Listening Hymns: Sonic Antifascism

Performance / Archive

Performance 29:00 min

Sonic Acts Biennial 2026 / Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam

Listening Hymns: Sonic Antifascism by ILYICH (Anton Kats) is a performative spoken word archive.

Listening Hymns is the residue of the artist’s multi-year research exploring sound and listening as generative practices within the research trajectory of Sonic Antifascism. The project asks: how can sonic practice articulate antifascist cultural work? The archive’s selections appear through radio shows, university lectures, sound meditations, listening sessions, theatre and music performances under the artist’s multiple names.

Tracing ways of listening through the words of artists, musicians, poets, writers, cultural practitioners, meditators and activists, among others, the ever-growing selection of voices follows listening as both a performative and a sonic practice.

Engaging concrete and metaphorical domains of listening, the archive draws on themes of anti-racism and intersectional feminism, sonic and somatic practices, critical theory and abolitionism, spirit and ritual, allyship, community building, education, sound studies and politics, among many others.

At the Sonic Acts Biennial 2026 in Amsterdam, the artist stages a performative intervention at the Stedelijk Museum. The performance begins with a.s.a.p. – a sonic antifascist prelude, followed by archive excerpts enveloped in an improvised modular synthesis set that acts as a sonic environment for collective listening. The audience is invited to enter a deliberately ambiguous space where listening is shaped by what can be heard and what remains silent.

Voices (in order of appearance): James Baldwin and Nikki Giovanni, Rae Johnson, Dylan Robinson, Vaginal Davis, Paul Kivel, Ligia Lewis and Anton Kats, Busta Rhymes, Sister Tue Nghiem, Col. Bruce Hampton, Candice Hopkins




Credits:

Concept, performance, modular synthesis: ILYICH
Production: Sonic Acts
Camera, editing, sound: Engage! TV
Sonic Acts Video Intro sound: KMRU & Aho Ssan
Design: Knoth & Renner with Anja Kaiser
Fotography: Angelina Nikolayeva

Related Links:

Resonance of Hope