Jana Astanov

Art is alchemy—a process where the mixing of unusual ingredients produces new meanings and enables time travel, merging spaces, landscapes, ideas, and lifetimes.

The Living is both an installation and a trance, weaving together the living room of my childhood in Poland with its lore playing on monitors reminiscent of past aesthetics and its mountain-view wallpaper. This childhood space merges with the landscape of the Shawangunks, the home my six-year-old son now calls his own. The work reimagines mythologies, blending old Slavic fairy tales with the lore of the land—original Lenapehoking and Kuwehoki, the land of the pine trees—where the pyre evokes the warmth and memory of the home’s hearth.

Within The Living, my world emerges from a tapestry of cultural influences, just as material culture reflects the global economy. The BaSla videos (Baltic and Slavic animal movement) and the wallpaper image of the Seven Sisters constellation were created in alignment with the energies of Full Moons, fusing the elemental powers of the universe with the collaborative process of art-making. The Slavic tropes of flowery fabrics tell their own layered story of economic dependency and conquest, produced in the Global South, sold in the West, and reclaimed from landfills in my hometown of Ełk, in Poland’s Masurian Lake District.

We are not all equal. Those of us from the edges of the Western empire can claim the power of a symbolic gesture —through art.

Ongoing performance series “Artist as a Medium” 2016-2025.

In the performance “The Art of Saving the Arctic” performed during Miami Art Basel in December 2014 at SpaceBy3 Gallery female body becomes a metaphor for the ecological catastrophe expressed through the movement, facial expressions, and visible physical pain, all at once, happening as synchronistic and magical transmutation of forms.

Through this immersive performance based on movement and sound the dancers represent the metaphysics of creation. Here, white symbolizes the soul and its inner workings like in the Tibetan Book of the Dead, the soul is moving towards the light to incarnate into the human realm. The color itself, white, is perceived when all visible wavelengths of light, the entire spectrum of colors, are present and stimulate the eye, creating a sensation of whiteness. To disperse this witness is to see the possibilities, like a newborn.  The hues of pink come from the light of the neons made by Astanov: “Shamaness” & “Antidivine” being the titles of her poems used as the narrative for “Transmission”. 

The performers come closer together creating a body sculpture where each part is connected to another symbolizing self-knowledge and self-realization until the completion of the circuit embodying connectivity and wholeness of the soul.

TRANSMISSION PART II

In this poetic trance Jana Astanov takes the audience on a journey exploring the dichotomy between the earthly existence and the mystical knowledge of inner divinity using sound art and hypnotic immersion.

This project came as a result of a workshop, part of Point B Gallery residency program. Astanov created the movement following Grotowski's technique, and working with a group of actors, dancers and musicians. “TRANSMISSION” (Polish “TRANSMISJA”) comes from the Polish theatre master’s conceptual repertoire, as well as the driving force behind the method “ROZŚWIETLENIE”, English “ILLUMINATION”. “ŚWIATŁO ” means “light", however, she also implies “ŚWIAT” - “world”,  as the souls prepare to enter the Earth portal, through the energy of praSlavic God Światowid and his Mazurian female equal Świtezianka. 

Poetry Hopscotch, PHv1.0, is a new media application that explores the literary cut up technique through the use of digital technology. Created by Jana Astanov and new media artists Rolf van Gelder with an aim to establish poetry as exploratory landscape for new media art.

CONCEPT: From the structure of poetic verse to the linguistic chaos from which new forms emerge, creating a digital repository of an immersive poetry co-creation process, by means of random appropriation as well as original content uploaded in real time by the users via their mobile devices.

The concept of the cut-up technique can be traced to Dadaists, it was then popularized in the late 1950s and early 1960s by such writers as Burroughs, Gysin, Burns and Cortazar (1963 "Hopscotch").

As Priestess of Impermanence Jana multiplies the powers of New Moon for Ruigoord's Sunday Church gathering in pre-festival feast of Feiry Tongues - Vurige tongen. Jana Astanov's performance and poetry hypnotic trance cirumambulating the inner border of the post-Provo village of Ruigoord. On the spiral from Amsterdam's heart chakra to the rims of untouched, east of Haarlem, far east of Haarlem. 

She-Universe channeling. 

Ruigoord

Black Swan Waltz &The Fire Tree performance, part of the Torus Porta performance series. Music led collaboration with Mark Mosteirin with his fantastic mix of Tchaykovki's Swan Lake and electronica. In this multimedia piece Jana Astanov transform herself into Black Swan ballerina, dancing and reciting in a poetic trance, engaging the audiance in the co-creation of the dark and dreamy atmosphere of this piece. Guest appearances from NYC performance scene artists: Tif Robinette at The Fire Tree, and Mag Ne Ta from VVILD TORUS and Olivia Coffey. 

“The ultimate truth of the Human is Hers” was originally performed by Jana Astanov and Red Temple collective with Katie Georgeadis, Abbey Watts, Danielle Uni Simms and Lee Mariah Armoogam at PointB gallery http://pointb.org/ in December 2015 as part of Winter Solstice celebrations.

Sound installation “Inside her head” - head of Medusa metamorphosed into a tribal totem that the Red Temple collective carried into the gallery in a solemn procession. The head itself is styled on the images of Medusa with red hair and long red ribbons with poetry written on them resembling the snakes. The head is fitted with a set of headphones and mp3 player so each person wearing it is instantly taken into the world of Medusa listening to what is going on “Inside her head” as the title suggests.

The performance itself is based on a ritual imitating ceremonies performed by Siberian Shamanesses but also merging cultural references from different tribal traditions. The Shamaness is seen as the go-between medium, revealing the will of the divine and connecting the tribe with its vital force.

Tribe, the art collective Red Temple is creating spiritual atmosphere using the sound of shamanic drum and the sound track with a mix of female authors that can be played both during the performance as well as by each person wearing the headpiece. Some poems belong to the members of Red Temple collective, others come from female poets who answered the open call, as well as a mix of soundtracks of selected poetry from such female poetesses as Sappho, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Marianne Moore, Anna Akhmatova, Maria Pawlikowska Jasnorzewska, Elizabeth Bishop, Maya Angelou, Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich and May Swenson - extracts of their poems were recorded by the Red Temple collective and added to the mix of what is happening “Inside her head”.

Art Terrorist Devi Oracle

Jana Astanov in collaboration with Heroine Bosch’s (sister of Hieronymus Bosch) Tarot Set-Me-Free foreseeing the future of your inner Kali -- seeing more than seems possible, and seeing it all at once. Guided by the archetypes of Kaliesque rebels emerging as a set of cards she takes the audience on a journey through the mutable worlds of Eros, Thanatos and Art Terrorista!

Bosch’s Tarot Deck serves as a base for Art Terrorist Devi Oracle Set, the front of each card is covered by an image representing different attributes of Devi Kali. From the set of 78 cards 22 images come from Jana’s performance and photography series (projects such as Antidivine, SheUniverse, Naked Poetry Dive, Jesus Was a Woman, Flower Moon, Mias, Arctic Siren, Indriganam, She as He, IPPR, Je suis Supernova, Medusa, Infinite Yantras, Red Temple, Digital Dakini, Holy Green Witch etc). The remaining 56 cards appropriate projects by other mainly female artists whose work represent Women Rights, Change, Time, Power, Creation, Preservation, Destruction and Revolution such as: Hannah Wilke, Anna Akhmatova, Ana Mendieta, Sylvia Plath, Kathy Acker, Nan Goldin, Maya Angelou, Carolee Schneemann, Miriam Schapiro, Judy Chicago, Yoko Ono, Guerrilla Girls, Carolyn Kizer, Karen Finley, Patti Smith, Pussy Riot, Anne Waldman, Alice Walker, Susan Howe, Kembra Pfahler.

https://soundcloud.com/antidivine

ANTIDIVINE

antidivine self
projecting confusion into another
with boundaries without the boundaries
with love with confusion

because I’m not you
because I don’t understand why I cannot be
temple of self temple of another

I need to hide you in your imperfection
hide you from myself from the world

even though you could exist
I don’t want you
until you dissolve in me
without resistance trepidation

agony of yours that does not want to follow
you must stay silent
while I project to explain
my falls my treasons my antidivines

boundless metaphors
extracts of experiences
flashes from

to touch the source the meaning through dance
repetitive movement free movement
free and repetitive

from the soul that comes from the spirit
in flesh in flares of material
racing towards me Earth
lifting the dualism in a gesture
of godlike female human

ontological happenings of me
mirrored in perception
by the list of personal pronouns

me as long as you
you through her
her inside of me
you with her

extending in the body vastness
blinding supernovas
like the fabric of being
and the revelation
that my personal matters
that the words I let through
are whispers
breathed into
herd heard by
the universe
of living race ravers