ILYICH: If not now, when?

performance / music concert
45 min

House of World Cultures (H.K.W.), Berlin
Steirischer Herbst, Graz
ZONA &, Timisoara

Video excerpts from the performance “If not now, when?” by ILYICH.

The name ILYICH was initially lost in the early 2000s after leaving Ukraine as a refugee. As a semi-fictional persona, it now serves as a starting point for an artistic practice in the form of musical concerts and interactive sound sculptures. Creating sonic and visual spaces ILYICH invites to disrupt identitarian, fascistic, and hyper-individualised constructions of the self that separate us.

If not now, when? is the latest performance that invites the audience into a world of deep and panoramic sound with thoughtful stories, cinematic soundscapes, e-bass interludes, poetry and dance tracks. If not now, when? ponders the possibility of an afterlife as something unfolding now: a practice of new beginnings, of life after the latest moment of planetary, personal and collective history.

Responding to the military invasion of Ukraine, If not now, when? embraces an uneasy place as the daybreak of the fantastical. Motivated by a disillusionment of borders in the face of an unstable present and unpredictable future If not now, when? invites others to join forces in listening and embarking on an introspective, at times grooving journey, redreaming the world after hope as a world after war.

Links:
House of World Cultures
Steirischer Herbst
ZONA &

Credits:
Zona & – Curated by: Corina Oprea and Magda Radu Video: Petre Fall

H.K.W. – Contribution to the exhibition: As Though We Hid the Sun in a Sea of Stories 20.10.2023 – 14.01.2024. Curated by Cosmin Costinas and co-conceptualised with Iaroslav Volovod, Nikolay Karabinovych, Saodat Ismailova and Kimberly St. Julian-Varnon

Steirischer Herbst – Curated by Ekaterina Degot and David Riff