Anton Kats - After Hope

In 1974, the shipyard of Kherson in southern Ukraine launched Vishwa Asha – Universal Hope, a cargo ship built during the Indo Soviet partnership. Once a symbol of possibility, it is now decommissioned or lost, a ghost vessel drifting through fractured narratives of war. Emerging from the performance After Hope, premiered in 2025 at Sophiensaele Berlin, the film by Anton Kats features the voice of artist and actress Susanne Sachsse and transforms the live work’s sonic, performative, and sculptural elements into a cinematic experiment on remembrance and transformation. Sailing with Universal Hope into a present marked by fascism, displacement, resistance, grief, and renewal, it asks what kinds of hope can still be built amid destruction and leaves us with a puzzle: If there were as many Dnipro rivers as there are grains of sand in all the Dnipro rivers, how many grains of sand would it take for hope to hit the ground? The work continues Kats’ exploration of sonic antifascism as a form of collective resistance and imagination. 

Die Filminstallation von Anton Kats, die aus der Performance After Hope hervorgegangen ist, vertraut auf die Stimme der Künstlerin und Schauspielerin Susanne Sachsse und verwandelt die klanglichen, performativen und skulpturalen Elemente der Live-Darstellung in ein Experiment über Erinnerung und Transformation. Die Bilder und Klänge erzählen von einem 1974 in der damals zur Sowjetunion gehörenden ukrainischen Stadt Cherson gebauten Frachtschiff namens Vishwa Asha (Universal Hope). Heute als verschollen geltend, geistert das einstige Symbol der Hoffnung durch eine Gegenwart, die von Faschismus, Vertreibung, Widerstand, Trauer und Erneuerung geprägt ist.