Anna Lublina

In what way does connecting different art disciplines hold a special meaning to you?

I am really attracted to the forms of translation and diaspora. These are personal forms that I have grown up inside of and they inspire my work as an artist. Both translation and diaspora ask for multiplicity and so I like to go to multiple mediums in order to maintain that multiplicity. In other words, I like to say things in different ways at the same time.

The transdisciplinarity in my work is perhaps an outgrowth of my bicultural upbringing; as the child of a Soviet immigrant, I have words and ideas in my English and Russian vocabularies that literally cannot be translated into the other language; this knowledge makes me aware of the failure of language as a structure to contain all possibilities. My work proposes the possibility of live performance offering more expansive structures built on collective thought and action. It creates new mythologies founded on queer, radical value systems that upend the histories upheld by patriarchal power structures.

You are a successful collaborator. What inspires you in people?

I love working with other people! I feel like a dialogue about an idea will always make it much deeper and more nuanced. Also, I am not good at everything and it's amazing to have other talent/skills/passion around to strengthen any idea.

The rehearsal process for my work attempts to embody a collective ethos: I take on a maternal role as director, leading my collaborators through exercises in which they are given the agency to generate content and action. This divestment of power is critical to my role as director. The work I create is then a manifestation of that collective process; it is my hope that the audience witnesses the rapport my collaborators and I have built and is welcomed into the world we have created, so that the space of the theater becomes joyful and, perhaps, beautiful.

Working with a team is interesting and can be very energizing. Is there anything that you find especially challenging about it?

I feel like it is a very specific skill to be able to encourage someone, offer critique, and give space for agency at the same time. I feel like I am always performing a balancing act of asking for the vision of others' while maintaining my own AND communicating clearly & lovingly. This kind of relationship is really challenging but also stimulating. 

How do you build your artist community?

Building a community has no consistent rules. I've been connected to people through friends, seen people's work and reached out, just been attracted to people energetically and just started working together. Sometimes it's just practical —you need something specific and they have it. Many times I don't actually collaborate with people in my artist community, we just are friends and support each other and maybe discuss ideas with each other.  There are so many different ways I have gathered my artist community. 

Can you talk about one performance that was especially memorable to you?

A few years ago I saw Annie Dorsen’s “The Slow Room” at Performance Space New York. She is a singularly experimental theater artist. For this work, Dorsen stripped the stage bare, populating it with a room of standing adults, who announced themselves with screen names like “KittyCat424.” In this Internet chat room in the theater, she gave the audience an experience of time online that cannot be understood as an intellectual idea. It was sensory, bodily — powerful in its boringness. This is what theater can do: it can help us experience realities that defy mere description. 

I enjoyed participating in your Talk Flock project. Can you tell our readers about it? Will it be coming back?

Talk Flock was a bi-weekly-ish series of online talks — a living room salon without the living room.  Every two weeks or so, we (me and my friend Jerry Lieblich)  invited two talkers to give 10-minute talks on topics of their choosing, after which we open up for general discussion.  The vibe was casual, but engaged - it’s fun to see how different ways of thinking and speaking interact, to find the connections between, say, astrology and abolition. 

Unfortunately, Jerry and I don't live in the same time zone right now so I think Talk Flock is on pause indefinitely. I also think Talk Flock was born out of a moment where we needed connection in the digital space. If we are to bring it back, I think we will have to reassess what the needs of right now are. 

What are you currently working on?

I am currently working on a staged performance which will premiere in 2-3 months. It’s entitled Jargon Rituals (working title), drawing from the gesture, tone, emotion, and instinct — the invisible inheritances — of Yiddish language and cultural history. The performance is founded in my experience as a Jewish person interested in creating performance practices that are founded in Jewish diasporic heritage and against nationalism of any kind. The practices will manifest as an ensemble performance in Frankfurt at Mousonturm 

March 2023. 

Can you talk about your graduate studies journey?

I am in a masters degree in Germany, JLU ATW Institute, in the Choreography and Performance program. I have been here for 2 years and am finishing my degree this semester. It has been interesting and difficult to study in Germany. The culture around the arts is so different from ours in the US, for better and for worse. Ultimately, it has been really good for me to take time away from the hustle of New York City and I've learned a lot about what I care about in performance — outside of my "career" in New York. 

Who are some of your mentors and role models?

I am really inspired by interdisciplinary artist Meredith Monk. 

I was really lucky to work for her for 2 years in various capacities. I have learned a lot from her process and continue to be inspired by her form and aesthetic. I draw inspiration from her use of folk, home-grown aesthetics. I love how she creates rich, DIY sets with paper-mache clouds and folk dances. I find this connection to history generates a kind of mythology. Her work feels like something passed down from ancient worlds. She creates mythologies that resituate our reality in order to illustrate our assumptions about how the world works. She melds mediums, creating work that privileges feeling before genre. A perfect example is her breath songs in which the composition is made entirely of breaths or laughter. The music is wholly original and emotional on a somatic level. The feeling of struggle or happiness through breath (so affective itself) is what creates meaning, rather than narrative text. As I explore the mutability of structure in my work, I draw inspiration from the way Meredith’s craft seems to exist between disciplines, dissolving the boundaries between forms to create something that is beautiful in its idiosyncrasy. 

I would also say that I've received mentorship from so many artists & humans! 

What city did you especially enjoy living in on your life journey so far?

I guess I've loved living in New York City the most but I've also grown a lot while living in Portland, OR, Bogota, and Frankfurt! I just love the crazy exhausted, yet loving arts community in New York.

What advice can you offer to students who are interested in interdisciplinary performance art? 

Find the artists you love and reach out to them to learn. Find the people you love to work with and build your practices together. That way, everyone comes up together.