After Hope
Performance / Concert / Exhibition

Performance: 55min

Sophiensæle, Berlin 30.04 – 04.05.2025

Kherson’s vast shipyard looms large in the shadows of history. Situated in the Delta of Dnipro in southern Ukraine, it was once the largest shipbuilding site in the USSR, giving birth to Vishwa Asha – Universal Hope, a cargo ship built in 1974 during the Indo-Soviet partnership. Decades later, Vishwa Asha – Universal Hope is decommissioned or lost, a ghost ship drifting through the fractured narratives of war.

Created by artist Anton Kats, also known under the fluid, semi-fictional identity of musician ILYICH, After Hope blurs the boundaries between performance art, music concert, and exhibition to examine the processes by which hope is built. Driven by the need to respond to the continuing global fascization, the work embraces the temporality of transmigration, a nonlinear understanding of time in which reincarnation becomes a mode of navigating life’s cyclical chronologies and invites audiences aboard Vishwa Asha to sail the waves of birth, death, rebirth and redeath. Through sonic readings of philosophical concepts like suchness, musical-theoretical principles of harmony, and feminist perspectives for sisterhood, After Hope proposes anti-heroic strategies on how to build hope that are rooted in listening, care and renewal.


Installation

The performative site and sound installation Cemetery of Melodies Alive is open to the public on the showing days of After Hope. It accompanies the nighttime live performance in the weaving of storytelling, music and sound art into a visceral experience. Reflecting on anti-fascist artistic positions through the lens of the military invasion of Ukraine, the project is driven by a crucial question: What is the responsibility of the artist in times of fascism and war?

Beginning with hopeless hope, this performative exhibition invites the audience to fearlessly reflect on the intertwined narratives of the present and offers a space to imagine and enact another world after the storm.

Listen now to ILYICH feat. George Lewis Jr. (aka Twin Shadow): Don’t Be Afraid

Original music by: 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
Costume collaboration: Yupanqui Ramos
Animation: Marcus Eich 
Foto Documentation: Mayra Wallraff

A production by Anton Kats in co-production with Sophiensæle and the Berlin Artistic Research Programme. Supported by the Fonds Darstellende Künste with funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media. The sound installation Cemetery of Melodies Alive was commissioned by steirischer herbst. Media partners: Missy Magazine, Siegessäule, taz.