Nana Biakova: Exploring the connection between one’s body and objects

Our country has an unfinished cruiser Ukraina, identical in its specifications to a sunk Russian cruiser Moskva. A fleet can have its own name if it has a cruiser. The Black Sea Fleet doesn’t have one anymore, so now it’s a flotilla. Our cruiser, on the other hand, is stationed on the Ingul River and has never been out to sea.

It became the central piece of the performance “Lost Movement “ by artist Nana Biakova. The girl also explores her own body, the space of the city, and the relationship between them. Nana talks about Mykolaiv, its connection to shipbuilding, the Japanese dance of darkness, and fears of returning to Ukraine.

Kateryna Lukiashko: You were born in Mykolaiv in 1990. How do you remember the city?

Nana Biakova: The subject of ships has always been featured in the city. But since my childhood, almost nothing was built anymore. The Soviet Union collapsed, and the funding for shipbuilding was gone. Now the cultural cluster of Mykolaiv focuses on marine art because we are situated very close to the sea. Modern Mykolaiv – is a city on the wave. It’s a new reimagined slogan for the city, suggested in 2019. Before that, it was a city of ships. Mykolaiv appears to be in a constant state of transitioning and forming its own identity; even now, during the full-scale war, when it is a frontline city, and its daily life and needs are forced to change. And this is how I remember it all the time.   

The spirit of the city, where ships are built, has disappeared somewhere. For a certain time, I, as a kid, did not analyze it in any way. Because for me those ships were always present. Later, I studied at the Mykolaiv National University of Shipbuilding in the ship interior design program. As an adult, I spent 3 years in Japan in emigration. During an art internship, I more and more dived into the subject of my own story, and biography, but from a standpoint of political, historical, and philosophical identification. As if I looked at myself from a distance. As though my newfound experience in a different environment helped me leave my own body and look at it from the outside. Then I started noticing ships and continued thinking about Mykolaiv. This led me to a deeper research of my home city.

Kateryna Lukiashko: Your apartment remained in Mykolaiv, even though no one from your family has lived there since a long time ago. Why did this happen?

Nana Biakova: Quite a lot of people left the city before the Revolution of Dignity, not even mentioning the full-scale invasion. Usually, they moved to big cities: Kharkiv, Kyiv, Lviv, and Odesa. My parents with sister also left the city.

After finishing the university, I was an artist, drawing with watercolors way back during my studies. My art pieces were published in the only modern gallery in the city. And they were straight-away pet projects. But I also had to find a job and continue to grow somehow. For this reason, I too moved to the capital 12 years ago. I was 23 and didn’t have any certain plans. I just wanted to be an artist. But I didn’t know how to do it. I lived my entire life in Mykolaiv and quite frankly, I didn’t have a complete picture of the modern Ukrainian artistic sphere. What little existed looked compressed, isolated, and very concentrated. When I arrived in Kyiv, I immediately went to see exhibitions. I worked in graphic design, studied, and tried to create art for the next 7 years. For a person from Mykolaiv, it’s really hard to paint the whole picture of how to navigate in arts these days, even more so a decade ago. In Ukraine, there are no studies on modern performance art. All that we have – are individual initiatives, such as the Antonin Artaud Scholarship for supporting artists in the sphere of performance art or programs from artists themselves, who have already been doing this for some time. More opportunities arose, but a feeling lingers that we are creating this sphere on our own.

Kateryna Lukiashko: At the heart of “The Lost Movement” is a story with an unfinished renovation. What is it about?

Nana Biakova: I have long had a feeling of something untold or unfinished. It’s most prominently featured in the history of the city itself. It had a shipbuilding plant and now it’s in a frozen, uncertain state. It became a part of the Mykolaiv landscape. Along with it, there are cranes and ships, the missile cruiser ‘Ukraina.’ Everything is unfinished. No transition ever took place. 

My performance is related to objects. Let’s say the cruiser – is an object. I often thought about why I have so much empathy for it and why I care so much. I realized, that aside from the fact I grew up there, there is a whole other, more separated level. And it’s related to my story, my family, and my apartment. When you’re a child and you have a constant renovation in your home, you don’t pay attention to it. Like okay, you have to go out and play elsewhere, since there’s dust everywhere. But the renovation took place for so long that it never ended. And the whole city is full of stories, which, due to the post soviet period, never could find their closure. I decided to research why this unfishedness exists and what to do with it now. So I had to take into account such elements as my apartment, which is in the same state. It has been empty for two years and it becomes apparent. The possessions start to deteriorate.

Kateryna Lukiashko: The context of loss is interesting. If you all have long since moved away, and the time there has stood still, why didn’t you let it go? Is there some hope that this movement, so to speak, will be revived, and the renovation will be completed? Or how do you see it?

Nana Biakova: It’s hard for me to look at it with a detached mindset. The same applies to the cruiser. No one knows what to do with it. It’s not used in any way. The apartment also lacks any definitive solutions. The war is ongoing. We don’t know what will be next… But my parents do have a connection with this apartment. I visited it for the project. I sit at night, and there is a drone flying over the house. Dad calls me and asks to close the room where the lead glasses are stored. He is worried for them. For me, this apartment – is the only place, where I grew up. And this is my only story. I don’t have an apartment in Kyiv that I own. I don’t feel myself completely at home anywhere but Mykolaiv. No matter the fact that I haven’t been there for a long time. Almost as if I’m always partially there, even if not physically. While reminiscing during emigration, I came back precisely to Mykolaiv, as though there lies an answer to who I am. It really is a magical place. On one hand – sunrise – on the other – sundown. And on the background – a landscape of Mykolaiv, with a river where the sun goes to sleep. It’s really hard to resist the sense of belonging to this place. I couldn’t bring myself to trade it for anything else.

Kateryna Lukiashko: In the performance, you researched hidden relations between alive and lifeless objects. How does that work?

Nana Biakova: I arrived in Mykolaiv thinking I would create a performance with art pieces. The concept went through several iterations and I had different ideas circling in my head at first. I even imagined smashing these glasses on video and in reverse, to make it look like they come together as a whole. It turned out I couldn’t create a deconstruction of these objects. I have a connection to them and I still have no idea what to do with them. And I can’t even take them back to Kyiv, since they belong to this place.

Same story with dresses. My mother is an entrepreneur and she made money on needlework. She made pacifiers, knitted hats, sewed things, and then sold them. Additionally, she went to Poland and Turkey, and then later to Odesa to the 7th km. In the 90s, money was hard to come by. I only remember a small period when everything seemed to be good. Then we started renovating. And then suddenly everything became very bad. My friends stopped gifting me presents on my birthday. But I always had a very good look thanks to my mom. I studied in an elite school, where good looks mattered. I could come to my mom with a sketch, draw something, and in 5 hours I was already at a disco in a new piece of clothing. And everything always sat comfortably. When she moved, she left a dozen plaid bags together with various dresses that weren’t relevant anymore. I had to spend a lot of time just to look through it all. Before I came back to Mykolaiv, I imagined that I would have a different connection to these things. I didn’t think that once I arrived there, I would have a feeling that everything was seemingly supposed to be so still.  

I don’t remember for sure if this project is now about me wanting these items to actually move, or vice versa. There is definitely a theme of stillness and lost movement. However, when I applied for the scholarship, I noted that this would be a long-term story. It would change. I constantly keep repeating moves related to certain objects, this is the way I remember them. It’s a process of bodily discovery. I feel now that the story has changed within my perception. Because at the beginning, I imagined it to be completely different. I need to follow my feelings and my connection with these objects, with this story, with the city. Because this is a discovery through own body and experience. It’s as though I’m detached; as if there is a body and a person that interact with one another. There are also objects. I should look into and analyze what is going on inside this body. This was also preceded by researching my childhood when I also seemed to detach and look at everything from a third-person perspective. 

Kateryna Lukiashko: These things are owned not only by you but by your family too. Have you wondered what they feel and if they share a similar connection to them?

Nana Biakova: I used my mother’s coat from 1980. It became a significant element of the performance. It was difficult to move in because it’s made out of leather. When I sent her the photo, she said it was awful. For her, it’s just one of her old things. She doesn’t have any special connection to them. So, I was allowed to take what I wanted. My parents only have a strong connection with lead glasses and porcelain from East Germany. It’s a very soviet story. And I, in turn, would take in my hands some decorative toy horse, and I thought I would die if I accidentally let it fall. I included this in my research too, because on the one hand – it’s trash, but on the other –  sometimes it’s scary to lose it. This feeling is persistent even in the body.   

Kateryna Lukiashko: Why are soviet things so valuable, but things from the 1990s – are not?

Nana Biakova: In the 1990s, my parents tried to find ways to survive. At the time, only this held any value, the things. They were only tools. The majority of people around us genuinely starved. We had. The main motivation was to make money, not something that would last forever. Creating something profound is what sparks my interest. Sometimes I wonder what will happen to this practice in 20-30 years. I can create art by using things created by my mom’s hands. But for her – most of the things she made were never something valuable. Artistic pursuits were not valued much at all in our family. I wasn’t raised as an artist. There were no preconditions for me to do what I do today. It’s a walk against giant waves. When I told my family that I would become an artist and would enroll in design, my dad was unapproving of it. Our family did not praise for creativity and this is also a soviet tradition – oppressing anything that stood out as different. And surprisingly, creativity was always present in our household: we sculpted and painted. My mother sewed a lot. You could always hear the sound of a sewing machine in our apartment. Our dad filmed us on video as early as the 1990s. A lot of really cool documentation was shot on video and it could be posted even today. But it had a narrative attached to it that none of it mattered. I felt constant pushback since school. Education, in its soviet and post-soviet form, was fine-tuned for not letting a person grow up free.

Kateryna Lukiashko: Performance art isn’t taught in Ukraine. How come you stumbled upon it?

Nana Biakova: Essentially, if you want to do it, you do it blindfolded. You look for people you like, for people who would teach you, all on your own. But this is a more freeing path. It all started when I got interested in Ankoku Butoh. I was working as a designer on a cultural project and wanted to dive into modern performance art on the side. I started doing body practice. My fascination with Butoh was influenced by an avant-garde agency “Ukho”. In 2016, they had a series of performances. The program “Architecture of the Voice” featured butoh-opera. Two butoh dancers were invited from Europe and 20 beginner performers took part as well. Rehearsals took place with avant-garde music in the Dovzhenko Centre. I started performing every day, finally feeling like I was in my own place. The aesthetic component was very beautiful for my taste. Two weeks came and went, but I still wanted to continue. I started looking for ways. I created a chat with the members of the group and formed an experimental dance group. The Butoh get-together took place in my apartment in Podil, where I researched the material. It became such a passion that I sought out any opportunity to talk to people who could relate to this. Within a year I got determined to travel to the Japanese city of Akita, the birthplace of the dance founder Tatsumi Hijikata. In September 2017, I attended a 10-day festival. By 2022, I was invited there as a participant with my own performance. For me, it was a great honor.  

Kateryna Lukiashko: So your performative method of working developed during your life in Japan? What was your experience with this country?

Nana Biakova: I first traveled there for reconnaissance. When returning from the festival, I already knew I had to live there for a couple of years. When talking with artists in this field who live outside of Japan, I realized the importance of immersion in the local way of life. I felt like I lacked the knowledge in this area. My experience in Japan was not very easy. My journey into learning butoh – is a story of self-education and independent research. Because there are no institutions, except archives, that would teach you anything. It’s undeniably an underground movement, which still needs theorization from those involved. It is very recent, having started in the 1960s. The founder died very young and left behind many questions.

The second time I went for 2 months with a return ticket in my hands and just one suitcase. I met all possible masters. Then the pandemic hit, and it became impossible to leave. I was forced to stay longer, so I began traveling around Japan. Then that “longer” ended up extending to three years. During this time, I more or less figured out what I had to do. A pathway appeared. I got lucky it was a person who drove me in their car. Japan is quite a long country. We traveled extensively through the south: Kyoto, Osaka, and Kishu. I visited Harda San’s house on the outskirts of Fukuoka, where they organize a butoh festival. Thanks to this journey, I was able to meet masters throughout Japan, which helped me form a general and specific understanding of the field at its current stage. 

There are a lot of people scattered around the world. Each of them has already developed their personal method and approach, based on what the founder shared. You can only find this out through personal communication. There are also two main archives. One is non-operational, while the other is at Keio University. During the festival, I met its director Kae Ishimoto. She became my guide. There were many formats: informal discussions, research, and film screenings. Some materials were hard to decipher even for the Japanese themselves. These texts, written by Hijikata in a surrealistic style, are convoluted, and unclear. But I still plan to work on them. 

Kateryna Lukiashko: How would you explain butoh to a person who’s not familiar with it?

Nana Biakova: Ankoku Butoh translates to “dance of the darkness”. It’s a contemporary avant-garde Japanese dance that first appeared in 1959. I had an interest in avant-garde that we did not have here. It’s a 1960s aesthetic, including its experimental parties. I like how it makes me feel when I practice it. Its form and idea fascinate me so much that I’m an absolute butoh enthusiast. The best way to talk about butoh is through the personality of its founder. At first, he was a dancer, with a background in jazz dance to ballet. Then he moved to avant-garde, and surrealism, and became acquainted with novels and writings of Jean Genet, a political and provocative writer who wrote his first novel while imprisoned. At that time, Hijikata consciously decided to invent a new form of dance, which would be the opposite of any existing European one. After the war, Japan was under American occupation, and there was a significant influence from the Western world. Artists were searching for their form, for new self-identification. In contrast to the refined ballet, the founder created a dark, grotesque, sometimes repulsive form as an embodiment of the shadow side that a human has. This evolved into exploring his story in performances about Akita and the very difficult times he experienced there, about brothers who drank sake as they went to war and returned as ashes. The avant-garde movement evolved and drew from Japanese history, post-war memories, and local physicality.

Butoh embodies the exact experience of living in Japan. It involves understanding how they eat, how they live in their space, and what they think. It is necessary to grasp these aspects to understand why some elements of the dance are like this. There are specific elements and choreography linked to the daily life of the dancer. They sit on the floor, hold a plate in their hands, use chopsticks to pick up food and consume seaweed. The choreography is based on these things. While these elements are quite familiar to Japanese people, to me, it feels like a different world. And when I learn this choreography, when I dance in this style, I feel as if I truly become something different.

Kateryna Lukiashko: Did “Lost Movement” use the elements or the approach of butoh?

Nana Biakova: When I work with movements, I always use the butoh technique. The dance starts with the devastation and deprivation of anything humane. There are special techniques where the body separates, and my identity is gone. Some say this process frees you of your ego. In this state, you can be what you want. But the “me” is still present, dictating in my consciousness what I will become. It’s a meditative state that I always use when performing.

There is no separate dancer, no separate actor, it’s a mix. I don’t have to be a person on the scene. A dancer is a medium between worlds. This basic approach can be tied to the religion of Shinto. It has respect for objects like they’re inhabitants of a secret world. There is a concept of “mono” as an object. A table is a mono, a phone is a mono. A dead person is also a mono, as is a ghost. My teacher always taught me that to dance butoh, one must explore what is not human and become an object. If we watch cartoons and anime, we will see many stories where objects are living beings. I also use this concept to explore the relationship between the body and objects.

Kateryna Lukiashko: You returned to Ukraine in 2023. Why did you make this decision? 

Nana Biakova: When the full-scale war began, I could no longer emotionally stay in Japan. But I couldn’t leave right away. And it was truly frightening. In January 2022, I heard a lot of talk about an impending invasion. At home, no one believed it at the time. In Japan, however, it was discussed differently, as if everything was crystal clear and it would happen at any moment. By that time I had already been in emigration for 2 years and was feeling very homesick. I planned to come back in March but everything got postponed for a year, which turned out to be very turbulent for me. February 24th was supposed to be the day of the presentation of my final work, which I had been creating for the previous two months at a residency in Tokyo. I continued to dance, but I became distracted. I started preparing a lot of borscht. This led to a project for a Ukrainian café, where I cooked 100 liters of borscht daily for a year. I felt that I couldn’t understand where I was. People around me couldn’t grasp my emotions. I felt like I was between two worlds. And there was no resource to explore this state. I needed to return to the place where I belonged and truly feel that I was here, not just observing from the outside. I realized that I couldn’t continue making art outside Ukraine. It felt like I was missing a crucial experience. I needed to be in Mykolaiv to understand where to go from here.

I feel less anxious being here. However, I was afraid that when I returned, people would notice that I was somehow different because I did not experience the full-scale invasion with everyone. I thought I might not be accepted because of this lack of experience. But that did not happen.

Kateryna Lukiashko: How did you get immersed in the new Ukrainian reality?

Nana Biakova: At first, I started meeting a lot with representatives of my field. I was establishing new connections and maintaining old ones. Through these people, I gradually adapted. Before that, I hadn’t spoken Ukrainian for three years, only English and broken Japanese. It is an incredible joy to have the opportunity to speak my native language in everyday life. Everything was old and familiar, but it felt very vivid. I remember eating borscht at Puzata Hata and crying. After a long absence, ordinary things ceased to be ordinary. I had a period when I was analyzing what I am now. It was like assembling a new version of myself. This was what I needed to focus on when I first arrived. I was sorting through my blank watercolor sheets and thinking about what the next step would be. But I delayed the moment of returning to Mykolaiv. I felt that I needed to connect it specifically with the project. I wanted to preserve this different feeling of the long-familiar. I saved it for the Scholarship. 

Kateryna Lukiashko: What idea did you bring to the Antonin Artaud South Scholarship?

Nana Biakova: The project was built on my perception of the city after immigration, using the Japanese approach, and analyzing what I am and what belongs to me. While in Japan, I worked on a project on the ocean shore, where I used lost objects that had washed up after a typhoon. And, by the way, there were similar elements of ships among them. I interacted with these objects and performed repetitive movements. On February 24, I was detached from everything that had come before. It seemed that everything I had done before no longer mattered. I started to wonder if I engaged in something irrelevant.

When I returned to Ukraine, I was finally able to revisit the project. I reviewed the videos, decided to complete and edit them, and then sent them to an art expo in Tokyo. I saw the connection: the ocean shore, the water, the theme of ships. It felt like a premonition at that time. This led me to think that the next step should be Mykolaiv. Even on the other side of the world, it remained within me. I am a bearer of that story. When I saw the Artaud South Scholarship, I already knew that it was meant for me and that I needed to return to Mykolaiv and continue working with the technique and found objects from the Miyazaki shore. The project description was somewhat different from what eventually developed, but the main focus was on the new perception of the city, that had changed during the war. For me, it was a pressing issue when I was in Tokyo, watching online as my school, university, and buildings connected to me were being destroyed. These memories, which are transforming in my body, cannot be addressed from a distance. After the trip, I had 12 completed videos. It’s quite a substantial body of work to continue developing.

Kateryna Lukiashko: What was the new perception of the city after you returned?

Nana Biakova: My biggest shock was that I couldn’t move around the city. I had a grandiose idea of documenting the missile cruiser Ukraina. This object, which I could deeply connect with on a personal level, was central to my entire project. However, no matter which way I approached the Mykolaiv Admiral Makarov Boulevard, I was not allowed even to the waterfront. Physically, I couldn’t reach it. I asked city residents, acquaintances, and my former professors. They all couldn’t provide a clear answer—whether it still existed, had sunk, or had been evacuated. Maybe some were afraid to answer. Perhaps people were so accustomed to the cruiser that they didn’t notice it anymore. Friends from Kyiv even told me it had been sunk. I was deeply upset. It was like finding something I had never seen before but had always been part of my life, only to lose it. A week later, when I was already convinced it was gone, I was walking on the Inhul Bridge when I saw it. It was in the same place—very scary, all rusty. It looked like a massive wave from a typhoon that had frozen in place. The entire factory inside trembles slightly. It was also the place where the cruiser Moskva was built, which attacked our soldiers on Snake Island. This is its ghostly, dead copy. But when I saw it, I felt like everything was back in its place. On a physical level, the cruiser is identified as part of my body. Just like all those glasses. If it’s still there, everything is normal. I had never experienced a time when the cruiser was absent. There was a premonition that it would return to the water, as people had lived in this state of stasis for a long time. But it will never be in the Black Sea.

No one knows what to do with it now. If it sinks, it could poison the Black Sea, the Southern Bug River, and the Inhul. This is a burden we’ve been saddled with. But on the other hand, it was built by Ukrainians. This is a significant and complex research topic, and I still plan to return to it.

Kateryna Lukiashko: The cruiser is a special part of your research. It was not possible to capture it. How are you working with it?

Nana Biakova: I had a dream to go inside directly. I reached out to the rector of the Admiral Makarov National University of Shipbuilding, to people who are currently working at the factory, mainly through acquaintances. At the moment, it is a military site located on the territory of the 61st factory. It is not possible to visit. The same applies to certain bridges. It is a bit easier in Mykolaiv now, but there is still tension. People are anxious when they see someone with a tripod on a minibus. I don’t even know what it would take to get permission to enter this area and work with the cruiser. It’s not only procedural prohibitions but also an emotional aspect, as the population is very scared.

I still hope that it will be possible to interact with the cruiser more closely, or even speak with people who might currently be responsible for it. At the moment, the cruiser is present in the form of movement about this object. I also worked with the Shipbuilding and Fleet Museum. There, I found a model of the cruiser, an exact replica. I stand in front of it in that hall, as if trying to interact with that form. It’s the same movement. But there is an unconscious zone, which is already somewhat abstract. After this, I can look at my body and describe its movement. It remains at the level of memory in the body. There are many abrupt arm raises, similar to the whirling of motor blades. Then there is stillness when the legs don’t bend and shuffle. Certain images come up during the interaction. Through this, a personal language is born. Each movement is like a phrase or sentence.

Kateryna Lukiashko: The performance has been shown three times so far: in Mykolaiv, Berlin, and Bucharest. How was it, and what has changed in the work itself?

Nana Biakova: Each time the performance is presented, it is enriched and modified, primarily influenced by the environment in which it is adapted. For the first time, I presented it in a museum, the second time in a contemporary underground theater, and the third time in a cinema where the screen did not work, and panel discussions were taking place in front of me.

In total, 12 videos are shown on screens, arranged in different combinations depending on the space. For instance, in Berlin, it was a complete montage of all the videos in a single line. In the theater, there were projections on the wall and floor, as well as three monitors. It’s as though they split into themes: a corner with videos from the apartment, a corner with landscapes, and a corner with museum footage. The performance itself consists of movements with logical transitions. While the work was not yet fully developed in Mykolaiv and Berlin, in Bucharest, I had two weeks to get familiar with the space and work on it. There, I also added text to help the international audience to better understand what was happening. Our local audience already knows the context and does not need much explanation.

Kateryna Lukiashko: “Lost Movement” is somewhat about rediscovering one’s own culture. Do you feel this way?

Nana Biakova: This is my own story, but it feels somewhat detached. The subject of connection between own body and objects is there for a very, very good reason. Those objects, that are in my body. This is a kind of contemplation where I also feel this way towards these objects, and what happens between us on the level of movement. What is my culture? After coming back from Japan, I am dancing a dance that does not resemble any of my own culture. It’s as though it’s an attempt to find another way. There is a discussion to be had about my belonging to this culture, to this plant that built Soviet ships. Is this my culture? Has it ever been mine? And why do I fear so much that this glass might break? Why do I want the cruiser to remain where it was? Maybe one day, I will say, “Yes, this is me.” These glasses and this cruiser, this is my culture, and this is my important story. I will let it go when I find this way. Until then, it has yet to be found.