natacha-voliakovsky

<div class="host-info">Asia Stewart, podcast host.</div>
<div class="guest-info">Natacha Voliakovsky, podcast guest.</div>

<div class="host-info">
  <p>Asia Stewart: Welcome to Open Studios, a podcast brought to you by PerformVu, the digital home for experimental performance. My name is Asia Stewart. I'm a performance artist and the Founding Artistic Director of PerformVu. I'll also be your host. In every episode, I'll be sitting down with a different artist to take a virtual step inside their studio to learn more about their practice and motivations. Natacha Voliakovsky is an Argentine activist and hardcore political performance artist. Influenced by their involvement in movements for reproductive justice and queer rights, Natacha advocates for bodily autonomy and control. As a high testosterone Jewish woman, Natacha is very interested in achieving liberation through somatic practices and expanding access to public space for women, non-binary folks, and gender non-conforming people.</p>
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<div class="host">
  <p>Asia Stewart: Welcome to the podcast, Natacha.</p>
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<div class="guest">
  <p>Natacha Voliakovsky: Thank you. Thank you for having me.</p>
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<div class="host">
  <p>Asia Stewart: Of course. I know that your identity as an artist is very much linked to your work as an activist. Could you talk a bit about what first politicized you as a young person growing up in Argentina? And how do you trace your development as an artist?</p>
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<div class="guest">
  <p>Natacha Voliakovsky: As you said, I was born in Argentina, and I grew up there. I came here like two years ago. The majority of the people are really engaged socially or politically. We go to the streets. That's the way we manifest. That's the way we said to the government what we wanted to say.</p>
  <p>Saying that I'm an activist is a way of expressing the kind of art that I do. And also is an easy way to express that I do social justice. And what I do is exactly use my art to express one of those messages.</p>
  <p>I always say this: my main objective is to create some sort of question in the people who are going to see art. When you really have the capacity to open some questions for the audience, that moment is when I think my job is done. And in general, what I try to open are questions related to social issues.</p>
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<div class="host">
  <p>Asia Stewart: You mentioned the fact that your practice is very much something that is socially engaged. You're very interested in social justice. You have been involved in so many different movements. You've been out on the streets. Why is it important for you, for your artwork, to be socially engaged?</p>
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<div class="guest">
  <p>Natacha Voliakovsky: It's something that came through my living also. Since I was born, I have had different artistic manifestations. I still draw. So I still have that classical or traditional way of expressing myself. But at the same time, since I was born, I've been surviving different situations. And my body was the center of the whole story. So that experience of my body, that is the experience of a lot of different bodies, moves [me] to create this kind of art.</p>
  <p>When the experience of the body is so big, how can you go– I don't know, I’ll paint or just do a sculpture. For me, performance is a way of directly showing and expressing and sharing what I've been through. And what a lot of people are still going through.</p>
  <p>Sometimes when I do things that are extreme or they are related to pain, they ask me about that. And it's like, well, reality is like that, you know? We are all the time around pain. We are all the time around different scenarios. That's doing something that is true.</p>
  <p>For me, performance art is the truest art that we can do. And it's the most meaningful type of art. Doing a performance out there, a place where we are going to fight, that is like the battlefield, especially in Argentina or the whole of Latin America, trying to put a message in a way that is really understandable for everyone and not just to the art community. Something for the people and by the people.</p>
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<div class="host">
  <p>Asia Stewart: You’ve referenced your involvement in this act of protest and different performances. How did your experiences in these marches influence or how have they influenced your artistic projects?</p>
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<div class="guest">
  <p>Natacha Voliakovsky: So, Ni Una Menos is a movement that changed everything, thanks to that movement– and other movements, of course, there's a lot of movements…We got the abortion law. In Argentina, we used to have illegal abortion, like our whole lives, and now this relates a lot to here in America, because we are fighting for that [here] as well.</p>
  <p>Having the possibility to express ourselves in a community–  to say what we wanted to say and to be heard by a lot of people. And since then I started doing a lot of performances in public spaces. I start using different representational elements that are related to marches.</p>
  <p>So this art has a different experience, a different display. It's not a museum, it's not a gallery, it's not a space where you are going to make a profit. You don't have a grant to develop that work, you are not being hired, you don't have a contract.</p>
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<div class="host">
  <p>Asia Stewart: And I can see behind you where you're sitting right now, I can see one of the flags or banners that also reminds me of the flags or banners that someone would wave in the streets during a protest. And I believe the flag behind you there says, “my body is not state property.”</p>
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<div class="guest">
  <p>Natacha Voliakovsky: Yeah, it's the one that I've used in Arkansas and has a lot of blood. There, as you can see. So yeah, I create flags with the same traditional material that are used in flags for marches. Like in general, political flags are used in Argentina and it's a really light material.</p>
  <p>There are also soccer flags. Our movement in the street is super related to the soccer movement. So I always call this idea “soccer performativity”. Well we call it fútbol. So it's more like a fútbol performativity that we all have. We shout, we go to the street, we manifest. And also this idea of having a flag, having something that you bring is having a message. It's not something that you can decide to interpret or not to interpret. It's something that is there. It's a concrete message, it’s straightforward. And when you put a message in the public space it suddenly creates a new meaning. So yeah, these flags also are a way to give life to these messages.</p>
  <p>I did different performances around the world. There is another one, for example, that I did in the Czech Republic where I was on the floor with a flag over me that says “Woman at war.” Femicides are a big thing. And it's not something that you see in the news because nobody cares about it. And the deaths of women, queer people or non-binary people, they are not recognized. They are not honorable. You know, we die and we are nothing. No one cares about us. So, that was my way of saying we also want to honor these deaths.</p>
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<div class="host">
  <p>Asia Stewart: And I think in the performance that you did in the Czech Republic of wrapping your body in the red flag and the banner, you're creating a space for public mourning and recognition of femicide and of the death and silences that have been allowed to occur for so long.</p>
  <p>The other thing that comes to mind for me when I think of the slogans and the text that you print on, on your flags and on your banners: they're very clear, they're concise, it's easy for people to understand what you're there for, what you're standing for, what you're calling for, there is no room for misinterpretation. And I'm thinking also of some of the phrases that I've seen printed on flags at different performances. We have, “My body's not state property.” At a performance, I believe it was last year, at the Center for Performance Research in New York, you had a flag that said “Abortion is a life need.” In another instance, you had a flag that said “Es una pregunta abierta.”</p>
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<div class="guest">
  <p>Natacha Voliakovsky: Yeah. The one you said in Spanish is, “it is an open question.” And that one was the first one in 2017 that I brought into the public space, and it's more like an open question to everything that was happening in that moment. For example, like gender things or who's having an abortion. Or like people that we carry uterus, so that it's not gender-related. Or how to manage our hormones or things like that. I think the open question is still there because what I like about these phrases is that you can reapply them to different contexts.</p>
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<div class="host">
  <p>Asia Stewart: And our conversation about flags and banners is making me think of another material or object that comes up in a lot of your performances, which is blood. What is the significance of blood in performances for you? And why do you continuously return to it as a material?</p>
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<div class="guest">
  <p>Natacha Voliakovsky: You know, the other day I was thinking about this because like, right now I'm going through a hormonal change. Like I've been growing my testosterone too much. So I needed to lower it. And right now I'm having like a 10 day period that maybe for some people is normal, but I used to have like four days. And it was like, that's all the time for some of us.</p>
  <p>And the other day I went to the doctor and they took blood for me, because I'm still recovering from a chronic illness. So it's like, blood is always there for a lot of us. People that go through different illnesses that they need to go through treatment for, or people that have uteruses, blood is there for a lot of us. All the time. It's something that is honest for me. It's something that at the same time for society is super taboo because it's not in our culture to understand how to manage blood or how to take care of our siblings or our lovers.</p>
  <p>And we are not talking about abortion. Abortions are around me in my life because I help people to do that. So it's like blood here and there. Working with blood for me is honest work. When you see blood there and you know that it's real, you instantly know that you are carrying blood. And if you cut yourself in a bad place, You can die.</p>
  <p>So it's like, yeah, humanity is so complicated, but at the same time we are so fragile and we can die so easily. It's not hard to die. So blood is all of that. We can speak all day about this. And you know, something that happens to me that is so curious, when I do a performance that relates to blood, I don't know why, and it doesn't matter in which moment of the month I am, I get my period.</p>
  <p>It's like the blood is calling more blood.</p>
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<div class="host">
  <p>Asia Stewart: Blood so interesting, because we associate red and crimson with life and vitality, but yet as you're saying, if we see blood, if we see a large quantity of human blood, or really blood of any kind, it also begs the question of what had to have happened to produce that quantity of blood.</p>
  <p>Some wound, a cut, an injury, violence, something opening the vessels that then spills forth the blood. It is very, as you said, it's very honest when you see it, it's very human and it does remind people of their own fragility, their own susceptibility to pain, to violence, to injury.</p>
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<div class="guest">
  <p>Natacha Voliakovsky: Yeah, I was thinking about how the way I grew up in my family, there was always someone that was in the hospital for different reasons.</p>
  <p>When you grow up with different scenarios, something in that is permanent in the way you see reality, in the way you perceive things. And for me, blood is something that is always there.</p>
  <p>Well, I have blood in my fridge, as you know. I have all my tools for performance. You know, I'm the one that– friends have a surgery and they call me to help clean their wounds.</p>
  <p>I'm related to blood because I understand and I know how to manage this, but at the same time, it’s a way of healing. It's a new way of connecting to blood. When I say all that I said about the past and what I've been through it’s because I'm here. And it's a way of me remembering and being proud of what I've been through and also to know and to acknowledge that there are a lot of people that are still there.</p>
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<div class="host">
  <p>Asia Stewart: How do you go about preparing your body for the extreme hardcore performances that you create? What does that process look like, of preparation?</p>
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<div class="guest">
  <p>Natacha Voliakovsky: Well, I have my own training method. What is this method? This method is like a way of designing a training system, analyzing different variables that are going to be around the performance that me or you or we are going to develop. To create a system to prepare yourself physically, mentally, and socially to get to that objective.</p>
  <p>For me, what is most important is how to recover from that. So depending on the action that I'm going to develop is the kind of training that I'm going to do. It's a training towards being present because if you're going to do something that is risky and if you are not in the present, there are a lot of potential disasters that could happen.</p>
  <p>I mean, this is also something that is present in whatever kind of performance that you're going to do. Like if you're going to talk in public or if you're going to do any sport– I'm all the time taking as an example soccer because it's so popular in my country and we are all watching soccer all the time…So you are a soccer player, imagine that, and you are preparing yourself. There are two regular basic preparations. So one is physical: that is muscle, breathing, resistance, endurance. And the other one is more psychological. You go to the field, you do what you have to do for what you're supposed to be prepared for.</p>
  <p>And I try to take kind of the same balance. I analyze what is going to be the physical development or that action or the physical risk. And I also take accountability of what are the psychological parts that are going to be related.</p>
  <p>And one thing that I've been working on these past years is how to prepare my community, the people that are closer to me because I understand that every time that I do a performance I also change everyone because they are scared or because they are excited. And the way this action could change me and could change those people would also change our relationship.</p>
</div>

<div class="host">
  <p>Asia Stewart: What does that look like? The process of trying to prepare your community, trying to prepare people who are close to you for the experience of watching one of your performances? Or you also mentioned the idea of recovery: of what it looks like in the days, the weeks, months, years after the performance? What is that work?</p>
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<div class="guest">
  <p>Natacha Voliakovsky: Well we can take an example. Let me see. [For] “Abortion is a Life Need” it was kind of easy to prepare people because I understood the physical risk and I was sharing that information with them. There wasn't too much physical risk, it was more like an emotional risk.</p>
  <p>I needed to insert two catheters in my skin, but I needed to do it by myself. The challenge for me was going through that by myself alone, and I was scared of not being able to do it for the performance. But I was aware that if I was doing things wrong, there wasn't a risk of dying. There wasn't a risk of needing to go to the hospital, you know? So in that way, it was like, yeah, probably I'm going to be scared. I could faint. I could have a lot of blood or a lot of bruises, but it's not like a really big risk. It's more like, emotional. So they knew I was going to need emotional support. And at the same time, I was going to be super satisfied if I was able to do it. And I was able to do it!</p>
  <p>So they were having a little emotional pain because they were watching the catheters through my skin. But at the same time, I know that people that know me, they are proud of me for doing what I want to do. And in general, they asked me, “Okay, what do you need after your performance?”</p>
  <p>And in those cases, I'm super able to share what I need.</p>
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<div class="host">
  <p>Asia Stewart: That's such an important thing to be able to do, to verbalize exactly what it is that you need. And to also be in a place where you have the foresight to plan your own recovery, how are you going to respond, how are you processing that work.</p>
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<div class="guest">
  <p>Natacha Voliakovsky: This type of art that in my case, and in so many cases, it’s real things. Because it's super different when you do a representation or when you do a kind of performance that is more related to dance or theater. The things that I do are things that in general I do once. I'm not trained to do that every day of my life. It's something that I prepare especially to go through.</p>
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<div class="host">
  <p>Asia Stewart: Your performances are massive undertakings. Your new video, “The Denied Body, A Refuge of Trauma,” considers what happens when a person in pain enters a state of denial. Now that you've completed this new video and you're going to be installing this work in a few days, how are you feeling about the work, about this new project?</p>
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<div class="guest">
  <p>Natacha Voliakovsky: When I do this kind of work that is not live, it’s different. Because they are, for me, they are really intimate works. And I'm kind of like: [I] open my heart, open my soul, open everything. It's a different experience.</p>
  <p>Like, we've been talking about training and how we prepare ourselves. So this is a different experience. I don't have any physical risk, but it's more like an emotional process. I was there with my face covered in blood, and that was a moment of calling all my trauma. It seems like an easy action for me, or the type of actions that I go through. But it was emotionally hard. So seeing myself again and again and again in that video, it's like when you revisit something all the time and you cannot escape it.</p>
  <p>But at the same time, I think that that sensation is exactly what the piece is talking about. It’s that trauma that doesn't go away and how you function in your daily life with that trauma and how we dissociate, how we change, how we try to be functional.</p>
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<div class="host">
  <p>Asia Stewart: It is very intimate, I think, watching this new video work that you've created. The viewer sits with you the entire time, it's a very close shot, and we can't help but watch you take your fingers that have been dipped in blood and rub your hands, rub your fingers along your face. It's impossible to look away, it's impossible to turn away from that. And it's interesting to have an installation where although your physical body is absent, your essence is very much present in that space.</p>
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<div class="guest">
  <p>Natacha Voliakovsky: Hopefully, the installation– because it's not already finished– hopefully we are going to have three flags. They are going to be new flags and these flags– because they weren't activated in the public space, the idea is that the audience could interact with them.</p>
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<div class="host">
  <p>Asia Stewart: And it'll be interesting to watch the flags mark time and mark the various interactions that members of the public have in the installation, and to watch the flags change color too, and carry the imprint of all the visitors.</p>
  <p>I also just want to ask you a question that you've asked others earlier this summer, and it's a question that also relates in part to the title of this new work, “The Denied Body.” What have you or what has your body been denied?</p>
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<div class="guest">
  <p>Natacha Voliakovsky: Oh, so many things. I've been denied respect, justice, love, recognition. My papers, also. Like, I've been denied in so many ways. So many times, in so many different scenarios. Growing up, also, I denied myself too, because you learn that, and you learn how to function that way. When you've been denied so many times, you have, as I have, this dissociation between mind and body, it's like a dissociation about who you are. So the experience of the mind and the body, put together, is hard.</p>
  <p>So you keep denying yourself in different ways. There are a lot of ways of denying yourself. All these last performances that I've been doing, video performances and live performances, is a way of calling me back. I'm trying to stop being so dissociated all the time and stop denying myself because I know I'm still going to get denied by the outside. How can you love yourself and respect yourself if you are also the first one denying yourself? That's the process. What I'm showing is an ongoing work.</p>
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<div class="host">
  <p>Asia Stewart: In many ways, your practice is redemptive. It's restorative. It's healing. It's that healing that you talked about earlier too.</p>
  <p>In closing, Natacha, I just wanted to give you the opportunity to share or speak about anything that we haven't touched on yet. Is there anything else that you wanted to bring up or discuss that we haven't touched on already?</p>
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<div class="guest">
  <p>Natacha Voliakovsky: I'm the Director and Founder of a platform in Argentina. So having this type of project, it makes a huge difference for the community. Performance art has always been there, but it's not something that from my perspective is really appreciated. So having PerformVu uplift a lot of artists could be a game changer. I'm super excited to see how it goes. We as artists are creating projects that we already know what we need and what we want and how we want to do things.</p>
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<div class="host">
  <p>Asia Stewart: And I guess asking the question that we were just talking about before: what have we been denied? What have we been denied as artists? What have institutions in various spaces chosen not to disseminate and share with artists so they can have a practice that's sustainable and fruitful and one that can extend with longevity, right? And so how do we as artists try to find ways to build that and create that and sustain that for ourselves?</p>
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<div class="guest">
  <p>Natacha Voliakovsky: Yes absolutely.</p>
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<div class="host">
  <p>Asia Stewart: Well, thank you so much for being here with me today, Natacha, for engaging in this conversation. Congratulations on your upcoming opening. I encourage anyone who's listening to go check it out on Governor's Island at Transborder Art.</p>
  <p>It's been so wonderful for me to watch your work for so many years and to now be in community with you and to be working [and] collaborating with you. So thank you for your support and thank you for all that you do for other artists.</p>
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<div class="guest">
  <p>Natacha Voliakovsky: Thank you, Asia. Thank you very much for listening, holding this space, and creating so many things because you are part of the exhibition too and we are not talking about that!</p>
  <p>I think that's super important. The day I called you to do this project together was a way also of engaging and creating this sisterness in how we live our art and how we experience things and, you know, having a conversation.</p>
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<div class="host">
  <p>Asia Stewart: Well thank you for being open for this conversation and hopefully many more.</p>
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<div class="guest">
  <p>Natacha Voliakovsky: Of course.</p>
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<div class="host">
  <p>Asia Stewart: This episode of Open Studios was produced by me, Asia Stewart. If you are interested in watching incredible performance work, I highly recommend that you check out PerformVu. Head to www.performvu.com.</p>
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