In her stage and video works, Estonian performance artist and musician Netti Nüganen becomes, among others, a weightlifter, teenage vlogger, detective, historian and cowboy. Her characters allow her to build and deconstruct narratives crucial to her method of understanding the gaps between recognisable references and language, as she puts it. A graduate of the School for New Dance Development (SNDO) in Amsterdam, her works have been shown internationally, while also touring with Florentina Holzinger’s ensemble pieces since 2017. During a recent conversation in Vienna, where she has been living for the past three years, Netti discussed her evolving practice of world-building through performance with Kathrin Heinrich – from sound experiments and fragmented storytelling to the theatrical traps she seeks to escape.
Kathrin Heinrich: Storytelling looms large in your work. Your most recent performance, Ash, Horizon, Riding a House (2025) is centred around a set made of ice, in which you and two collaborators Pire Sova and Michaela Kisling reflect on identity and belonging as fluid constructs. In it, you embody different characters, such as a real-estate agent, an auctioneer and a tourist. How do you start world-building for a performance?
Netti Nüganen: It usually begins in a very solitary context, with a topic or a cluster of questions. For Ash, Horizon, Riding a House, it started with observing myself as a tourist – travelling to where I was born, where I live, and to a completely new place. The actual world-building is a little more hands-on: I often start by learning a new technique. For this piece, I became fascinated by the banjo and by country music, its relationship to landscape and nostalgia. I was interested in how country music romanticises the rural, and – being critical of that – in trying to find a new way to look at country as a genre by relating it to black metal. Because black metal also looks at nature, but rather through a dystopian lens.
KH: You actually learned the banjo for this piece. How does that fit into your practice?
NN: I did, yes. I’ve always worked with sound, but only recently dared to start calling myself a musician. I played piano, violin, and harp for years and I work a lot with my voice. With the banjo, I took classes for some time, but then I went rogue. I also started composing rogue because I’m not interested in the proper patterns. When you have the ability to improvise or be curious about different ways of doing things, something more interesting happens. I also continued my vocal work with screaming textures, which started in the performance The Myth: Last Day (2022). That physical intensity stayed with me, and I began relating it to banjo playing, with a bow and pedals to develop my own sound technique. I also started learning auctioneering – that fast-paced, rhythmic speech – which I’m still practicing.
KH: Your works often have a strong dramaturgical structure. How do you decide what to show and what just to suggest?
NN: That’s the real hard work – finding the balance between clarity and abstraction. Sometimes you want things to be direct, but too much explanation can kill the magic. In Ash, I worked a lot with the symbol of the house: to what extent to keep it abstract or make it concrete. When I wear it on my body, sell it as a real estate agent, or walk with it, the image becomes theatrical, but also very real. In visual art, concrete images somehow feel freer; in theatre, concreteness can feel heavy or manipulative. One strategy to subvert this in my storytelling is fragmentation: stripping elements away and feeding the audience parts of the full image over time.
KH: You mentioned coming from a family of actors and directors. Does that background shape your relationship with theatricality?
NN: Definitely. I grew up surrounded by dramatic theatre – narratives with clear arcs and characters – and I’m constantly in dialogue with that tradition. I’m hyper-aware and critical of theatrical methods, so sometimes I intentionally go against what “works”. Still, I think the desire to tell stories naturally leads to theatricality. Once you get a narrative rolling, it becomes theatre.
KH: Many of your works also question how stories are told – almost like meta-histories.
NN: Yes, I’m always considering how to tell a story. That reflection brings a meta-level: the tension between fantasy and the hardcore reality of the situation on stage. In Myth, for example, I speak in dialogue with myself – sometimes inside the fiction, sometimes acknowledging the reality of standing there, naked, talking. That oscillation between fantasy and the banal reality of performance is where the meta-level emerges. There is the fiction, the fantasy, but also the fact that we are here in this theatre together, sitting, right now.
KH: You’ve told me that the vlog-performance THE STORY: chatty get ready, what I eat, workouts (realistic day in a life) (2018) is one of your favourite works. Why?
NN: It was made very intuitively, with little analysis, and that freedom still feels close to me. It used the format of a vlog – I love YouTube and the confessional, intimate mode of vlogging. I made it while travelling in the US, especially in Los Angeles, where everything felt both deeply familiar from movies and television, and completely alien. That eerie mixture of recognition and estrangement fascinated me.
KH: The work has a dreamlike quality with a figure onstage echoing the video.
NN: Yes, that figure was like a ghost, a double of myself. The performance was originally a diploma work, so it was also about defending my practice. I remember feeling like I was defending not just the piece, but my right to make it – to trust intuition over explanation.
KH: In theatre, people often talk about the Brechtian fourth wall. You don’t just break it, but seem to tear it down from the start. How do you think about the audience’s role in your performances?
NN: I think a lot about spectatorship, about attention. What kind of looking do I want to invite? Sometimes I want everyone to focus on one image; other times I prefer a landscape-like attention, where the viewer can look anywhere. Even boredom or drifting thought can be a valid mode of attention. In Myth, I imagined the audience as witnesses – like students or judges – but I didn’t realise that fully. Still, I want spectators to be active, not passive.
KH: Collaboration with other people is often part of your work, but you call yourself a solo artist.
NN: I still work mostly alone. When I collaborate, it’s because I want someone to embody a specific function. In Myth, there was Johhan Rosenberg, a kind of ghost performer who could do anything. In Ash, the scenographer Pire Sova works onstage, painting and shaping the set – she’s the “holder of the ice”. There’s also Michaela Kisling, a DJ who holds the sound. But I rarely imagine full ensembles unless there’s a clear reason.
KH: You also perform in a large ensemble in your day job. Does that influence your solo work?
NN: For sure. Working with Florentina Holzinger has shown me what’s possible on a big scale, especially in today’s political climate. Her work creates space for practices like mine, she’s made certain radical gestures feel normal. That visibility empowers smaller-scale artists too
KH: How do you sustain your own practice while touring with her?
NN: I work a lot on the road. My research travels with me, I don’t need a fixed studio. I’m slow in making new performances, partly because of touring, but I’m fine with that. Each project has multiple lives, multiple chapters. Ash, for instance, will likely become an installation and a sound piece.
