Nastya Valentine Presents CYBER CASTLE, featuring Plasmic, Celeste X, Baby Uniq, and More

Nastya Valentine is curating multi-media experience Cyber Castle at L.A.’s Coaxial on July 15, 2022. In anticipation of the special event, we visited Nastya’s enchanting HQ recently to snap some photos, video, catch up a bit, and learn more about the next exciting Castle installment.

The upcoming Cyber Castle will feature contributions not only from the multi-talented Nastya Valentine, but also Celeste X, Plasmic, and Baby Uniq. We were eager to know more about the remarkable and relevant event, and Nastya graciously obliged us with fascinating extensive insights into the evening ahead at Coaxial, background to the various Castle iterations, reflections on the talented artists involved, and much more.

Nastya’s insights into Cyber Castle and more, exclusively shared with WMF:

“Cyber Castle is an art show/music show/immersive cyber experience brought into reality, taking place at Coaxial Arts on 7/15. The inspiration for this show is the confrontation of the online alter egos we all have, and how that can be shown through performance art, music, and interactive installation. The concept is driven by the cyber roles we give ourselves when navigating our e-dystopia. The way we fragment our real and online personas. The multiple lives we lead for the vapid currency of likes. The body modifications arising from a distorted rhetoric of what looks trendy. Why do we do these things to ourselves, aware yet enslaved by the invisible and life-altering algorithm?

*Nastya Valentine, July 2022. Photo: WMF*

The music artists I’ve chosen are not only my close friends and similar in vibe to my own art, which brings a cohesive sense to the Castle, but they put on a very interesting show as solo acts without it being a spectacle or gimmick. They’re out of the box high femme performers who make banging tracks. I get really excited and inspired when I see my friends perform. Being part of Celeste’s performances were some of the most fun times I’ve had on stage; she creates these characters like Venusian nymphs, burned witches, and demonic call girls — it always feels organic to her ethos and not gimmicky. Plasmic is like the personification of rebellious bright magenta; her high energy stage presence is something everyone should witness and experience. And she plays the keytar like a fuckin pro. I will be performing tracks that I recorded using the DAW of my Tesla in quarantine and documented on my OnlyFans. If you can’t overthrow capitalism, have sex with it. Baby Uniq is the most scandalous bitch in Los Angeles — enough said. Nothing bores me more than a five piece band of dudes standing and tuning their guitars between songs that sound the same, with no visual aid or performative element. I think many spaces in LA have been oversaturated with boring, high-ego entitled male energy, but that is in the process of changing so I am trying to contribute by creating a space of high-ego fembot energy. The fembots are rebelling. We are so objectified in society both physical and digital, so this massive self-objectification is a commentary on that. Celeste and I did a quarantine music project called Fembot and made a few songs, and I think the horniest one may be performed in my set at the Castle. I want to intellectualize the hyper feminine and yasssssify the conceptual art space. Some of the visual artists are also musicians: Belly Belt and Bedroom Witch both create phenomenal live acts and now they are transmuting their aesthetics into video projection work. Other visual and projection work will be presented by Illiterate White Girl, Casey Kauffmann, and Coco Ono. I may also screen an old horror film I made about a cannibal camgirl.

Coaxial is an incredible and unique venue. The artists they showcase are innovative and exciting. It’s the perfect space to hold the first pandemic-era Cyber Castle: a show that invites you to deconstruct the online social and parasocial landscape and interface with your digital demons while still having fun. I’m working on a book/project called Cyberhorny that deals with these topics as a whole, and I would love to do a Cyberhorny artist residency there one day. That’s the dream.

*Nastya Valentine and…Bernie Sanders. Photo: WMF*

There will definitely be future installments after Cyber Castle. Which Castle will it be next? I’ve been curating “Castle” series of parties for five years and each one is a unique ecosystem in itself with an individual theme, concept, and backstory. So far we’ve had: Party Castle (the og, named after my friend’s cat), Space Castle, Nuclear Castle, Cave Castle, Bliss Castle, and Horny Castle (the party that ended the world right before covid hit). Cyber Castle is the seventh installment. Quality over quantity: I would love to do them monthly or at least seasonally if budgeting and burnout would allow. They’re done so rarely because of the amount of work that goes into engineering a Castle: if you’ve ever been to one, you already know the vibe. It’s like terraforming a different dimension, with critiquable art and bangin music, without the pretentiousness of most gallery shows. The whole ethos of the Castles was to create a space of unpretentiousness and inclusivity — I don’t care if the artist has 15 followers or 15k on insta, what I’m looking for is art that has heart and reaches beyond the generic. Not everyone has the resources, connections, wealthy parents, or other invisible privileges that allow for an easier path to success. I want to give unique, visionary, weird, obscure, marginalized artists a gateway to tap into their dimension and bring it to life at the Castles. There is no hierarchy or headliner, everyone is treated as equals. I would love the Castle series to continue with the DIY mentality coupled with the high concept, high quality execution, and to continue bringing together the weird and talented artists I’m lucky to know. Come into the hivemind and get your tickets now. “