Anton Kats / ILYICH

Austrian premiere

The Kherson shipyard, located in the Dnipro Delta in southern Ukraine, was once the largest boat building site in the USSR. Here in 1974, the cargo ship Vishwa Asha (Universal Hope) was built in the framework of the Indo-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation. Today, it is lost; a ghost ship manoeuvring through the narratives of a war that “never ended.” Created by Anton Kats, who strives for “sonic anti-fascism” as a musician under the name ILYICH, the performance After Hope blurs the boundaries between sound art installation, spoken word poetry, and live concert. Examining processes by which hope is built and driven by the need to respond to the global rise of fascism, the work embraces the idea of transmigrating souls, a nonlinear understanding of time in which reincarnation becomes a mode of navigating life’s cyclical chronologies. After Hope centres on antiheroic strategies that cultivate any form of hope: listening, caring, and renewal.

Concept, artistic direction, performance, sound, music, text: Anton Kats | Original music: ILYICH | Recorded in collaboration with: Andrii Barmalii, Maxim Hladetskyy, George Lewis Jr. aka Twin Shadow, Olivia Lucy Phillip, Susanne Sachsse, Yuri Shepeta, Valeri Volkov, Fanni Zahár | Mixing: Viktor Kurando | Mastering: Eugene Diggidon Don | Dramaturgical advice: Dragana Bulut | Structural design: Byron Kalomamas | Sound installation manufacturing: TSET | Outside eye: Ligia Lewis | Light: Jacqueline Sobiszewski | Light operator: Zweck / Gustav Kleinschmidt | Costume collaboration: Yupanqui Ramos | Animation: Marcus Eich