Interview with Bolotsa Collective – WORM X Amarte 2025

Get to know Bolotsa Collective, the collective behind the free workshop series Party Party.

Bolotsa Collective, comprising of Sonya, Egor, Sema, and Tonya, is a tender polycule that likes to queer and reflect it’s own borders, along with definitions of friendship, family, and care.

Their workshop series Party Party establishes a fictitious political party inspired by the figure of the child: free, unafraid of cringe, and full of rebellious curiosity.

Their workshops take place on the 13th, 18th, and 21st of November.

Sign up (free admission) and find more information available here.

HOW DID BOLOTSA COLLECTIVE COME TO BE?

SËMA: We’ve been friends for a long time already, and we’ve known each other since Moscow, where we all lived for a long time. But then we emigrated from Russia and ended up in the Netherlands. We are very close to each other and we love to not only do some regular practices of friendship, but also try to invent new ones and new ways of relating to each other and to other people, all while doing it with fun and pleasure. We started to think of everyday life as an opportunity for such practice and conceptualized this as an art. And, for example, we started the choir in Amsterdam, which has been going for more than a year now. This way we also found new people and created a community, for like-minded people, mostly Russian speaking. What else did we do? 

TONYA: I think what Sema is saying is very important to understand what Bolotsa is. First and foremost, we’re very close friends and we really love to invent some kinds of activities for the four of us, and then for a bigger group of friends. Also doing some events or finding communities that can potentially be our new friends as well. So we’re just inventing different funny formats and exercises and practices to connect to each other and to other people in general. And it was really an everyday practice. It started to be an art project, but at the beginning, it was a practice for ourselves and the practice of friendship.

SO BRINGING THE PRACTICE INTO DAILY LIFE IS WHAT LED TO PARTY PARTY, ESPECIALLY SINCE POLITICS ARE PART OF THE EVERYDAY?

SËMA: Definitely, yes. I think we should first mention that this open call led us to reconceptualise our group as an actual art group. It gave us an incentive to open up a bit and to scale up, and to think of a project that would be much bigger than what we did before. So that’s why it was most important for us to start from the themes that were in WORM’s open call, which were deep listening and pleasure activism, for example. And so, we started to brainstorm what we can do. I think the first impulse was to work through the topic of childhood, because it’s something that was already implemented in our practice. After all, play is central for us, and playing with each other, and also trying to reclaim ways of playing that we all used to have when we were children, but now we kind of forgot about. So we started with that. And then keeping in mind the topics that WORM suggested, it also got an additional political frame to it. We all felt for ourselves and for other people, that there is a fear of engaging in politics, that sometimes it might even feel cringy to do something in the public space or to interact with people, to demand something, to play around. And so these two axes become connected in this project Party Party. 

TONYA: And I think it takes us back to what we discussed previously, that for us, friendship and playfulness and the freedom that exists inside of our friendship is very much an emancipatory experience. You can be visible when you’re not afraid to speak up, when you’re not afraid to be yourself. It also allows you to explore yourself and to change yourself and to adjust yourself to this kind of weird, playful performativity that creates a very special place of joy, understanding, connection, and imagination. So for us, it is also very important to use this power of friendship, that we explore in our everyday life, and use it as an actual political instrument to talk and connect to other people, because for me, it’s a foundational experience and it’s very important and rightful and special. Also, we are all researchers, and we are all engaging, and reading, and looking, and exploring different artworks; and I think we’ve been discussing a lot of like references and inspiration projects that were important for us. We can tell a little bit about some of the important reference points. 

SONYA: I think maybe one of the first references that made us think that our project should be a political party was United Estonia, a mockumentary from a Theatre in Estonia. They made a political party, a congress, which ended up having a lot of people. It was a theatrical performance, but at the same time, no one knew if they were for real or not, and even when you watch the mockumentary, you are not really sure. And this performativity of politics, the theatrical aspect of it, inspired us.

Photograph from Theatre NO99 fictitious political movement NO75 Unified Estonia.

TONYA: And there are so many mockumentary projects that are engaging in the form of a party. The reference that I’m thinking about is a project Party of the Dead. It’s a project that started in 2017 that established a party of dead people. It explored themes of necropolitics, of course, and the initial emptiness of politics as a process right now, in this economy. It took inspiration from the Soviet unofficial art scene from the 70s and art movement of Necrorealism, because they have been exploring the performativity of a dead person and the political meaning of being dead publicly, being a zombie. They explore this bodily experience and relate it to the emptiness that totalitarian regimes create in every individual, and how they’re trying to find a way to connect to each other and to create solidarity in these practices as well.

Photograph of Party of the Dead.

EGOR: Yeah, it’s important to add that most of our references are from Eastern Europe. So that’s the main connection between our projects and the politics we used to see as a child. Unfortunately, the bad one, the autocratic, so and so on. I also wanted to talk about Monstration, this special kind of performance/protest that was kind of popular in Russia back then. With gibberish banners and slogans that make no sense. To show the fact that all politics are kind of just a performance.

Photograph taken of a Monstration demonstration.

TONYA: And what is interesting about the Monstration, I think it started in 2004, so in post-Soviet Russia, the demonstration was happening every year on the 1st of May, so labor celebration, one of the most important Soviet holidays that was happening every year. And of course, since the ’70s, it was absolutely empty. People were doing it because they’ve been pushed to do it. They’ve been going on the street as a form of political activism, but of course, it was just the performance of the ideology that you’re obligated to do. And demonstration is exploring how absurd it actually is to put yourself in the situation where you’re holding a poster, a slogan that means absolutely nothing.

YOU MENTIONED BEFORE THE IDEA OF CHILD AND PLAY, AND THE CHILD IS A CENTRAL FIGURE IN YOUR PROJECT. YOU ALSO MENTIONED BEING CURIOUS, REBELLIOUS, AND UNAFRAID OF CRINGE. WHY THIS FIGURE, AND WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO YOU BOTH POLITICALLY AND ARTISTICALLY?

SONYA: I think artistically, we find a great freedom in the figure of a child. Children are the only people who are allowed to be cringy, who are allowed to not feed into the norm, and then it’s taken away from you. But at the same time, it’s allowed because everyone understands that it’s a learning process. We try to recreate this learning process by being childish in our friendship. I think we are always interested in bringing this learning practice to adults as well, because when we remember how we were children, how it was normal to try different things, try different personalities, try different ways of interacting with other people, and with your surroundings. Without these second thoughts of being looked at or being self-aware, I think freedom inside the child is very interesting for us. And politically, because of the other things we already talked about. We think that this freedom of cringe or to be cringe is very important for political performance in general. We were also thinking a lot about how the figure of a child is also co-opted by the fascist political structures. So it’s not like we are bringing something new into political thought here. Everyone is obsessed with children, but in a weird way. And so we are sort of reclaiming the practice of what it means to be a child, how do we remember ourselves as children? I think it also destroys this narrative of a mythical child that a lot of fascist ideologies use constantly. 

SËMA: Yeah, and also, it’s very logical that they exploit the image of the child because it’s a vulnerable image, and so it’s very easy to be exploited. It’s also connected to the future, for example, of the society or country, to the political, in other words. So the first thing to say is that we will protect the child, our children, and then to justify the queerphobic or migrantophobic policies out of it. So we kind of come and say, we are children and we know how to protect ourselves. We don’t allow people to criticise, we will have fun, and we will do politics in our way. 

TONYA: What we’ve been discussing with each other is a very, very nice saying; a question that Paul Preciado, a queer philosopher, writes in their book called ‘An Apartment on Uranus.’ The question that they’re asking is, “Who will defend the queer child?” Everyone cares so much about children, but no one cares about the queer child. 

And the figure of a child, for us, it’s something very universal as well, because everyone was a child once, and childhood is a space and a particular time of life for every person where it’s okay, where it’s legitimate to be fluid, to be queer, to explore different identities, to change identities, to choose the outfit, to choose the profession, to imagine and be free in it, to be playful about it. Play and game is also about being unserious as if living not in a real world, being able to imagine something that’s not impossible to imagine practically as well. And I think it’s such an important space of political exploration.

AND THEN FOR YOUR FINAL WORKSHOP, YOU BRING THE PROJECT INTO THE STREETS. I KNOW THAT TONYA, YOU WERE A BIT SCARED ABOUT HOW THAT WAS GOING TO GO.

TONYA: No, not scared, but I think it’s just important to keep in mind. Also because the goal of the project is exactly this, it’s to overcome the fear that’s imposed on us in everyday life. Because, sometimes, when I’m walking alone on the street, I’m changing direction because I’m going the wrong way, and then I catch myself thinking, “People will think something about me, that I’m stupid and I’m doing something wrong.” This is absolutely crazy. How, in everyday life, the fear of just being in the public space, which is supposed to be for everyone, is imposed on us. And of course, this is a system of normalization and of judgment, and cringe is very much an oppressive structure for us. So we’re aiming to overcome this fear and to do it carefully and with support and fun and joy.

SO THAT BRINGS YOU TO THE PUBLIC SPACE AS A SITE FOR POLITICAL PLAY AND ACTION. JUST BEING FREE FROM EVERYTHING AND JUST BEING, BUT ALSO FORCING OTHERS TO WITNESS PEOPLE BEING.

SËMA: Yeah, also, I think we keep in mind that political change doesn’t happen in our rooms, right? It happens in the public spaces, and that’s why we need to practice and learn how to cohabit these spaces, how to intervene in them, and how to reclaim our right to the streets. Because these days, if we keep sitting in our rooms chatting with AI who therapises us, and we don’t even know who lives next door, what social change are we talking about? 

EGOR: Yeah, this is like what happens at real parties, you know, when someone is partying so hard, dancing like a crazy person. And he’s kind of inviting other people to dance like a crazy person as well. And this is really important, especially in terms of the communal spaces in the city. 

TONYA: Also, it takes us back to the theme of childhood, because of course, what you are doing as a child, you’re going to a playground, and you’re approaching a random child as well. You’re in the same position of vulnerability, but also, you’re saying to them, “Do you want to play? Do you want to be friends?” And that’s just as easy as it should be.

AND WHAT DO YOU HOPE THE PARTICIPANTS WILL EXPERIENCE OR LEARN DURING THE WORKSHOP? IS IT MORE REKINDLING WITH THEIR POLITICAL IDENTITIES, OR BEING FREE FROM SOCIAL NORMS, OR A COMBINATION?

SONYA: I think it’s a combination of everything. I think the main goal that we have is to fight the fear and to bring pleasure back. So we hope that people will discover what they are fearing in the political process, because the three workshops are kind of focusing on different things. The first workshop is more about yourself, and maybe that’s mainly your fear, the second with your peers, and the third when we interact with others and with the city. So we hope that maybe people will get a chance to reflect more on what their problem is with political activism, or maybe not a problem, but what is stopping them, sometimes internally. Yeah, so I think that is the main one. And then each workshop, of course, has little goals that we also want to unpack. 

SËMA: Yeah, but also in general, doing and engaging in politics is a creative process, and this is a very important lens for us, and so we want to be creative in every step of our series. For example, you have to reimagine what we can look like, what we can wear, and what makeup to use, starting from this and finishing with what activities we can do in the city and how to interact with strangers. 

SONYA: But also for us, we hope to learn something new. We hope to learn how to make a big event with lots of people that we have just gotten to know. Also, the process of collaboration with institutions. Before we only did things on our own, with no budget and a lot of passion. So it’s also a very interesting process, and we are already learning a lot, and we hope that we will learn even more. 

TONYA: Yeah, I think for us it’s still very important to treat this project as a very personal project that’s related, again, to our friendship and the initial emotion of being present, seen, and safe. It’s a very interesting artistic, curatorial, and teaching task, I would say, to expand this feeling of friendship to the strangers who are coming to us.

HOW WOULD YOU LIKE BOLOTSA COLLECTIVE OR PARTY PARTY TO GROW FROM THIS PROJECT?

SËMA: I think, as Sonya said, to reflect on our past practices and to learn from collaboration with the institution, to learn how to deal with projects that are larger scale and that allow us to use more resources to do more fun things. Also, I think this is the first time we have developed a project with such a complex structure because all three workshops are connected. We also hope that we will grow in this sense, expanding our art practice and learning how to incorporate different but independent practices into connected structures with a higher level of conceptualization. 

SONYA: And we hope to have more friends and also encourage other friends to play with each other in childish ways. 

TONYA: Yeah, and I think that one of the goals, both for all the participants and for us as a collective, IS to find inspiration, powers, support, to keep organizing, to care for each other, to care about the community that’s around you, and to facilitate this process, again, with care,with attention, with imagination, and with joy. 

SËMA: And this is very personal, because for us, as migrants, it also feels very uneasy to engage in local politics. And because we live in a country that is not “our own”. I think with this project, we question not only the boundaries we spoke about earlier, but also, like the national boundaries, because we believe that systems of oppression are interconnected and global, and when we fight on the local site, nevertheless, we always engage in the global fight for freedom and emancipation. 

TONYA: And we can learn from all the different experiences because, of course, so many people were experiencing different kinds of political oppression or fragility or precarity, and I think it’s so important to talk about these experiences and the range of these experiences and to see the clear pattern of how it’s all the same at the end. 

AMAZING! THANK YOU SO MUCH.

Follow the collective on Instagram here.

Interview by Madeleine Martin.

Photograph 1 courtesy of Theatre N099 and ZonaK.

Photograph 2 courtesy of Party of the Dead. The signs on the photograph say: “Don’t go to war”, “Dead for peace”, “Dead don’t have fatherland”.

Photograph 3 courtesy of Mikhail Nemtsev. The signs on the photograph say: “Raccoons are people too”.

Party Party is part of WORM x Amarte 2025, a residency programme in which the two organisations provide space for four collectives to develop new workshop series and advance their artistic practices.