Design: alen hast and myk rudik from u2203 studio

At the core are two new commissioned works created by pairing Ukrainian and European artists undo despot, Zeynep Schilling, Khrystyna Kirik, Mark Bain, and alen hast + myk rudik of u2203 studio. The project is co-curated by ∄, CTM Festival, Mariana Berezovska, and alen hast from u2203 studio, and supported by Goethe-Institut. Disturbed Ground builds on previous artistic investigations held at ∄ in autumn 2024 under the title, Echoes of the Earth.

The artists spent one week in June 2025 working on-site at ∄’s creative and tech production space, u2203 studio, engaging in dialogue with researchers investigating the environmental impact of russia’s full-scale invasion. The curatorial idea emerged from a desire to explore how we can engage with war-torn ecologies not just as political topics or statistics, but as living systems carrying memory, trauma, and meaning, and how art can play a role in expanding our relationships to realities that are difficult and painful to grasp and engage with. By working across disciplines — sound, video, architecture, science, and storytelling — each artist pairing seeks to propose new ways of sensing and relating to ecocide that reach beyond data and maps, and into the sensorial and affective.

An additional video work by Vartan Markarian will be shown in conjunction with the performances. Created as part of the Echoes of the Earth residency which inspired Disturbed Ground, Markarian’s »Horizons of Disappearance« navigates the tension of the forest as a space of ecological richness and respite, and potential catastrophe due to large-scale anthropogenic factors such as climate change and war.

These works are a call to consider our relationship with land, waters, and ecologies – asking how we might listen to distressed landscapes or localities not only through the lens of destruction, but as sites still resonating and transforming.

Commissioned work

Heavy Waters

The collaboration of undo despot x Zeynep Schilling x alen hast + myk rudik explore the layered and evolving life of rivers in Ukraine, flowing through histories, mythologies, sediments, and the present-day violence of war.

 

Commissioned work

The Core

Khrystyna Kirik and Mark Bain create a collective experience of embodied listening to the earth under siege, translating the effects of environmental destruction due to war on Ukraine.

Video

Horizons of Extinction

Created as part of the Echoes of the Earth residency which inspired Disturbed Ground, Vartan Markarian’s work plunges into the large-scale ecological disaster of forest fires caused by climate change and anthropogenic factors, including the war in Ukraine.

Disturbed Ground is co-produced by ∄ and CTM Festival with support from Goethe-Institut’s Co-production Fund. Curated by Mariana Berezovska, alen hast (u2203 Studio), ∄, and CTM Festival.

»The Core« by Khrystyna Kirik and Mark Bain is further supported within the framework of CTM’s Radio Lab with Deutschlandfunk Kultur, ORF, and tekhnē. tekhnē is co-funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.

The video work »Horizons of Disappearance« was produced within the framework of Echoes of the Earth, a project by Mariana Berezovska, Mila Kostiana, and alen hast that was supported by ∄ and Goethe-Institut.