Vera Boitcova

During my home residency, I will be working on the project called ‘Tales of Transformation’, which explores the possibility of transforming personal traumas into exaggerated fairytales, where participants are given a chance to look at their past experiences through a different lens, employing an art-therapy approach and combining it with visuals, narration, and video/performance techniques.

Due to home residency constraints, I might not be able to carry out everything as was originally planned (as my project requires workshops with participants and hands-on type of work in regards to filming and rehearsing). However, I believe that this situation can present an interesting challenge and give me an opportunity to adjust my methods to the new socially distant environment. I am looking forward to meeting fellow artists and researchers, sharing and discussing my ideas with them, and having a chance to dedicate my time solely to editing already existing project materials from the past, and collating a fairytale library website consisting of my own entries alongside the tales gathered from participants from different countries.

My working methods include:

Leading workshops during which participants create and share their stories, and sorting out materials from previous workshops.

Filming, editing and performing my own tales, as well as helping those participants who also wish to make a performance with their creative and technical ideas. The final goal is to make a full-length performance for future showings.

Collating a web-library – a website containing a collection of fairytales based on real-life experiences and traumas, contributed by my workshop participants. Some of the tales will stay just in a written form, some will be added as video and performance recordings.

I am a Russian performance/video artist and LGBT+/women’s rights activist. Queen Mary University of London graduate (MA Theatre and Performance, 2015). Artist in residency: Loviisa Artists’ Studio (Loviisa, Finland, 2019), Hectolitre (Brussels, December 2019), Faber (Olot, Spain, 2020). In recent years, performed at Art Muse (Saint-Petersburg), Forum (Loviisa), Birmingham MAC, Battersea Arts Centre, Camden Peoples Theatre, Camden Centre, Brighton Dome, at various Duckie events, and in a number of galleries across the UK, Italy and Russia. Currently collaborating with two major Russian human rights organizations: ‘Coming Out’ LGBT+community, and ‘Eve’s Ribs’ women’s rights organization.

My work can be described as a video/live performance collage of real-life stories (exaggerated and transformed into something surreal) told by a variety of colourful personas all of which are usually played by me (often at the same time). Topics include civil rights, mental health, traumas, fear and memories. In my works, I try to conjure a sense of familiarity, belonging, and déjà-vu. Being from a place where people like me are being silenced and disregarded, my main goal is to create a space or a situation where my audience and myself would not feel invisible or alone anymore.