Lolo Zouaï' Releases "Reverie"

Clarissa— I was invited to your concert without really knowing what to expect. I don't understand Russian, but I knew the position you had taken, and that alone made me want to be there. There are so many people who can't speak, and you did. And then, from the very first song, when your voice came in, Nastya, it felt like something opened - there was so much pain in it, almost impossible to fully understand, but impossible to ignore. People see you as more than artists, almost like symbols, not just for Russia or Ukraine, but for something human. I'm wondering...how does it feel to carry all of that?

Anastatia— Music itself is very physical. When we just started the project, I really didn't want to use any language at all. I was mostly screaming, because a scream is universal, and anyone, anywhere in the world can understand it. A scream is pure emotion. Yet, even if you don't understand the language, you can feel it, because voice and melody translate better than anything else. I feel like we grieve collectively during the concerts. It unites us. I hope it gives people some kind of release and helps them process things they can’t express in words.

Does being on tour feel like freedom or just another kind of displacement?

Nick— Touring doesn’t really feel like displacement to me. It feels more like exploration. It’s still very exciting, especially when we go somewhere we’ve never been before. The actual road and travel itself became less exciting over time, but being in a new place or a new country still feels incredibly inspiring to me. And honestly, the fact that people come to connect with us and listen to the show still feels like a dream. It can definitely be draining, but it doesn’t feel like displacement. If anything, it feels like proper placement. I’m curious if the stage feels like a safe space or the most exposed one. I think it’s both very safe and very exposed at the same time. In a way, it’s safe exactly because you’re exposed. Sometimes I feel the most understood when I’m on stage. But at the same time, you’re fully putting yourself out there without any real protection. Obviously there’s light and sound and all the technical side that elevates the performance, but in the end you’re still standing in front of a crowd doing the most sacred thing to you. That’s where the excitement comes from for me. But it rarely feels uncomfortable or wrong. It usually just feels like some form of collective therapy.

A— Touring is a different dimension in terms of time and space, and though the process itself can be very exhausting, I love being on stage. I feel a kind of physical joy from singing I can’t explain. I also never feel pain on stage, only afterwards. Usually I’m the one giving away all the energy, but last tour I was performing while very sick, sometimes barely functioning, in a wheelchair, and the crowd was so supportive that it somehow felt healing. When I hear people singing along, it gives me an almost sacred feeling, like listening to a choir in a church. I go on stage not to perform, but to be with others in one uniting space. It feels very safe.

When your concerts in Russia were being shut down mid-set, did it feel like performing or more like resisting?

N— Both, but in a much more intense way. Some of those concerts, even when we only managed to play two or three songs, became some of my favorite shows we ever did, because everybody understood that something once-in-a-lifetime was happening. Sometimes the police came in the middle of the show and cut the electricity. Sometimes they physically pushed us off stage. And then the crowd would keep singing the songs without us. It felt like a very honest representation of what all of us were feeling at that moment us and the audience together. There was this collective understanding that we all wanted to push back against the system that was slowly, and then very suddenly, closing in around us. You’ve said even a half-finished show felt like a victory.

A— It felt like a thrilling adventure, full of adrenaline. But in reality, it was more about survival. We had one goal: to make the concerts happen. We knew we hadn’t done anything wrong, and we also knew that if we stopped, it would become easier to censor artists coming after us. We had support of our audience and support of media worldwide. But the devastating truth is that doing something like that now is simply impossible. The times are very different. If you stay inside the country, you either have to play by rules or become invisible. From the outside, I sometimes feel like there is an invisible country inside Russia made up of invisible people.

What does it mean for you to be seen, especially in a context where visibility can be dangerous?

A— I used to think a lot about two superpowers: becoming invisible or stopping time. I never lacked attention, so invisibility felt tempting to me. Visibility can give you connection, but it also makes you vulnerable. Especially when people stop seeing you as a human being and start seeing you as an image, a symbol, a projection. Sometimes disappearing feels like a form of protection.

Do you think silence is still an option for artists today?

A— I think there is a lot of pressure on artists to be vocal these days. Speaking out, when it’s meaningful, can really bring change. But I don’t believe in performative gestures with no action behind them. I believe you should speak when you have something grounded and true to add. Our project has always been diverse but people very often narrow it to social commentary or politics alone. So, I feel this pressure too, both external and internal, to constantly speak out. But sometimes you need a pause, a moment of silence to process your own feelings. Sometimes that’s the only way to keep going.

Has taking a position cost you something you didn't expect?

A— When you live in Russia you know only one thing for sure: you can never be sure what is going to happen. There is some beauty to it and some horror too. You can do something harmless like writing a song and end up being followed by FSB for months, eventually landing on a blacklist. Or you can literally commit crimes and still be a respected man with status and money. The list goes on. Russia was once my home. It isn’t anymore. But back then, I believed things could change for the better and that I could be part of that change. I would say the biggest cost was not losing my ground, but losing this belief.

Do you ever feel fear while expressing yourself so openly? And if so, how do you deal with it?

A— I always try to do what I fear the most.

Do you think it’s possible to separate identity from the place you were born into?

N— If you really want to, I think it’s completely possible. I don’t know why someone would necessarily want to do it, but I think you can reinvent yourself both inwardly and outwardly. I really believe that. Identity is also a bit of a game we play with ourselves and with each other. It’s a story you tell. And you can definitely change the story.

Do you feel nostalgic for something that maybe doesn’t even exist anymore?

N— I felt nostalgic a couple of years ago, maybe a year and a half ago, especially when thinking about leaving the country and about the way life used to be. But that feeling is mostly gone now. I think that version of me is also gone. I genuinely feel like a different human being now. All my cells have changed, and so did my identity. It’s constantly evolving, and enough time has passed for me not to really live inside nostalgia anymore.

What responsibility, if any, do you feel you carry?

N— As an artist, I would love to say that my only responsibility is to create good art. But the older I get, the more I understand that this idea is very idealistic. It would be great if it were true, but it’s not. When the war started, I initially felt guilt because we had been opposing the regime for years already, and in some sense I felt involved in that struggle. Then the war happened, the system became even more authoritarian, and I felt this deep sense of failure. But guilt is ultimately unproductive. It doesn’t help anyone. At some point that feeling transformed into responsibility instead. We are a public Russian band, and because of that we felt responsible to help however we could. That feeling is much. more productive than guilt. So we tried to act, support people, raise money, and do whatever was possible.

Is there something you still hesitate to say?

N— Yes, definitely. There are things I would rather not say publicly because they could put my family or some of my friends in danger. But outside of that, we always tried to say exactly what we wanted to say, and often the things we probably weren’t supposed to say. In a way, that was part of the point. If something becomes unspeakable in a society, that usually makes it even more important to examine through art.

Being detained before shows and having venues pressured to cancel you, did it change the way you saw your work, or just confirm it?

N— It mostly confirmed it. In some ways it made us understand the power of what we were doing much more clearly. The way the system reacted actually made me more confident in the work. What struck me was how indirect and cowardly those reactions often were. If the authorities genuinely believed they were morally right, they would have simply jailed us immediately and openly. Instead there were all these convoluted methods: pressure on venues, intimidation, cancellations at the last moment. That revealed fear more than confidence. I think the system was afraid of attention itself. Any independent source of influence, even something as soft as music, becomes something as soft as music becomes threatening to authoritarian structures.

Do you think the system was afraid of your message or of the people listening?

N— I think it was mostly afraid of the visibility we started getting. The real problems began when the videos suddenly exploded online and reached a much larger audience. Systems like that start to crack when people openly acknowledge the obvious elephant in the room. It’s not even specifically about artists, just people saying things out loud that everybody already knows internally. That’s what we were trying to do, sometimes seriously, sometimes humorously. Once enough people recognize reality together, authoritarian systems become unstable. That’s what happened in the Soviet Union too. So yes, I think they were genuinely afraid of that process. And honestly, if I were in their position, I probably would be too.

If they tried to silence you and you’re still here, what does that say about them?

N— At that time, it meant they were ineffective. We still finished the tours, still played most of the concerts, and after that we actually experienced a lot of freedom creatively. Obviously we had to leave the country for that, but we still managed to make the point and create the noise we wanted to create. wanted to create. Now the system is much more effective than before. It learned through trial and error. Today it probably wouldn’t even allow things to escalate to that level publicly.

What does resistance look like today, in your opinion?

A— Resistance usually is very loud. But it can be quite too: remaining human and emotionally alive in a world that constantly pushes people toward numbness, fear, aggression or performance. I think refusing cynicism is also a form of resistance.

When everything around you becomes political, how do you keep something that is just yours?

A— I think if you constantly react to everything around you, eventually you stop hearing your own voice. Sometimes you need silence to hear what you actually feel beneath all that noise.

There is a tension between beauty and violence in your work. Is that contrast intentional or inevitable?

N— It probably comes from nature. I truly believe there is not much besides sex and death, or love and death. Those are the basis of almost any ethics, and working with ethics is what excites me the most.

At what point does art stop being art and become something else entirely?

N— For me, it never stopped being art. It was completely coherent with what we were trying to express anyway. It simply became part of the narrative around the work. At the same time, it also became something very emblematic. The image of musicians being detained or handcuffed because of songs is almost archetypal for artists living under authoritarian systems. It’s deeply unfair, obviously, but it also reveals something very true about the relationship between power and art.

In the end, who failed: you or the system?

N— I think systems like that are ultimately designed to fail. You can’t concentrate that much power and still maintain a realistic understanding of the world. Eventually everything turns into smoke, mirrors, and ideology that the system itself starts believing. And I don’t think we failed either. I genuinely feel we did everything we could. We made the art we believed in and tried to do it honestly. I always felt that way.

A— Maybe the real failure happens when you completely lose connection to yourself inside the system.