Natalia Zaitseva

В октябре у меня вышла книга. Три месяца я откладывала пост о ней, потому что каждый день приходят новости, не совместимые с публичной радостью. Вот, например, сегодня Илье Яшину дали 8,5 лет за распространение "фейков" о событиях в Буче. Я смотрю на людей в зале суда, и чувствую, что они готовы разрыдаться. И таких судов в России сейчас очень много. Ок, книга. Повторю здесь то, что я написала для инстаграма издательства @no.kidding.press «Я не представляю, как этот текст будет читаться сейчас. Он написан не то что до войны, а даже еще до пандемии. Но полагаю, в нем есть то ощущение бесприютности, которое сейчас, наверное, близко многим. ⠀ „Ипотека страданий“ — это не о том, что я взяла ипотеку, а о том, как в течение всей жизни я избавляюсь от каких-то страданий, а значит, они вот-вот закончатся, я их выплачу. Так себе метафора, но мы решили сделать ее названием: в ней есть отсылка к экономическим отношениям и прекарности. ⠀ Эта книга написана в течение 2019 года. Основным принципом было описывать настоящее, только если оно вызывает в памяти какие-то сильные воспоминания. Это был год перформативного каждодневного письма. ⠀ Главный художественный вызов был в том, чтобы ничего не сообщать, не повествовать. Находиться скорее в поэтическом режиме. У этого текста нет адресата. Тем не менее у меня всегда была уверенность, что он должен быть выпущен, прочитан».

My website is a ♌️: was born on the 11 of August.

I decided to stop using instagram for some time, because I’m dependent on scrolling and find it sick. But as a last goodbye I want to post this photo that I like very much. @tatiana_efrussi saw us @mikhailtolmachev_ and @ada.travels.the.world from the opposite tram. Let it be more offline- and less screen time in our life!

“Eine simple, vollendete Inszenierung wie glänzender Sternenstaub, der sich wie Balsam auf die Seele legt. Und einfach nur eines einfordert: Mensch zu sein.” Thank you, Torben Ibs @turbotorbs , for this beautiful review! @kreuzer_leipzig ❤️

About three years ago, before life changed for most of the people in my life—and many who were not— we had an idea. What would it be like to make artificial theatre?
To do a play.
To create an illusion of reality.
To allow living, breathing, thinking audience members
to have their effect on it. The result was a vision of pre-recorded and generated content that shifted with each viewer’s perception, directly influenced by their own thinking through EEG, motion, and heat. A room filled with images, faces, voices, sounds, and music.
All responding to you, without ever fully revealing how. We called it iRis. Siri backwards. Based in on one of my favorite plays, by @zaizeva 
We made a trailer. Three years later, the world of AI has changed. Almost everyone now uses a large language model, yet its effect on our lives still feels just beyond reach. Will AI help solve the world’s most urgent problems? Will it be weaponized? Will it consume water and resources for more cat memes? Is this frog soup, or will we think our way out of wars, ecological crises, and deep inequality?  This play, in the form of an Artificial Theatre, would offer a space to sit inside these questions together. Writer: @zaizeva Actors: @anna_nebo @dmitrievaleksandr @stefanielizaveta @496th Associate Producer: @markizraelson DoP: @m_dmntv VFX: @velvet_control Color: @veronica_tiron Directing & Music: @stephenochsner P.S. a link to Natasha’s site with my translation of the play is in the first comment P.P.S. a link to the same video on YouTube is in the second comment

Was bedeutet Zugehörigkeit, wenn Orte verloren gehen?Wie lebt sich Pluralismus im Exil – zwischen Sprachen, Erinnerungen, Allianzen? Es war ein unvergesslicher Abend über Fragilität und Widerstand, Kunst und Selbstverortung. “Lokal-Dekolonial” war eine Reihe des Referats Internationale Zusammenarbeit der Stadt Leipzig & der Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung im Kontext von 12.Festival von Politik im Freien Theater. Danke an alle Beteiligten für 🎭 Performance – @zaizeva Z📖 Lesung –@pustotalitarism 💬 Diskussion – @crymariapapu , Elena Filippova @perito.media , Natalia Zaitseva, Dinara Rasuleva @dinararasuleva , @allapopp 🎶 Musik – TATAR KYZ:LAR @tatarkyzlar Danke an Felix Pacholleck @felixpacholleck für die Fotodokumentation und Anna Koroleva @skazkatut für die Ko-Konzeption und Organisation. Carolin Savchuk für das Konzept Lokal-Dekolonial. Ich freue mich auf weitere Zusammenarbeit! #PluralismusImExil #LokalDekolonial #ExilKultur #Translingual #Lostlingual #TatarKyzlar #Leipzig #bundeszentralefürpolitischeBildung #PIFT

October 19, the lecture performance „Christabel“ as part of the „Local Decolonial“ event in the „Politik im Freien Theater“ festival

Living my best life in Leipzig

Since I don’t speak Karelian, I don’t call myself Karelian. But am I underestimating my Karelian identity because I have inherited a Russian chauvinism that erases and suppresses all the ethnic differences? Or, on the contrary, am I exaggerating it now—because of the current anti-colonial discourse and the reality of the art scene where being "Russian" has become a disadvantage? My father is half Karelian, and he was raised by his Karelian family. As a child, he spent a lot of time with his grandmother Dunya—my great-grandmother (on the photo)—who, as I recall, could barely speak Russian. My father was socialized in Soviet society and was listed in the documents as Russian. My father never spoke about his Karelian heritage as it was an insignificant fact. I never heard my grandmas speak the Karelian language to each other. Later, when I lived in Petrozavodsk, Karelians of my grandmother's generation told me how, after the war, teachers would strike them if they were caught speaking Karelian instead Russian in the school halls. Until 1941, the schooling in Karelia was in Finnish. It means that my grandmother Shura received her early education in Finnish, spoke Karelian at home, and only as a teenager was forced to assimilate into the Russian-speaking Soviet society. In 1937, many Karelians and Finns were sent to labor camps or executed. As a border area with non-Russian native residents, Karelia was under the closed scrutiny of the centralized Soviet (later Russian) government. From my essay "Can I Consider Myself Indigenous if the Only Indigenous Person in My Family is My Grandmother?" On the photos: my Karelian embroidery poster, my great-grandma Dunya with me and my sister, the page from the Karelian primer of 1941.

Leipzig, 2024; Vieljärvi, 1921 When Anna Karpenko @hannaharp asked me if I wanted to participate in the exhibition of posters ONCE WE WERE TREES, NOW WE ARE BIRDS made by Martin Roth Initiativ’s stipendiats (which I was in 2023), I had no idea how to make a poster. It’s ok, said Anna, we want to show different techniques in which the artists work. It would be good if you presented your current practice – you can write even a theater play and place it on an A1 sheet. I will make a play, I said, but it will be an image. From November 2024 I have been practicing different types of Karelian embroidery, the craft of my grandmother. For a fabric base I bought tote bags in the famous German drugstore DM – the color was right, the price was low. When the curators approached me, embroidery was my actual everyday practice. So, the play has three acts: 1) DM tote bag as a symbol of capitalism that consumes everything and a symbol of my new country of residence. The tote bag's line is "Here I am a human. Here I buy". 2) The Karelian archival embroidery from the year 1921 (it’s important) 3) My Karelianness as a card that I can play in the decolonial game of washing out the Russianness. The third is a bitter joke. I see how people try to distance themselves from imperialism and chauvinism, exaggerating the multiethnicity of Russia, writing “russia” from a small “r”, talking de-colonial, researching roots and learning languages of their grandmothers. I’m also a part of it. At the same time I’m skeptical. Because even in my ancestors I see how they wanted to be Russian, when it brought them benefits. And I see how historically unavoidable it was for them to become either Russians or Finnish. I want to talk about complexity. So I’m skeptical about the decoloniality of my own work. Maybe it is too postmodern. Maybe it lacks a direct message. I will do a series of posts about it, explaining my bitter views. Now here in the carousel you can read the text that accompanied my original poster in IFA gallery in Berlin @ifagalleryberlin More about the whole exhibition in their instagram!