A documentary audio installation titled June, dedicated to four fallen Ukrainian soldiers, by Kyiv sound artist Yan Spector, will be presented at the ORF musikprotokoll contemporary electronic music festival at the Graz Museum in Austria. This was reported on the festival’s website.
According to the description, June is a 45-minute audio work recorded in 2022–2023 in Kyiv, Chernihiv and Volodarka (Kyiv Region). Spector dedicated it to four friends — Hennadiy Kolesnyk, Kostyantyn Kuzin, Bohdan Mazurenko and Anton Petrochko — who were killed while carrying out combat missions at the front in the summer of 2023.
Conceived as a diary of loss, the work follows a city that is not on the front line, yet is never truly separated from it. Children’s voices can be heard in the piece, because they are part of Spector’s life. Funeral processions are heard too, because in Kyiv they are part of everyday life. At the centre of the narrative are four men who, with one exception, are not heard directly. The work conveys the sonic atmosphere of streets, playgrounds, flats, concert halls, churches and hospitals. However, it is not an ambient work (one that leans towards free composition of sounds rather than linearity). Here, 53 audio tracks are layered on top of one another — and from these strata a narrative gradually emerges.
The installation will be on display at the museum from 8 to 11 October. The production was carried out by Ukho Music and Kyiv Dispatch in collaboration with the Graz Museum and ORF musikprotokoll.
The festival will run from 3 to 11 October.
About Hennadiy Kolesnyk:
- serviceman (call sign Pidkova);
- killed on 7 June 2023 while carrying out a combat mission near Bakhmut;
- served in the Azov unit from 2015;
- awarded the Steel Cross breast badge;
- survived by two sons and his wife.
About Kostiantyn Kuzin:
- serviceman and mountaineer;
- killed on 25 June 2023 in the Chasiv Yar area while carrying out a combat mission — for 15 minutes Kuzin held off enemy fire, enabling 17 of his comrades to return alive;
- became a father two months before his death.
About Bohdan Mazurenko:
- serviceman, junior sergeant of the 47th Separate Mechanised Brigade (call sign Rico);
- killed on 30 July 2023 in the city of Orikhiv, Zaporizhzhya Region, as a result of a guided aerial bomb strike on the unit’s location;
- volunteered from the start of the full-scale invasion, and in the summer of 2022 voluntarily joined the Armed Forces of Ukraine;
- awarded a distinction from the Kyiv City State Administration for volunteer work;
- after his death, Mazurenko’s daughter was born.
About Anton Petrochko:
- serviceman (call sign Tokha), senior machine gunner in the Bureviy brigade;
- killed on 23 August 2023 by an enemy drone while carrying out a combat mission near the village of Stelmakhivka, Luhansk Region;
- awarded the Order For Courage, 3rd class;
- a mural dedicated to him has been created in Kyiv’s Dniprovskyy district — painted by Olena Noina and Vitalii Hidevan.
About Yan Spector:
- Kyiv sound artist and producer, co-founder of the Plivka and 2c1b communities;
- works with field recordings, musique concrète and electronics;
- in his work, he aims to explore how music functions in an urban vernacular environment;
- he describes his documentary materials as memory soundscaping, in which he archives fragments of sonic environments as audio memories, from which he seeks to build coherent narratives without significant artistic intervention, except for editing.
About ORF musikprotokoll:
- an annual festival platform for contemporary and experimental music in Austria, founded in 1968;
- dedicated to contemporary and experimental music and intermedia forms;
- aims to showcase current artistic trends and their representatives;
- organised by the Austrian public service broadcaster Österreichischen Rundfunk in cooperation with the interdisciplinary contemporary arts festival steirischer herbst.