Who’d have thought that snow falls

Who'd have thought that snow falls

Video-Choir-Installation

The story

In 2021, a German-Polish-Ukrainian team traveled to the Luhansk region in eastern Ukraine to meet local singing collectives. The question behind the journey: how do crisis and everyday life shape a voice — and how is that carried on, across generations, across borders? It was the eighth year of war in the region. A year later, Russia’s full invasion began. The villages we had visited are now under occupation. Singing the Ukrainian songs that had been sung there for generations is forbidden.

Who’d have thought that snow falls grew out of this rupture. The voices we recorded became something we hadn’t planned: a living archive of a tradition silenced at its place of origin.

The Installation

Three large screens hang in the room like windows — opened toward Luhansk and toward a past that can no longer be reached. On them: the singers of Bilolutsk, Osynove, and Horodyshche, filmed in 2021 in their villages and landscapes. In front of the screens, a choir of Berlin-based and displaced Ukrainian singers answers them live. Their voices cross the physical distance the war has drawn.

Between the songs, a poem is read — written from inside the occupied zone. Its words bring the reality of life under occupation directly into the room.

Martyna Poznańska’s multi-channel composition of field recordings from Luhansk and Matthias Schönijahn’s video work hold the space together. What emerges is a site of collective listening, where loss and resilience are not pushed aside but made audible — and, for a moment, carried together.

On the title

The title refers to Frank O’Hara’s poem Wind, in which a snowstorm, seen through a window, strikes the lyrical self with sudden, fragile force. In the installation, the screens become such windows. What appears in the poem as a snowstorm resounds here as war: the unimaginable breaking in, fragile beauty turning into rupture.

Press

„The voices of the women in the landscapes of Luhansk resonate within the space and continue in the singing of the Berlin project choir, making them physically tangible. Coming together with these people in the here and now — giving space to loss, displacement, and pain — has created a sense of solidarity and connectedness.“

— Matthias Rebstock, Doing Collective Memories

Team

Artistic direction, camera, video editing, stage design and direction Matthias Schönijahn // choir direction, composition choir Paulina Miu Kühling // composition, sound design Martyna Poznańska // dramaturgy, choreographic collaboration Rose Beermann, Constantin von Thun// field and choirrecordings – Johannes van Bebber // dramaturgy video Ljupcho Temelkovski // light design Maika Knoblich, Constantin von Thun // outfits Ewa Brokos // video projection, sound, technical set-up Johannes Plank, Anna Petzer // scientific consulting Влада Русіна (Vlada Rusina) // production management Birgit Voigt // production management Ukraine Валера Пріорізна (Valera Prioriznha) // artistic assistance, translation Тереза Яковина (Tereza Yakovyna)

Berlin-based and displaced Ukrainian singers

Agnieszka Bułacik, Ewa Brokos, Mina Djordjević, Katharina Fischer, Agnieszka Kucharska, Julia Legezynska, Joana Katarzyna Pietras, Ola Zielińska, Влада Русіна (Vlada Rusina), Тереза Яковина (Tereza Yakovyna), Ігор Дмитрієв (Igor Dimetrijew)

With singers from the Luhansk villages Filmed in 2021 in three villages — all now under Russian occupation.

Білолуцьк Людмила Шуляк, Петро Чепелуха, Валентина Деркач, Людмила Горшкова, Оксана Гутнєва, Людмила Іларіонова, Тетяна Кандиба,Юрій Кузнєцов, Юрій Максименко, Анна Невідома, Наталія Шепілова, Олег Волков, Тетяна Зайцева // Осинове Ольга Бушла, Любов Молочкова, Марія Саградова, Зінаїда Сковородка, Катерина Ткаченко // Городище Тетяна Грабчук, Любов Корнієнко, Раїса Шугайло, Світлана Коновалова