Magmanyñ atqylauy ✦︎
(performance documentation), 10:54. May 2026, Almaty–Istanbul.
Together with Bekarys Seri, in 2026 we created the performance Magmanyñ atqylauy in response to the introduction of anti-LGBTQ+ propaganda laws and other legislation restricting freedom and the value of human life. Magmanyñ atqylauy is a bodily recollection achieved through the reenactment of the games we played as children—blind man's bluff, war games, playing house, Chinese jump rope, Aq Serek pen Kök Serek, Altybaqan, and Küres—and an exploration of the norms and values these games instilled in us from an early age.
A performance expanded through moving image and spatial sound, created using field audio and video recordings, as well as interviews with the community. The metaphor of the “eruption” represents the period of raids and incursions targeting queer spaces in Kazakhstan in the autumn of 2025. The magma effect suggests the fertility that follows the destructive force of an eruption. Magma nourishes the soil, creating conditions for new forms of care, dialogue, and resistance that are able to exist simultaneously in their soft form.
Venue: Barın Han (Istanbul. Turkey)
Performers: Anna Kin, Arys Assem
The Love of the Things ✦︎
(live performance documentation) 9:37, Feb 2026, Almaty, Kazakhstan.
This activation investigates bodily experience under conditions of neutrality, drawing on somatic practices and movement research. While performers appear in conventionally gendered visual codes: an oversized tie on him and an oversized floor-length bridal veil on her — the performance presents gender as a choreographed form rather than a fixed identity. Through what appears as a non-binary pair, refusal of heteronormative structures is symbolized.
In the final act, the idea of fluidity extends beyond gender and the human-centered perspective. The performance concludes in silence with a mundane action: dismantling a DJ setup. Performed as if the objects — cables, USB driver, headphones and amplifiers — were alive and capable of sound, this act animates the non-human, proposing an expanded field of coexistence decentralizing human experience as ultimate, and gently shifts love away from human-to-human relations toward human–object coexistence.
ŞU ŞAŞU—the association and series of events dedicated to sonic arts, light and performance.
performers: Anna Kin and Arys Assem
venue: Kerege.ca