Human?.. — Mariia&Magdalyna

"Human?.." - the new album from actresses Mariiа&Magdalyna , in collaboration with electronic musician Khrystyna Kirik.

The album includes 9 musical compositions originally created for the stage performance
"HUMAN? ..." in the first months of the full-scale russian invasion of Ukraine.

This is a reflection on what musicians and all Ukrainians alike faced on February 24, 2022. Meditative melodies, transforming into broken tempo to emphasize the words. The heart follows the melody, slows down and speeds up, and together with the performers experiences the disintegration of the past, the destruction of the world, and reflections on what the future will be. The album uses both classical and electronic musical instruments, alongside both singing and spoken-word recitations.

Mariiа&Magdalyna is the duo of Marusia and Nadiia, who have been working together for 9 years. Over these years, they were involved in more than 10 projects, including being members of the social rave band "TseSho", and actresses in the Dakh theater. In 2020, the duo launched a project for theatrical liturgies, combining biblical texts with their own experience in performance, empathetic reflections, and modern sound.

Nadiia: "Marusia and I are very close. Intimacy for me is when there are many points of contact between two people, and they can become close because they feel each other. We are united by common views on art as a way of life. We have similar questions and we are interested in exploring them together through theater and music.”

Also, within the structure of the Dakh theater, the duo have their own Dakh School studio, where, at the intersection of theater, music and philosophy, they explore the self, its emotions and consciousness. Their students learn to work with the body using a non-traditional approach to acting, where the actor is responsible for their own actions, treating empathy as a part of love. Their duet performances are also based on these ideas.

On February 24, 2022, russia launched a full-scale military invasion of Ukraine. This marked the beginning of the most brutal phase of the bloody 8-year war against the Ukrainian people.

In March, Marusia and Nadiia went to Lutsk, in western Ukraine, and created a music residency where they grappled with the current situation in which their old world had fallen, and no new one seemed to be coming in its place.

"Human?.." is a musical journey: a compilation of daily diaries written during the war alongside texts from the Bible. With these texts in hand, over the span of 2 weeks, the artists explored topics of love, acceptance, forgiveness, anger, sin, and hatred.

Nadiia: "In our case, the exploration area was the diaries that Marusia and I wrote, starting from the seventh day of the war. When the initial stress lifted, we began to look for what could give us a foundation of stability, what we could rely on. So we turned to ourselves, to our feelings and experiences, writing our streams of consciousness.

The biblical texts are the basis. For me, this is a book which inscribes basic ideas and constructs of human behavior and perception systems. It is very interesting to work with such deep, multi-layered texts. They have to be deciphered, as it were, sometimes reading one text a hundred times; on the 101st time you really feel the essence, you get to it, and it gives strength."

For this album, the duo were joined by double-bassist and electronic musician Khrystyna Kirik, who translated her emotions into sound and created the music for the performance. Chaotic, arrhythmic melodies that absorb the pain of the new reality.

Nadiia: "Marusia and I have been working together for 9 years. As with any relationship, opening up to new people is sometimes difficult. But, fortunately, something coincided again: Khrystyna chose us, and we chose her. This is not a project with a guest musician, this is a collaboration, this is an attempt to trust, again. We explored mutually painful questions. Khrystyna, in fact, was the curator of all the main recording processes, for which we are infinitely grateful to her."

Artist Olena Shykina also worked on the project, creating posters for the album and visuals for the performance.

The four women toured Europe from May to October, performing in more than 10 cities: Hanover, Budapest, Graz, Hamburg, Oslo, Cologne, Leipzig, Magdeburg and Berlin. Prior to that, they toured within Ukraine, and they plan to repeat these performances.

Listen to the album "HUMAN?.." online

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Thanks to Kosmos Tabir and Stepan Kulyna for the live video

Thanks for lifelong support:
Ievgen Bernos
Bohdan Yaremchuk
Anna Shevchenko
Vladyslav Tarasyuk
Iaroslav Vakatsienko

Thanks to Benjamin for translation

Many thanks for the opportunity to use the programs:
'Resolume Arena' by Resolume
'TouchDesigner' by Derivative

Visuals - Olena Shykina
Music - Khrystyna Kirik
Mixing - Khrystyna Kirik
Mastering - Taras Kozak
Studio - uncovered music space
Web page development - Sinopa

A lot of love to:
Kosmos Tabir
Dakh Theater
Dakh School

Gratitude to Taras Prokhasko for the text from the novel "NeprOsti”