Wednesday, May 21st at 8pm EST, ISSUE Project Room and Time Based are pleased to stream a new collaboration between Kyiv-based composer Oleksii Podat and New York-based sound artist Suzanne Thorpe. The duo’s new work will be available on ISSUE’s website and Time Based's YouTube channel (4pm EET) as part of ongoing activations of the Distant Pairs Series. Throughout May 2025, ISSUE and Time Based will co-present three digital commissions uniting artists based in Kyiv and New York. Working through the simultaneity of war and multiple crises, these three pairs engage in a collaborative creation that highlights physical distance - yet reveals a deeply layered interdependence.
Time Zone Response (Відповідь часового поясу) initiates an emergent call and response with the sounds and experiences of home, in different time zones. Focusing on their immediate surroundings and engaging with them through the body of sound, the artists use the medium of field recording to capture the spaces they are living in at this moment, as great uncertainty—both in Ukraine and the U.S.—disrupts their sense of the future. “Listening together, we hear place, vulnerability, obstruction, frustration, fear, heart, solace, understanding, helplessness, joy and despair, all in process; contextualized, conjoined, scrambled, mediated and remediated, unfolding. With Time Zone Response we agitate muddled beginnings sounded in collective listening.”
Oleksii Podat is an avant-garde composer and producer from Sloviansk, Ukraine, whose work bridges experimental soundscapes with an intuitive pop sensibility. Engaging with both small and large musical forms, his compositions feature prominently in audiovisual art projects and films. A distinctive voice in Ukraine’s experimental music scene, Oleksii is known for his radical approaches to sound production, blending avant-garde playfulness with raw sonic intensity. His self-proclaimed genre, melodic noise, has become a defining element of his artistic identity, pushing the boundaries of contemporary composition.
Suzanne Thorpe is an electroacoustic flutist, sound artist and scholar. She couples critical listening with acoustic ecology, improvisation and technology to craft relational and immersive sound engagements that reveal dynamics within human cultures and nature's systems. She has performed and exhibited internationally and has contributed to a significant discography as a founding member of the critically acclaimed American group Mercury Rev. She has received numerous grants, awards and residencies, and has had the distinct pleasure of performing with a heady roster of wonderful performers and improvisers worldwide. Thorpe is currently Assistant Professor of Sound Studies at Manhattan University, a Visiting Scholar at NYU, and remains co-founder and director of TECHNE, a nonprofit arts-education organization dedicated to dismantling social and cultural barriers in technical learning environments.
