As For Now, It Is Quiet / Listen Live
As For Now, It Is Quiet / Listen Live is a series of recordings produced as part of the 2024 Ukrainian collective audio stream project As For Now, It Is Quiet, which evolved from its 2022 iteration, Listen Live. The project works with sonic knowledges of Russia’s war in Ukraine to foster a listening community through collective acoustic witnessing. Streaming functions as a dispersed network of real-time sensing and a form of co-presence, cultivating attentiveness and care across distance.
Some of the recordings may contain the sounds of air raid sirens, explosions, or other effects of ongoing military activity. These sounds are part of the acoustic environment in which Ukrainians continue to live and from which this project emerges. (...)
Participants used portable microphones, called streamboxes, to transmit the sounds of their locations to an online map or listening room – and, in 2024, simultaneously into the exhibition space of the cultural center Dim Zvuku (Home of Sound) in Lviv. As For Now, It Is Quiet (Stanom na zaraz tykho) was curated by Natalka Revko, Valeria Nasedkina, and Andrii Linik, and brought together more than 25 streamers from over twenty locations, including frontline cities and villages. Some transmissions were disrupted either directly by Russian attacks on Ukrainian cities or by internet instability caused by drone and missile strikes on civilian infrastructure.
The 2022 iteration of the project, Listen Live (Nazhyvo), was curated by Natalka Revko, Valeria Nasedkina, and teams from Soundcamp and Acoustic Commons. It was part of the larger artistic research laboratory Land to Return, Land to Care (Zemlia povernennia, Zemlia turboty), curated by Oksana Dovgopolova, Kateryna Semenyuk, and Natalka Revko. The Soundcamp team played a key role in the project by developing and distributing streamboxes to Ukrainian artists and providing crucial technical assistance to the Ukrainian team working in wartime conditions. Listen Live streamed from five cities, including Kyiv, Odesa, Dnipro, Lviv, and Uzhhorod.
The exhibition presents a selection of original streams, shortened and edited by Olya Zikrata to fit the exhibition format. Olya participated in the project as a researcher, writing about it for the Journal of Sonic Studies. She expresses her gratitude to all the Ukrainian artists who contributed to the exhibition, and to Natalka Revko for her guidance and support throughout the project.
Odesa daytime. Odesa region. Ukraine
2024–2026
Produced by Vasya Dmytryk
Vasya Dmytryk is an artist from Odesa working in sculpture and installation. His practice engages with urgent ecological and socioecological concerns. The stream was recorded during the daytime in an undisclosed location around Odesa. Following the Russian occupation and blockade of major Ukrainian port cities such as Mariupol, Berdiansk, and Kherson, Odesa has remained a crucial port for Ukraine, enduring daily attacks on civilian and maritime infrastructure.
Forest in forest. 2023 Luhansk recording in 2024 London.
2024–2026
Produced by Svitlana Dovbysheva
Svitlana Dovbysheva is a media artist and practitioner now based in London, UK. She worked as a local producer with international media during the ongoing war in Ukraine. This stream was produced in a forested area in London while simultaneously playing a recording from Serebriansky Forest in the Luhansk region. In her notes, Dovbysheva recalls the destruction of Serebriansky Forest, which was mined by the Russian military and hit with phosphorus munitions.
Donetsk region at night. Frontline village. Ukraine
2024–2026
Produced by Davyd Holodetskyi
Davyd Holodetskyi is a photographer and IT specialist who joined the Ukrainian defense forces shortly after Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. He participated in defense operations in Zaporizhzhia (2023) and in the Pokrovsk sector of the Donetsk region (2024), where he recorded this stream. The stream captures the atmosphere of life in Ukrainian defense positions over a 24-hour period. The selected excerpt was recorded at night.
Hidden Sounds. Dnipro. Ukraine. 2022
2022–2026
Produced by Maksym Ivanov
Maksym Ivanov is a flutist, composer, and conductor from Kryvyi Rih. He lives in Dnipro, where he works in academic music contexts. The stream is played during the curfew period from Ivanov’s apartment, serving him as a shelter. Due to the lack of dedicated shelters in Ukraine, people often seek refuge in their own homes. The stream captures the tense hours of waiting between Russian bombardments, where moments of quiet are charged with fear and anticipation.
Autumn Excursion. Odesa. Ukraine. 2022
2022–2026
Produced by Viktor Konstantinov
Viktor Konstantinov is a self-taught musician from Odesa, performing under the stage name Polje. He released his debut full-length album Kombinezon on the label система | system in May 2022, launching his own label, Liky Pid Nohamy, in September 2022. The portion of the stream presented at the exhibition was transmitted from Sotnykivska Sich, a historic Cossack cemetery located in Odesa and considered the largest Cossack necropolis in Ukraine.
Tending to the garden. Sumy region. Ukraine
2024–2026
Produced by Iryna Loskot
Iryna Loskot is a multidisciplinary artist working across ecological and socially engaged practices. Her streams were recorded in the village of Ivanivka, located 36 km from the frontline in the Sumy region. The selected excerpts focus on local practices of caring for homegrown gardens under wartime conditions. The garden becomes both a site of labor and an epistemological space of connection to land, zemlia, which has been burned, mined, and devastated by the invading army.
Wartime garden blasts. Sumy region. Ukraine
2024–2026
Produced by Iryna Loskot
Iryna Loskot is a multidisciplinary artist working across ecological and socially engaged practices. Her streams were recorded in the village of Ivanivka, located 36 km from the frontline in the Sumy region. The selected excerpts focus on local practices of caring for homegrown gardens under wartime conditions. The garden becomes both a site of labor and an epistemological space of connection to land, zemlia, which has been burned, mined, and devastated by the invading army.
Marsove pole. Air raid. Lviv. Ukraine
2024–2026
Produced by Olena Pohonchenkova
Olena Pohonchekova is a radio artist and music maker who also writes about music. She contributes to a bubblegum zine and other Ukrainian and European publishing platforms, while producing her own show on 20ft Radio. This stream was recorded in Marsove Pole, a memorial and cemetery in Lviv honoring Ukrainian defenders. The presented excerpt captures an air raid siren warning civilians of a Russian attack on the city. Across Ukraine, such sirens sound daily, with some municipalities experiencing air raids lasting up to 18 hours.
Kherson at night. Kherson region. Ukraine
2024–2026
Produced by Lena Samoilenko
Lena Samoilenko is a volunteer delivering medical supplies to the frontline city of Kherson, supporting elderly people and persons with disabilities. Kherson was under Russian occupation from March to November 2022 and, following its liberation, has continued to endure sustained Russian artillery and drone attacks, as well as so-called “human safari” operations targeting Ukrainian civilians. The stream records a typical night in Kherson, where more than 60,000 people continue to live under these conditions.
Digging day. Greater Kyiv area. Ukraine. 2022
2024–2026
Produced by Ivan Skoryna
Ivan Skoryna is an electronic music artist from Kyiv, who released his first album, damage, in 2019. During the early days of the full-scale Russian invasion, Skoryna joined a volunteer squad helping a local territorial defense unit, when Russian forces advanced into the suburbs of Kyiv after seizing control of large areas of Ukraine. The stream reenacts the act of digging trenches, a mundane but vital task undertaken by thousands of Ukrainian defenders.
Podil neighborhood. Balcony. Kyiv. Ukraine
2024–2026
Produced by Ksenia Yanus
Kseniia Yanus is a sound artist and music journalist from Donetsk, now based in Kyiv. She a contributor to the minimal wave project Bez Gruntu and the industrial noise project YouzMuzak, and a founder and curator of weekly events Noiz Shchoseredy (“Noise Each Wednesday”). Her stream for As For Now, It Is Quiet was recorded from her balcony in the Podil neighborhood of Kyiv in the summer 2024. An earlier stream from the project Listen Live was recorded around and inside the Rotunda Church in the city of Uzhhorod, where she was internally displaced in 2022.
Rotunda Church Shelter. Uzhhorod. Ukraine
2024–2026
Produced by Ksenia Yanus
Kseniia Yanus is a sound artist and music journalist from Donetsk, now based in Kyiv. She a contributor to the minimal wave project Bez Gruntu and the industrial noise project YouzMuzak, and a founder and curator of weekly events Noiz Shchoseredy (“Noise Each Wednesday”). Her stream for As For Now, It Is Quiet was recorded from her balcony in the Podil neighborhood of Kyiv in the summer 2024. An earlier stream from the project Listen Live was recorded around and inside the Rotunda Church in the city of Uzhhorod, where she was internally displaced in 2022.
Distance. Way. Connection. Lviv. Ukraine. 2022
2022–2026
Produced by Kseniia Shcherbakova
Kseniia Shcherbakova is a multimedia artist, hairdresser, fashion designer, and musician, working across projects that foster creative spaces and support internally displaced people (IDPs). She has founded a shared studio for IDPs in Lviv, a performative hair salon and a grunge studio, among other initiatives. Her stream was broadcast from wartime Lviv, where Shcherbakova lived as an IDP after fleeing her hometown of Odesa.