines liminality as a transitional state with suspended norms, and argues that "those being moved in accordance with a cultural script were liberated from normative demands, when they were, indeed, betwixt and between successive lodgments in jural political systems" (Turner 1974, 13). Essentially, Turner describes a transitional period where individuals are temporarily outside of normal social structures, which allows them to have some unique and transformative experiences. This position resonates with queer refugees’ challenges: the migration process itself is liminal, as are certain aspects in the navigation of sexual orientation and gender identity. This state of in-betweenness also parallels queer feminist scholar Gloria Anzaldúa’s concept of the borderlands (Anzaldua 1987) where identities are ever-changing and continuously shaped by the surrounding world. In Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Object, Others (2006), theorist Sarah Ahmed similarly argues that disorientation and spatial alienation that often come with the experience of liminality can be seen as fundamental queer experiences (Ahmed 2006).
Through my interviews with queer refugees in England, France, Luxembourg, Germany, and Finland, I noticed how liminal spaces and precarious conditions often lead to the development of homemaking processes that mirror ecological survival strategies. For most of my interviewees, finding home is not just about finding a physical place to live but about creating spaces of belonging, emotional safety, and social acceptance. This reminds me of sociologist Avtar Brah’s notion of diasporic space (Brah 1996), where home is a mobile and relational construct not tied to physical places but to emotional and cultural states of belonging. The idea of “home”, thus, changes from a fixed destination to a process shaped by memories and emotional connections.
Another similarity with the natural world can be seen in the way queer migrants present themselves. They may compartmentalize their identities, presenting one version of themselves to the dominant culture while keeping a more authentic sense of self within their own communities. They behave like chameleons that change their color to blend in with their environment for protection. Social psychologist Erving Goffman's The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1956) discusses this performativity through his concept of “front stage” and “back stage” behavior (Goffman 1956). In public, queer migrants often adopt a curated persona, a mask that aligns with socially accepted norms. Meanwhile, in private or communal spaces, they may express more complex and fluid identities without fear of exclusion. Thus, gender and identity appear to be performative at their core, being conditioned by societal norms and expectations, as shown by philosopher Judith Butler’s seminal work Gender Trouble: Feminism and Subversion of Identity (1990). By performing a “right kind of queer” identity, a construct and an image that is legally and socially accepted in the host country, queer refugees may gain easier access to social services or legal protections, even if it means masking parts of their true identity. This implies a survival tactic, both ecological and performative.
Similarly, just as some species develop symbiotic relationships to thrive in challenging environments, queer refugees often create supportive networks within their communities. In these spaces, they find solidarity and mutual aid, creating new “homes” based on shared experiences and collective values. These networks function much like ecological partnerships, where people benefit from the resources and support of others, whether through emotional connections or shared cultural practices. In some cases, queer migrants find refuge within underground or informal LGBTQ+ networks, carving out alternative spaces of belonging that offer protection and solidarity in a society that may otherwise exclude them.
Ultimately, the process of homemaking for queer migrants is dynamic and adaptive, and that, in my view, mirrors common ecological survival strategies. They must constantly evolve and build new support systems in response to the ever-changing conditions they face, just as species in nature adapt to their environments to survive. This fluid, ongoing process of adaptation reflects the resilience of queer migrants as they create new homes - not just physically, but socially and emotionally.
Bibliography
Ahmed, Sara. Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006.
Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1987.
Brah, Avtar. Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Identities. London: Routledge, 1996.
Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1990.
Goffman, Erving. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Anchor Books, 1956.
Mortimer-Sandilands, Catriona, and Bruce Erickson, eds. Queer Ecologies: Sex, Nature, Politics, Desire. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010.
Turner, Victor. Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1974.
*This text was written for and published in the Unfolding Island Ecologies book that served as a companion to the exhibition with the same name (for which this entire project was created).