Grounded Outer Space People

Anton Kats (* 1983, Kherson) presents Grounded Outer Space People, an ephemeral and ever-changing artist residency and ensemble exploring the relationship between transmigration and music.

During a week-long program at KW, sonic, textual, visual and performative material is developed through improvisation and shared listening, shaped by the contexts and references the artists Hiromu Seifert, Natalie Greffel and Nima Séne bring. The open studio invites the public into the collective process, culminating in a final concert at KW Institute for Contemporary Art at the end of the residency.

Interdisciplinary and open-ended in nature, Grounded Outer Space People is built on Kats’ multi-faceted practice, spanning music, radio, installation, and publication. The project draws on the artist's ongoing articulation of “sonic antifascism” and on Ukrainian cosmism, approaching its imaginative and planetary thinking through sound. Inspired, among others, by artist and philosopher Fedir Tetyanych (1942–2007) and Chicago Boys: While we were singing, they were dreaming by Hiwa K, the ensemble situates music as a practice of implication across bodies, histories, and geographies.