An Interview with Prague Performance Artist Darina Alster: Eastern European Speculative Feminism, Performance and the Velvet Revolution!

This month, CoCA (Center on Contemporary Art) and Peter Bill are presenting the work of Prague, Czech Republic performance artist and Art Star, Darina Alster, whose work deals with magic, feminism, post humanism.  Her performance packs a feminist punch that if you ever get a chance to see it will leave you forever changed.  Here is an interview that I had with the amazing post postmodern artist!

Xavier: I would like to focus on your history, goals, feminism and posthumanism. And how you came up to Seattle! Peter says you have a huge following in Prague. Peter says you have a huge following in Prague.

Peter Bill:  Darina is a Praha (Prague) Art Star. I wish she would talk a bit about the controversy in her studio this past semester, and how she so well defended her assistant Kača Olivová when she faced a reactionary petition against performance art!

Xavier:  That is wonderful, we will definitely get to that, but first, Darina, can you please take a moment to introduce yourself and give us a brief overview of your performance art and mixed media praxis, please?

Darina Alster: Sure! I am a visual artist, performance artist, publisher, researcher, and lover of learning (a pedagogue,) born and based in Prague, in the Czech Republic. I work, mostly in performance, spoken word, and sound and video installations. The main topics of my artistic interest are spirituality, time, identity, eroticism, emotion, the human body, posthumanism, eco-feminism and speculative feminism.

In my work, I attempt to extend and move beyond the borders of known reality. I enjoy tripping up everyday expectations, interrupting normal, “real” situations with unexpected, unknown, and irrational events and things. I use these to create new gateways to the unconscious/subconscious. I experiment with new media, combining the new with old/archaic media forms, such as Astrology, Tarot, mythology, fairytales, or various other kinds of archetypes. Starting in 2016, I co-developed an artists’ group called Mothers Artlovers (Mothers/Artlovers) and from February 2019, I have been the lead, alongside my beloved friend Kateřina Olivová of the New Media 2 studio at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague!

From early childhood, I knew that I was an old spirit. Growing up with my mother and grandmother, as a single child, living in the oldest parts of communist Czechoslovakia, the “Starometska”—so actually the center of town. I often saw ghosts and spirits from the fin de siècle walking the boulevards of these ancient and storied streets.

Growing up in the Czech Republic, at the time had more of a connection to its past, leaving deep traces on ones’ soul and also ties to previous generations and history.

 Xavier:  That sounds very different than the way that we view history here in “the States.”

Darina Alster: My mother was a PhD, and my father was a Greco-Roman fighter, essentially a sportsman from Sicily, Italy. But they broke up before I was born so I never got to meet my father.

Xavier: Could you take a moment to tell me more about these ghosts? Did they speak to you? Did you get anything from these spirits? What did they show you and does this have any effect on your work today?

Darina Alster: These spirits were only visible on the streets; they would just appear and then disappear. I knew for certain that my mother could not see them. But I and the other local children would talk with the spirits as a kind of game. This wasn’t a form of madness—we knew that elders did not see them. I lost this gift when I became a teenager and cared less about these types of “inner world” things. As an adolescent, I didn’t care about “inner worlds,” I was walking on the streets, smoking dope, and listening to street music. I was punk!

Then came the “Velvet Revolution” in 1989. I was 11 years old. After the Velvet Revolution everyone was euphoric! It was an important moment in history when the “Iron Curtain” fell. This was when the Berlin Wall came down.

Xavier:  May I ask what it was like living under communism?

Darina Alster: Hmmm., Living under communism...well it was not so much communism, as it was totalitarianism. Nobody trusted communism, really. In Czech history there is one truly sad moment, and it is the experience in august of 1968. In the sixties we had high hopes; we had gained a high level of inspiration from the rest of the world, and we believed that we could make a more friendly, humane form of socialism—one that was open to the arts and to culture. Then on 8/21/1968 came the Russian tanks.

We were occupied by the Russian army.

“They came to rescue us from the destructive capitalist powers from the West.” Czech politicians decided it was best to surrender. The Russian army had tanks in the Czech Republic for 21 years. After that, in the seventies and eighties nobody trusted any ideology. They simply attempted to exist. Their only desire was to survive.

So you were asking how this affects my work?

Xavier: Hahah! Yes, I get that heavily ironic statement.

Darina Alster: I believe that especially in the Czech Republic, I guess, even globally we are facing massive, historical, societal, generational trauma!

Let me explain. So, those of us that have grown up during these times—essentially Generation X and the so-called millennials, we are dealing with the systemic, historical and even personal effects. We are having to face the consequences of the collective trauma that comes from all the effects of living with and under a totalitarian regime and its culture, pre and post the actual regime.

What I am pointing to can be seen quite clearly in the 1990’s and 2000’s.

Everybody could and did start their own businesses. Everybody borrowed enormous amounts of easy money. This was all part and parcel of the example of the great game of “voucher privatization.”  Where “vouchers” were given to the general population, which could be exchanged for shares in formerly state-owned enterprises.

Around the year 2000, this was coming to its zenith. Everybody felt free but were saddled with huge debts that they were unable to pay.

Now politics in Eastern Europe are in absolute crisis. People still want capitalism but have large debts and in a huge ironic turn, if you say anything like “social state,” or “welfare state,” they will call you a communist. So, politics in Hungary, Poland, Slovakia have become “extreme right” and in their desire to avoid the return of communism they are creating a new totalitarianism. Topics like ecology and feminism are hated by mainstream.

This is what I am working against and trying to overcome in all of my artwork.

Xavier: It is insane just how much that sounds exactly like what is happening in the United States—almost as if much of it was being promoted by the same forces, but of course—that would, just be crazy.

So, this is the background to the performance Art you make? The milieu, the things that you are up against with each and every artwork and performance?

Darina Alster: It is. Also combined with femicide, racism, hatred against queer people, feminism, ecology, witchcraft, and other things.

Xavier: It seems almost as though that is what is happening here.

Darina Alster: By way of comparison, I am actually living in the most atheist country in Central Europe. Performance art is very political, through performance we can heal the reality of our daily lives by finding new forms of existence and identity. I have always been connected with spirits. I really feel strong in the spiritual world, the inner world, which gives power and meaning to our physical world. I feel like a soul having a physical “experience” in the material world.

Performance is always connected with ritual.

Queerness and diversity are a form of protest. We can protest nonviolently because our countries are, luckily, not at war with each other. We can protest through creating other realities through performance. Performance, then is a medium for spirits.

Xavier: I read in one of your past interviews that you have an evolving relationship with Feminism. I find that in the United States a lot of women have been turned against feminism because of the constant hammering by our "Right wing" to promote the idea that women must hate men in order to be feminist. It is just another example of the desire to control the narrative by over-simplifying it.

Can you tell me about your journey with feminism and its place in your work, please?

Darina Alster: In the Czech Republic, feminism was also universally hated as you wrote. Here, a feminist is considered to be an ugly, stammering, lesbian who hates men.

My journey to feminism: I have always been interested in such topics as identity, spirituality, and our interdependent relationships to one another, but I became a conscious feminist when I became a mother and I saw how society changes behavior when women become pregnant.

Doctors started to behave like I was incapacitated, and my body now belonged to everyone. My friends, curators and colleague artists kept telling me to hide for 4 years because my art would be ugly, romantic, and kitschy because of the hormones of motherhood. It was in those moments that I realized why and where all those beautiful women were disappearing to over the years! Throughout my studies at the art academy, we had been told that once we had children our art would necessarily become sidelined.

At first, while I was studying, the student body was equally cut down the middle—female and male students—over time the females mostly disappeared. This caused me to recognize that the role of women in society is unequal and unfair. I was told from every direction that I needed to stop—but I simply could not.

At the same time, I became fascinated by my growing body, and was fascinated by the miracle of the human growing inside of me. I began to examine all of the processes going on with me and to rethink my positionality to all of it. It was a really mystical experience for me, and I had to document and to rethink it all in exciting, new artwork! Not to essentialize but birth is the ultimate answer to the phenomenon of death.

Xavier: Awesome! Let's get more specific about how you perform and the main issues of your work.

Darina Alster: My first exhibition, actually one month after giving birth to my first daughter, was named The Art of Lactation. Everything had changed! My main topics became archetypes as keys to human hidden powers and the rethinking of humanity from a post-human perspective. I trust that in emotions we have secret powers. I don’t trust that we will find important things through rational linear ways of thinking. In my performances I think through my full body!

Xavier: Wonderful! Is breastfeeding as big a taboo there as it is here?

Darina Alster: Conservative powers hate breastfeeding! I was examining breastfeeding through several performances to embody the idea of the Christian “holy mother’s” body. With my colleague Kača Olivová, we created a supportive group of mothers to aid each other to examine motherhood as a subject of art.

Kača created an activist breastfeeding group of mothers named Breastfeeding guerilla. When a mother is breastfeeding in a public space and is asked to move to the bathroom, or another less public space, she can call Breastfeeding guerilla and ten breastfeeding mothers will join her.

Xavier: Okay, let's go into your process as a performer. Thinking of the piece you are doing on Saturday; I want you to respond to me as though the piece has already been done and it was perfect. First describe to our readers what we saw and how you went about creating the piece. Do you think of the narrative, or the concept first? Do you start with the body or with a theme, please explain and expand upon what you have said before. Cheers!

Darina Alster: My performance is entitled Resilience. It is about the connections between queerness and biodiversity. About fluidity and the capacity for inner self-renewal through a post-humanist perspective. It is about the wildness and innocence of the animals within us. It is always ritual, and it grows from my presence in the present moment.

I know if it is a good performance when I feel the energy and when it somehow surprises me, through these performances I practice giving intentions to the events, holding space for the magic therein!

Visitors to my performances are part of the event, I don’t believe in borders between performers and an audience. We are both part of the event, each creating the situation with our mental and emotional states-I am holding the space for us to open and experience something unique and to find our inner open source of inner virtue.

Performance creates a temporally autonomous zone, a liminal space and there we can find answers and visions.

I am working mostly with nonlinear narrative as a language of myths and fairytales, posthumanism = the perception of a human as a living structure and as a part of larger living structures of caring.

When I told you I saw spirits as a small child, now I sometimes speak with gods. They appear in my mind in meditation as the “Non-binary Madonna,” which I am exhibiting at CoCA.

Practically, I am inspired by the mysticisms of all religions and trying to redefine their archetypes for our current world. To redefine/define gods, goddesses, devils, and demons and figuring out what role they might have for our contemporary society. Finally, art is also a form of prayer.

I will tell you what they said to me. The Madonna told me that she is a symbol of the rediscovered relationship between nature and people, between nature and culture and people with each other.  In her mercy our collective societal trauma can be dissolved.

Jesus told me that he is the most misunderstood man that ever lived.

Satan is jealously in love with the Good. Good is mother and father in one. In subconscious sub-countries have live goddesses which are half-human half-goddess named Dakini and the only things that are important are compassion honesty and trust.

As I was saying earlier there have been growing conservative, aggressive moods in society in the Czech Republic and elsewhere. Much of this aggression can be seen in acts of overt racism, hate crimes, anti-queer acts, hatred toward women (and female presenting femmes) in leading positions, hatred toward the “woke movement” and anti-artistic attacks against artistic freedoms of expression, not limited to, but especially in, performance. 

Conservatives hate the nude body, especially when it does not follow the banal standards of beauty, and is seen to be behaving freely but is not sexualized.

So, this spring 2024 my colleague, Kača Olivová, visual artist, activist and performer, cofounder of Mothers Artlovers collective with me and also one of our double-heads of the studio of New Media 2 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, was performing naked at the garden of the academy. Kača was performing with soil and seeds acting as a contemporary witch, fighting back against the narrative of burning witches. It was a public event and Kača is a body positive activist.

This time, some conservatives and social media provocateurs had chosen to record part of the performance and post it on social media, and it just so happened that around Kača’s performance there were innocently playing children. Conservatives argued that Olivová’s performance was actually porn and that it was, in their estimation, quite toxic for these children to be around. Of course, it was just artwork in a public space, but this created a massive wave of animosity toward Kača and performance art in general in the Czech Republic and it initiated a great wave of anger by old, white male artists against us, and against all women in positions of leadership. At this point, they gathered their misogynistic energy and created a petition, which was signed by 2500, against the National Gallery, the Academy, and against the Jindřich Chalupecký Award, at the time, most of the main cultural organizations in the Czech Republic were all headed by women.

However, in the end this would backfire as we began to receive massive support from several other cultural institutions and even from other cities throughout the Czech Republic, as well as other art academies and galleries throughout Eastern Europe, as well as from the Vienna Queer Museum and cultural institutions from many neighboring countries!

Kača’s performance proved to be the tipping point at a time during the Czechoslovakian culture wars when conservative hatred ran rampant and strong. And because of this, we are now part of a feminist institutional codex, and we started to be more connected and supportive of each other as a whole.

Xavier: So did this bring the communities closer together? Was it a bonding experience?

Darina Alster: For some it was a wonderfully bonding experience, for others it tore communities, relationships, and agencies apart! For us queer and feminist activist it led to bonding, but the rest of society started to become extremely verbally aggressive to each other and to us.

Xavier: So it sounds like a mixtureof both good and bad which sounds like the best you can hope for during these hard times.  In closing, is there anything else you would like to add? 

Darina Alster: Sure! We are structures of consciousness on the face of the Earth, who is our lover and not just our mother. Each of us has huge power. Emotions are our prophecy. With compassion we can overthrow our present societies of trauma. Society is made by each of us, and we have the power to reconstruct those old crumbling systems through the magic and power of performance.

Xavier: Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to do this interview!

Darina Alster: Thank you!