Follow the Fellow #7

How do you relate to things? What makes you care about them? Take this branch. It’s a seemingly random chunk of wood stripped of its natural environment, turned into a flattened digital image, and put against an artificial background. It doesn’t say much in itself, does it?

But let me tell you a story.

The other day I spoke to Dasha Podoltseva, a brilliant Kyiv-based graphic designer and a longtime Kyiv Contemporary Music Days collaborator. I asked Dasha to create visuals for »Find and Relate,« the event I’m organizing with KCMD in Berlin this September. Here’s how I explained the title to Dasha: ›relate‹ in this case is used in its two meanings: to tell (as in »relate a story«) and to empathize (as in »I can relate«); while »find« refers to the networking aspect of the event: come and find someone to relate to.

»Find and Relate« will feature a conversation between Liza Sirenko, co-founder of The Claquers, Ukraine’s first independent media about classical music, and Jeff Brown, editor at VAN Magazine. I expect the discussion to open up to the audience so that we can share our positions and hear the others in an informal, friendly setting. Find interlocutors and relate our experiences to each other. This may sound trite but I sincerely think we need more live conversations like that. Ones in which colleagues from different countries and contexts can talk without an agenda, where there is no subject-object dynamic, and we can simply speak our minds about things we believe matter. »Find and Relate« will not be another panel discussion »on Ukraine topics« — it’s a get-together for music professionals from Berlin and Kyiv (mostly) to hang out and, well, try to relate. Or not — and that’s also fine.

But I digress. I gave Dasha the assignment and she came back to me with a surprising solution. In Dasha’s design, an enigmatic pine branch became the compositional centerpiece. It’s not just any branch, though: first of all, it’s a stick, and you gotta respect that. As kids, we all used to find sticks, bring them home, and treat them with utmost care. Well, nowadays you don’t have to be a kid to flex your stick: you can post it on Official Stick Reviews and have 2 million connoisseurs praise it. This particular stick, however, is even more special: it fell from a tree damaged by a Shahed 136 kamikaze drone during a recent Russian attack on Kyiv. In Dasha’s words: »A friend of mine found it in her yard — talk about find and relate.«

This week marks the third anniversary of my departure from home. I haven’t seen Ukraine since 2021, I haven’t experienced evacuation, air raids, and blackouts firsthand. Whatever I know about the full-scale war I know from my friends, family, and the news. So, in a way, I’m not that different from many Berliners who have simply been emotionally and intellectually invested in what’s going on east of their border. And that tells me that somehow we can all relate. Perhaps, like me, you feel something of a slight tingling in your chest when you see that bare pine stick from Kyiv that you’ve never held in your hands?

Come to »Find and Relate« and let’s hang out! It won’t be all talk: we will also have a concert by incredible Mathis Mayr of ensemble mosaik playing his own selection of works by contemporary Ukrainian composers. I don’t think Mathis needs much of an introduction but I can’t refuse the pleasure of sharing this recording of his performance of Ralf Hoyer’s »Tristan, displaced« (2021):

»Find and Relate« is part of inm’s Month of Contemporary Music 2024. It will take place on 19 September, at 18:00 at Morphine Raum (Köpenickerstraße, 147). Free entry.

»Find and Relate« is – as well as this column – made possible as part of the Weltoffenes Berlin fellowship program of the Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Gesellschaftlichen Zusammenhalt.