Elza Gubanova & Leon Seidel
A Conversation Between Olya, Yeva, Elza and Leon About Belliphony, 2024
The participatory practice of Elza Gubanova (*2001, Odesa, UA) and Leon Seidel (*1993, Ansbach, DE) centres on the investigation of sound in the context of war. The specific acoustic backdrops of military conflicts have a profound impact on the war experiences of entire societies, with certain sounds becoming inscribed in people’s collective memory.
By way of a collaborative translation process, the installation A Conversation Between Olya, Yeva, Elza and Leon About Belliphony adopts a likewise scientific, artistic and childlike perspective to transfer sound experiences of war (belliphony) into text, images and objects. Starting point is the scientific work Warbound: Collective Audio Streaming from Ukraine by Ukrainian theorist Olya Zikrata, for which Leon Seidel’s interview series Imagined Cities, conducted in Kyiv and Odesa in 2023, served as a research basis.
Zikrata – whose interest lies in topics such as acoustic activism and resistance cultures in connection with Russian authoritarianism, imperialism and colonialism – conjures in the text the image of a bestial creature as a metaphor for the invisible acoustic presence of war. Based on a simplified version of this text translated into Ukrainian, Elza Gubanova’s little sister Yeva made a drawing of a monster. The work juxtaposes fragments of these conversations with sound-absorbing panels. As a dialogical response to the creature that sprang from a child’s imagination, they are to be perceived as a protective gesture against the violence of war.