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. 

The film installation by Anton Kats, which emerged from the performance After Hope, features the voice of artist and actress Susanne Sachsse and transforms the live work’s sonic, performative, and sculptural elements into a cinematic experiment about remembrance and transformation. The images and sounds tell the story of a cargo ship named Vishwa Asha (Universal Hope) built in 1974 in the Ukrainian city of Kherson, then part of the Soviet Union. Now decommissioned or lost, the former symbol of hope haunts a present marked by fascism, displacement, resistance, grief, and renewal.