TRAPPED IN AIR
Anna Ivchenko (2023)
Multichannel site-specific
sound installation
28.06, 17:00-20:00
Sophiensaale backyard
Sophienstraße 18, 10178 Berlin
Anna Ivchenko
Анна Івченко
Anna Ivchenko is a Ukrainian artist and musician with a focus on sound installations, performance and video. Lives and works in Kyiv and Berlin.
In her practice the artist focuses on the themes of collective and personal memory, environmental and political issues, aiming to restore the lost connections and reevaluate existing processes and structures.
Trapped in air — site specific audio installation located at the House of Craftsmen’s Association (Handwerkervereinshaus,
now Sophiensaele).
This place used to be a place of forced labor, where among others, Ukrainian women used to be exploited as forced workers during World War II.
?
There is almost no information about those people — the only thing we know is that they worked for a factory that produced high-precision grinding machines and small armaments.
The sound installation is based on both real and fictional letters of Ukrainian Ostarbeiters, which highlights the impossibility of fully recovering the memory about them.
«…Мамо, ми працюємо на фабриці, працюємо 12 годин, нам видали ліжка, матраци, фартухи гумові. Мамо, живемо ми добре, годують нас дуже добре, так як у тридцять третьому».
"...Mom, we work at the factory, we work 12 hours, we were given beds, mattresses, rubber aprons. We are living well, mom, we are fed very well, just like in 1933."