The Core

Khrystyna Kirik X Mark Bain

Sound and archisonic live performance

Khrystyna Kirik and Mark Bain explore how the force of war imprints itself into land. Using seismic data recorded during missile strikes and explosions in regions such as Kharkiv and Kherson, they translate this violence into vibration and sound — layering inaudible yet physically impactful low-frequency waves, sonic winds and frequency pools, dense drones, voice, and high frequency textures. Mark works with the architecture of the building, treating the structure of ∄ as a resonating instrument, while Khrystyna uses her voice with a throat mic and audified seismic recordings to create a vibrasonic experience of being engulfed by the earth.

Their performance, The Core, unfolds as a journey through five acts, descending from the surface into the depths of the ground. Each act, or layer, evokes not just geological shifts, but emotional ones — asking us to listen with our bodies to the imprints of violence that infuse the soil.

The performance aims to create a collective experience of embodied listening — not to shock, but to envelop. Sound resonates through walls, through bodies, through memory. The artists explore how violence reverberates beyond what is seen or reported, and how listening to its traces offers a way to reconnect to the fundamental entanglements and dependencies between humans and nature, including the living soil beneath us. This work is about destruction. But rather than hardening in response to trauma, it invites a softening — a shared space to reflect, dissolve, and re-emerge stronger. It asks: what does the land feel — and can we learn to feel with it?