zvukoizolyatsia: mission accomplished

Over two evenings, 7 and 8 July, Warehouse № 2 of the former Izolyatsia plant became sound\'s territory: ZvukoIzolyatsia was presented to the general public, thereby marking Donetsk\'s first audio-visual dialogue between avant-garde music and possibilities of cutting-edge visual technologies synthesised in an industrial space.

A search for sound and meaning was carried out by three young Ukrainian composers, Bogdan Segin, Aleksey Shmurak, Maksim Kolomietz, whose compositions were performed by a Kyiv ensemble of contemporary avant-garde music, Nostri Temporis, and intertwined with a visual commentary by Miroslav Vajda and VJ-group "RESTART". The audience embarked on a meditative journey, travelling back via sound and vision to the space\'s industrial past, whilst not forgetting to witness its present and dream about its future.

Segin, Shmurak and Kolomietz represent the generation of Ukrainian composers for whom the boundaries between western and post-Soviet avant-garde, the past and the future, are no longer relevant. Their aim is to seek their own identity in a world of abundant information and disappearance of national schools and prescriptive movements.

The three oeuvres composed and performed in Warehouse №2 – "Introduction, Intervention" (Segin), "Evanescence" (Shmurak) and "Cold Flame of Freedom" (Kolomietz) – contained numerous references to both avant-garde and classical contemporary composers (particularly Lachenmann and Xenakis), and at the same time communicated fresh vibes and uncompromising individual raison d\'être of academic music and music itself.

The main protagonist of the project became the Donetsk audience. We would like to express our gratitude towards our many guests for their interest and open-mindedness – let alone those for whom ZvukoIzolyatsia became a crossing far beyond the habitual. The somewhat noisy escape of the less patient members of the audience only added to the sound installation and the general aesthetic feeling of the performance.

Here are some of the more thought-out responses:

"The whole thing felt like starting to watch a Tarkovsky film on the fifteenth minute.”

“This project proved to me that everything around us is music. I particularly enjoyed how the sounds of music blended in with the chirping of cicadas and the twittering of swallows.”

“This was the sound of Donetsk. This music could become the city\'s anthem.”