Neseine Toholya is an artist-researcher in an interdependent relationship with the world. Practices decolonial queer, produces text and other artistic products. Born from the spirit of the era, she graduated from the Pedagogical College in Salekhard, the Smolny Institute for Noble Maidens and the European University, currently a Fellow at the IASS Potsdam. Composes art of varying severity, is in search of meaning, and stands for goodness and justice. Likes Sailor Moon and other Japanese cartoons.
~several is transdisciplinary curator and artist practicing:
• anarcho-queer experiences and ideas;
• techno-motherhood;
• temporary autonomous zones;
• self-organization;
• decentralization;
• OSINT investigations and genealogy connections;
• production of situational knowledge/practices.
In the second interview, Neseine Toholya speaks with a transdisciplinary curator and artist ~several. They discuss the experience of the home as a supportive and helping community and talk about migration as an experience of loss of basic privileges — one which people with female gender socialization or residents of non-central regions constantly face throughout their lives.
Neseine Toholya: Nowadays, I call everyone to ask how people define home for themselves: what place they have considered home in their lives and how this changed over time. First, please introduce yourself.
~several: Anarchist, feminist, artist, curator. These are the main sub-personalities. In fact, I never had a sense of being rooted in context. I think the reason is the strange and partly lost genealogical and cultural connections in the family. On the one hand, since childhood, I was haunted by a sense of otherness (coming from a part of the family known to me); on the other hand, I had no access to a tradition that could ground me. I always found myself in an intermediate state of diffraction — when you are neither this nor that and can never find a sufficient description for yourself. The geographical states I feel comfortable with are the forms of movement, all transit spaces. I love the spaces of airports, railway stations, border zones, highway gas stations, and waiting for a jitney. I am madly in love with all means of transportation; the feeling of home for me lies in transit. Of course, in the pauses between movements, I prefer to ground myself and live somewhere. And in times like these, the main thing that makes me feel at home is an idea. For ideas, I am ready to move anywhere; context, climate preference, or other conveniences matter little. Instead, I’m looking for a place where I see the point in unfolding or exploring ideas. And in this case, for me, the critical point is the people, the community. Although the last six months, everything has not been quite the same. Well, it’s a very different situation.
Neseine Toholya: And how has it been for the last six months?
~several: For the last six months, it was more important for me to find some kind of safe space which would be as far as possible from the previous narratives and practices. For obvious reasons: all these narratives led to the fucked up situation that we live in. I wanted to take a distance and observe from aside. Determine my place of participation/non-participation and involvement in what is happening, and look at this picture with a cooler head to see some mainlines and structural dynamics. So for the last six months, I’ve been more or less reclusive, mainly working online with a decentralised workgroup. Of course, I constantly rush between countries and cities, but the best part of my time is spent in the mountains on a motorcycle.
Neseine Toholya: In the mountains?
~several: Yes, I go into the woods, On a motorcycle. And this is the only thing that makes me happy.
But still, some places have the power, and you want to return there. I often think about how it works. After all, some sites collect certain events, such as, for example, “suicider rock”. But this is an abrasive name. I also have such places endowed with a special meaning for me, attachment points. Naturally, all of this has now also lost its meaning due to the impossibility of returning to these places. But these connections are already forming within another geography. In general, I am not attached to the landscape but to the people with whom we’re moving in the same direction, and now I miss many of us because there is no way to be physically together.
Neseine Toholya: Do you have an inner connection with the places where you were born? Or have you completely lost them? How does it live with you?
~several: Of course, I long for these places, but neither for a city nor an urban landscape. It is Baikal. Forest steppe, taiga, rocks; places I liked to visit and labelled as “my” territories in the psycho-geographical landscape. These places, of course, disturb and worry me — I can’t renounce them as “shitty russia”, which needs to be put an end to. It exists beyond the rational and political — these places don’t fit into the political landscape. The city is more symbolically loaded because it is, again, people and ideas. Behind the processes that have constructed these spaces are certain narratives and actions. I don’t miss them at all. I can’t miss the current party, the governor, and the people who supported all this. But I miss the natural landscape where most of my socialization took place. I hung out there for twenty-five years. Of course, this has dramatically shaped my conceptual apparatus. I have much less in common with someone from Moscow than someone from Siberia. Recently, I realised that to live and hang out closely, if it’s people from russia, I always find myself next to folks who come from the middle of nowhere. And this is not an accident. It’s much easier for us to understand each other; we clearly have similar behavioural reactions, habits, analysis of the situation, attitudes towards the distance, and relationships with space. I wish it was another way, less deterministic. But in practice, it still works like that.
Neseine Toholya: How do you notice this difference? I also thought about it, but more in the context of friendship. It is more comfortable and easier for me to make friends with people who don’t come from big cities. The relationships themselves are different for those who grew up in the city and those who grew up in a small settlement. And it is easier for me to understand someone who did not grow up in Moscow, in St. Petersburg.
~several: Yes, we value circumstances and relationships differently. In a small town, you have less space to alienate. Consequently, you can not let your neighbour down and meet them the next day at the exhibition opening with a smile, pretending that nothing happened. If you screwed up, then it’s harder to explain. There is a reputational trace of distrust; no one will work with you and have business with you. If you let a person down in the taiga and don’t show up, they just freeze to death. It’s about responsibility, the perception of time, awareness of oneself in the landscape, such simple things, right? But to arrange a meeting in the frost in Yakutsk and then not come is a severe letdown. In St. Petersburg, it’s generally not given a fuck about. “I overslept for a day and a half, then apologised, and all in all, I’m depressed, in bed, and forgot, and everything is fine…” I tried to get used to it for a long time, and still haven’t managed to.
Neseine Toholya: I’m not used to this either — how people treat friends in St. Petersburg (I had more interactions there). And in Moscow, it seems that relations are built even in a more specific way; compared to St. Petersburg, Moscow is an even more alien space for me in terms of connections. How people will not take into account (and this does not apply to everyone, of course). Maybe I just had bad experiences, but they were usually very aloof. People seem to be much further away, and I understand that I cannot develop such a friendship with them, as, for example, with my friend Gulya, with whom we have been communicating for a very long time. We have such a relationship with her that we can part for a couple of years, not see each other much, and then meet and continue to communicate as if there was never this pause. We don’t have breakups. Even if we do not see each other for a long time and just keep in touch, it is as warm, and we are just as comfortable with each other; we still trust one another. In the cities, you fall apart for a while; then there is this very long period of convergence; it’s like you have to prove something to have the right to be friends with a person, and it kills me. I’m just good with people by default, and I can immediately start being friends with someone I like. Of course, after some time, they may disappoint me. But when we meet and for a long time try to seem pleasant to each other — this way does not work for me.
~several: I think it’s because of this resource-like attitude to the circulation of people. It’s such a carousel, they constantly come and go, and there is no understanding that you need to see the value behind each individual actor. You left — five more came running to your place. The utilitarian attitude towards people is very much in the spirit of capitalist and neoliberal logic. Indeed, one must seem to deserve and constantly reinforce one’s significance. There is no default acceptance that you are essential simply because you exist. To be honest, I’m not sure that this is something that exists in Siberia — when you are appreciated for the fact of your existence. But there, people are not treated as an endless resource because there are not so many of them. Relationships have a different significance there. I really like this scenario, which you are talking about, that with many, we do not need to keep in touch daily via instant messengers and social networks. We may not see each other for a long time, but this kindred feeling is not lost.
In general, I think that a different attitude to time, space and resources strongly determines how we perceive people and the nature of our relationships with them. That is why one can dream that we are not all so determined by the environment, that we also had an influence on our formation, that we chose a different environment. But I still unconsciously choose people from some fucking depths of the country and hang out with them. It is an interesting topic for analysis, to what extent this is actually true.
You grow up in such a context that you constantly need to travel somewhere and move around. This idea is not very clear to people from the capital or from Europe. “Why go somewhere? Everyone will come here anyway”. This explains a lot about how the understanding of reality among people not from the central regions is shaped. This defines the degree of permissiveness, recklessness, and passion. We a priori agree to a much grander deed than a person who initially already has a basic set of privileges.
I’m amazed at people who can’t come at 3:00 in the morning if you ask for it, for example, or can’t drop everything and fly in. I’m talking now about close people. For me, this is essential; I will do it for a close circle of people. This is not an act of heroism, it’s like the norm, but I understand that this is not only about one’s ethical standards and the degree of recklessness. It’s about relationships with space, learning to overcome it since childhood, and how it becomes a basic practice. Because if you want to see something and learn about this world, you must travel a long way. And now it becomes clear that I should have gone in the other direction 🙂
Neseine Toholya: The perception of the country is also different for those who grew up far away and those who grew up in central russia. I often encountered people from central russia being not very versed in geography. They ask if Yamal is in russia or think that some parts of russia are some other countries. Four days on the train gives you a sense of space and time and how you define places around the country.
~several: I am sure that the surrounding landscape greatly structures our thinking, which correlates directly with how synapses are built in our heads and what types of relationships are formed. Maybe it sounds near-esoteric, but that’s how it is for me. Suppose that since childhood, you have constantly been in some long intercity jitney situations, riding these trains and continuously surveying the same territory from different angles (I’m talking about the country’s territory). This gives you different volumes and dimensions; everything is generally different. And if you are in the center of infrastructural nodes, what understanding does this provide you about what is happening in Vladivostok, Bratsk, or Norilsk, for example? Almost none. These movements, their frequency, these speeds, this coverage — all this strongly affects just about everything. It’s hard to hang out with people predisposed to a more static lifestyle because of the opportunities given to them by default. You just permanently don’t get each other.
Neseine Toholya: This is also reflected in how people have been affected by the last six months. Those who are used to sitting in one place, the less mobile people — it seems more difficult for them with all these relocations. Some of my acquaintances are taking separation from the familiar pretty hard; they dream about returning, and it lasts for an infinite amount of time. I kept trying to understand this for myself: am I tied to some place in russia like that so that I want to live nowhere else, and even despite the threat to my life, I still dream of returning there. On the one hand, I understand that now I have more opportunities to come back, but I have absolutely no desire. This is not the place to which I am strongly drawn. It pulls, but not enough to make it an idée fixe. It is more vital for me to get a different experience and try to do as much as I can here now, and then, maybe, with this new baggage, go back there and try something else. Interesting, what is the reason for this? The fact that I still have the opportunity to return, as if I don’t know how illusory it is, and therefore it seems to be easier for me to experience this separation? Or is it because I have this mobility, and I have been forced to adapt to new places all my life? Once I left Yamal and moved to St. Petersburg, then from St. Petersburg — to Moscow, and then I left russia altogether. It turns out that all my life, I’ve been trying to adapt somewhere new, to set up a different way of life, and now these processes are not the most stressful for me. Well, not like I was drawn back enough to leave everything here.
~several: I think it has a lot to do with the global inequalities of capitalism. If you live in some infrastructurally consolidated place with access to all resources, you are much more integrated into all sorts of institutional stories. Most likely, you got “an apartment from your grandmother in the center of Moscow”… All these memes, they are real. Then you have something to lose. Since childhood and adolescence, you are very well integrated into some communities, which we naturally didn’t have.
And we had to lead a precarious life, moving to get to the good things: to study — you have to go there because there’s not a thing here. To work, you need to go to another place because no one will pay you here for what you do. Projects should be done in yet another place because no one is interested here. The environment has not yet been formed. Here, the extent of our responsibility for this is unclear: there’s an option to stay despite everything and create these conditions and environment, but it is a very long and challenging way. The resource currents washing us to the center, they wind us up, and we, unfortunately, obey them. You can rarely jump out of this logic. Either you need tremendous support, for example, the opportunity to buy an apartment in your city, get a bunch of paid and good online education, and this will not be the first or second higher education, but something on top of that. If you are inscribed in some kind of precarious cluster-fuck since childhood, then, one way or another, you build these adaptation mechanisms. And now, this situation does not demoralize you so much: you already have a cluster-fuck vaccination. Not the first time when you have to throw all your belongings into a bag and start all over again.
Of course, this is much more difficult for many metropolitan children because they have something to lose, and life does not prepare them for this. They had everything clearly lined up for them, what they would do in five years and so on. This, of course, is not some general universal rule, but this logic often works. And we, non-material labour workers, are the most unprotected actors — doing some obscure things, constantly trying to survive — for us, this is a more or less familiar reality.
This also applies to the question of gender. Persons with experience in female socialisation, of course, have the most vulnerable position. You are constantly in the mode of fucking off, losing about everything in your life, and in this respect, it is much more difficult for men to take and rebuild their entire realities. We do this regularly: running away from domestic violence in the family or giving birth to a child, which changes our lives. The mechanisms of typical female adaptation to reality work for higher stress resistance and coping without going insane. Although this is also not universal, these are simply my observations. This can also be seen from the actions of female activists: how quickly they figured out and organised this important infrastructure network of working projects while the men were arranging discussions about the loss and collapse of everything russian. As if there are simply no other things to do now than to sit and suffer about no one reading your poems anymore. The news is that almost no one gave a shit about them in the first place. I don’t know how much this helps you in developing the reflection about Home. But the issues of socialization and adaptive mechanisms are strongly tied to the structural inequality of capitalist logics and exclusion from access to resources.
Neseine Toholya: When I think about it, I intuitively understand what could be behind this, but I simply cannot explain these things to my friends. You know, when you come across some experience, you just can’t figure out how to…
~several: How to explain this experience to another?
Neseine Toholya: Something like that. Although these are things that just need to be checked. And maybe if you think in this direction, it will be easier to try to do something in a new place and accept it.
~several: This is about losing basic privileges. Some people had them, and some never did, and it’s tough to explain. Some really suffer in emigration without access to familiar things. And it won’t even occur to you because you never even thought of becoming attached to brands or cultivating taste habits: you know that tomorrow you will find yourself in a random place with no money. And it’s hard to grow sympathy and say: “Yes, dude, I’m sorry that you can’t find your fucking cream, without which you can’t live in this horrible country.” Of course, I’m angry, but I often hear such examples that knock me out. Considering what we are talking about now, these are conversations from a safe place about a safe life: when currently people, in fact, have just lost their houses, apartments, children and relatives, and against this background, we are suffering here because of some kind of tortured nonsense. Because of isolation, loss of russian culture or something else. Of course, you shouldn’t discount your experience, but I think keeping these thoughts and fields close to each other is essential.
Neseine Toholya: On the one hand, I understand that comparing sufferings and who lost more of which is a tainted way. On the other hand, I think that the house in which I lived in St. Petersburg stands in one place and no one bombed it, that the city stands still, and, at the same time, russia is attacking Ukraine, erasing some areas from the earth. When I think that my home could simply not be there anymore, and the space I’ve existed in could become radically undone, it seems to me that it would hurt me much more. But I know that it remains there, and if I really strive for it so much, and if it is such an important place for me, then in a year or maybe longer, I will find an opportunity to return there and try to cultivate something there again.
Read also:
The smelly pen is the expression of space-time
The third — and the last — conversation with Neseine Toholya: they recall the objects containing the space-time continuum of their Homes with decolonial researcher Martha Dashiin
I might still be in shock because I was never going to leave
The second conversation with Neseine Toholya: with artist and researcher from Yakutia
~several: I don’t know, I don’t really believe in it. It seems to me that no matter how much we miss some places in St. Petersburg, we will never find them after we come back. What we long for is strongly tied to events and people that will never be there again. The scariest thing is that the place remains, but you can no longer find it. This will make returning much more painful. The scenery will be there, but we will never be able to gather in the same company and walk, discuss, laugh with the same ease. This will never repeat, and it must be accepted as a fact. But there might be something else; maybe we can even laugh like before, but it will be completely different. And it means that it can be reproduced in any other place, and it will not be related to the home at all, not in any way.
I can’t imagine how these squares and decorations can make you feel at home. To me, what gives you a Home are people and thoughts, your deeds, and togetherness. This feeling of glue between you. It provides a sense of home, a sense of security. I still believe in a community that cares about each other — and that’s how home feels. You can be in very strange conditions, in some fucked up situation. Still, your friends found a place for you to stay, another friend paid for your ticket there, a third one threw some pennies onto your card, and now you have something to eat — and this creates a feeling of being at home, understanding that you will survive because of this support.
I don’t know any other sense of home. I didn’t have parents who would take care of me or conditions in which I would feel safe. It was always community, and I still feel its support, although I have not been hanging out in the same place with anyone for half a year. But we keep in touch with those who are dear — one way or another. We find time to see each other. For example, we briefly crossed paths with you in St. Petersburg when both were there — you still find time for those who are important to you. Whatever the hell you are in.
Neseine Toholya: I also understand that the feeling of St. Petersburg as my place was connected with the people I met there, while I still have a connection with Yamal as my home. I think a lot about my home there — my parents’ house. What will happen when it’s gone, and will I still perceive this place as home? Even now, coming there, I don’t feel at home. I visit my parents as a guest, but everything is familiar to me because I spent my childhood there. Nature, some particular, special moments. During the day, there is a specific moment when the sun moves in the kitchen, which is very connected with the feeling of Home. There is a particular vantage point to the street, from where you can see the grass that sways in the wind — and all this gives me a strong feeling of Home. These things are not so material. It’s not about the house but what makes something Home. I wanted to ask you if you have any specific things that make you feel at home wherever you go. Some of the ways you domesticate a place.
~several: Yes, before now, it was stones that I dragged everywhere with me. The stones from Siberia — jade pellets from mountain rivers. Also — burning thyme. When I burn thyme, I feel like I’m at home anywhere. But, again, during these six months, the situation has changed. Now, for the first time in many years, I do not have my stones, and I feel this absence, but somehow I continue to live without them. Stones and thyme are the things that have always been with me until the last three months that I came here.
Neseine Toholya: And I have a portrait of my grandfather. Literally, this winter, when I was at my parents’ house, I saw this portrait lying — and all my life, it stood or hung in my room, and I communicated with it all the time in some way. I realised that I was missing it, so I took it with me, and then, when I was collecting my things in panic, the only image I took with me into migration was this portrait of my grandfather. It makes me laugh that it’s not even quite a photograph. It looks like it’s half painted, half photographed — something cryptic.
~several: Yes, there are all sorts of rituals that keep us from going completely insane.