In Conversation: N/A(Z) on Simulations and Human-Machine Relationships

N/A(Z) is a multidisciplinary artist working with sound, new media, and performance — born in Turkey, based in Brooklyn. She builds multimedia installations and audiovisual performances that treat the mind as a software to be decoded and reality as a simulation to be probed. Her journey began with leaving Turkey and quitting opera, and since then she has spent her time rewiring: unlearning through feminist philosophy, learning to manipulate sound, to project onto objects, to perform live. She creates immersive simulations and performances, guided by Haraway, Irigaray, Barad, and Wittgenstein, that invite tentacular thinking and revolt.

Portrait of N/A(Z). Image Courtesy of the Artist.

Q: How would you describe your artistic practice to someone encountering your work for the first time?

This is a hard one. Simulations created using material from this reality in order to reveal the worlds we can build.

Q: Mind Simulator maps the mind as four operating systems with a suppressed essence in the backroom, where you begin and end with Turkish singing. How did you arrive at this architecture and was it something you mapped out, or did it emerge as you built the piece?

The piece was mostly improvised, happening organically. The backrooms, the suppressed, silenced, the weird, is always the origin of any work im doing, what goes without saying, and in that repressed weird side of myself, singing felt right, because it is always alive in every decision, its probably the space I spend most of my time, letting that sing, showing that it is always in action was important. But here it also represents the breaking of a feedback loop into a new cycle. When I begin it is more silent still suppressed, but when I am ending, it is long& loud, accompanied by vocal cries as I am shaving my head, a symbol, promise for change, which is what I always seek both within my contemplation & action.

Mind Simulator, 2025. Mixed Media Installation. Dimensions Variable. Image Courtesy of the Artist.

Q: Turkish cultural references appear throughout the installation, from kilims to Rakı to singing. How does your relationship to home and cultural memory shape the work?

It is a weird one, I think I usually want to escape them, but it also is who I am… My Turkish background provides the space for questioning reality which leads to the need for revolt. It is interesting, I feel like what has taken me away from my voice (speech) now facilitates itself stronger not only in the voice I have through my art but also in my singing. Whenever I do a live set I do improvisational Turkish singing, these words and concepts just come to me in the moment, sometimes it is crazy to hear back what thoughts arise. I feel the need to challenge norms and taboos, which is when Home becomes my canvas. It brings me a sense of urgency. I want to protect it, but also protect myself from it, so I guess it shapes me and my work in different ways.

Q: Sound manipulation appears throughout the performance as a connective tissue between the corners of the installation. How do you think about sound differently from image or text when building emotional or psychological space?

I think they are always in intra-action, but I do think about sound differently as it is the basis/origin of my practice. It feels like a language that I have been speaking for a longer time, since I know more about sound, I get to be even more playful with it. I don’t have to think about it, it just happens, like in Mind Simulator, the first installation version, there was no sound that was recorded beforehand. Every single sound used for the composition for the space was recorded and manipulated real time. This way I feel like creates a stronger connection to the space, it is not about the space, it is from the space, it is the space… It feels impulsive in my body, I just pick an object, whether it is a mirror I break, or a glass I click, it belongs to the specific moment, and it translates itself to the space through manipulated loops. Sound doesn’t become just a part of the installation, or something that accompanies it, but the feeling of it, the reality, the world in which it takes place… 

Reality Simulator, 2025. Mixed Media Installation. Dimensions Variable. Image Courtesy of the Artist.

Q: You describe lucid dreaming as “revealing of reality” rather than an escape from it. What have dreams taught you that waking consciousness could not?

Dreams provide a space of deeper understanding without having the limitations of our pre-constructed reality. They are a site for practice, revealing potential and transformation. The most prominent example that keeps coming up in my work is realizing the potential of my vocals. I kept having dreams where I would sing in Turkish and do these crazy vocal cries, one day it just started happening in real life. It felt like all the weird techniques I was doing in dreams were training me for this moment. I still start singing whenever I have a lucid dream as an investigation of sound and vocals. The reason why I am doing XR right now is also because of dreams. I used to see these weird dreams about VR and it created a curiosity in me about creating those experiences. My ultimate goal with lucid dreaming is to make art in the dream realm and recreate them in “waking” life.

Dreams have taught me that there is always the potential for redefining reality, and I think practicing lucid dreaming allows for the possibility to not only reconstruct ourselves, but also the art we make, and the reality we live in. Through revealing the world it reveals to us the possibility of change. 

The installation creates an experience that feels intimate but also disorienting. What kind of emotional or psychological state do you hope audiences enter while moving through the work?

I hope I can create a space of introspection. Turning to the inward but also realizing that the inward is also a common space we can collectively. I want to bring them back to their bodies, but also allow them to go deep in their minds. Viewing the mind as a construction site, we can start to build the architectures we want to see. I hope they feel hope and discomfort, power and questioning….. I hope my audience can feel these intense bodily emotions so that they can be translated to philosophical investigations. 

Q: Your installation treats technology both as a site of alienation and as a tool for translation and liberation. What kinds of human-machine relationships are you most interested in imagining or resisting?

I am interested in hybrid human-machine relationships and achieving unity through co-creation. Multispecies relationality can expand our reality, creating just systems and an inclusive language now is vital for this. We need to learn how we speak about these relationships now, we need to learn how to approach with subjectivity & negativity as these relationships will only grow. AI is not a phenomenon that is only going to be in our lives now, AI is only going to grow and get further integrated in our lives, learning co-creation, and approaching with “loving to” is essential to creating a hybrid human future together. I think that this has immense potential, learning how to expand instead of replace is important. 

XR Reality Simulator, 2025. Mixed Media Installation. Dimensions Variable. Image Courtesy of the Artist.

Q: Are there particular artists, writers, filmmakers, or philosophers who have deeply influenced the way you think?

Irigaray, Haraway, Wittgenstein, Barad, Lugones, Oliveros, and Lorde have been very important to me in realizing my work. Investigating them and with them has really been a transformative process. And of course my best friends have had great influence in my thinking, I am so lucky to have amazing powerful women around me that constantly inspire me and expand my logical space.

Q: After making this work, where do you see your practice evolving next, especially in relation to technology, performance, and human consciousness?

I have been feeling this urge for revolt. I feel this urgency to revolt, I want to explore what this means, and how it can show up more in my work. To do this I want to get into hacktivism, digital vandalism, and hopefully new concepts that will arise through this investigation. I want to be more intentional with my simulations, become more uncomfortable, more thought provoking, more controversial, tap into the weird and the ugly. There is a big project I see in the future, something my best friends and I are working on that I am excited to share soon, can’t say too much about it yet but hoping to create a new path for an imagined future…