An interdisciplinary, two-part project by Yulia Arsen that explores nostalgia, ghost futures, and collective memory through the lens of creepy post-Soviet rituals.

First part is the solo dance performance, “Do You Really Wanna Live Forever”, created by choreographer Yulia Arsen in collaboration with experimental musician Wassily Bosch, where movements echo folk dance, Soviet athletic propaganda aesthetics, and postures shaped by cheap drug use. These collide with fragmented sound — distorted pop hits, ambient noise, and personal artifacts — creating a purgatorial space where time feels frozen, as if the artists are trapped inside a memory capsule — or have become that capsule themselves. At the heart of this experience lies an inability to truly express oneself or break free. This work embodies the absurdity of existence, where repetition, irony, and sincerity merge into a melancholic, yet strangely optimistic, loop.

The second part — “Utrennik” — is a multidisciplinary collective work by nine artists, where sound takes center stage — merging with video and performance into a form of total installation. It delves into the “utrennik” — a Soviet-era children’s “morning performance”, a ritual where cheap costumes and scripted magic barely concealed a deeper emptiness. For many who grew up in post-Soviet countries, the “utrennik” became a symbol of exhausting repetition, creation without creativity, happiness without hope. Here, it reemerges as a metaphor for broken promises and futures that never arrived.

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Do You Really Wanna Live Forever

Concept, performance: Yulia Arsen
Sound: Wassily Bosch
Outside eye: Anna Kozonina
Costumes: Masha Mirzoian

Utrennik

Concept, performance: Yulia Arsen
Sound, music curation: Wassily Bosch
Sound: Natalya Petrikowa
Sound, design: Pavel Pakhomov
Performer: Asya Ashman
Video: bottom escape
Costumes: Masha Mirzoian
Installation, performance:
Oleg Eliseev and Jenya Kukoverov (EliKuka)
Outside eye: Anna Kozonina

Production: Bedroom community association

Co-productions: Théâtre de Vanves, Point Ephémère x cheville, Voices Berlin, Site Art Projects, Franco-German Transfabrik Fund for the Performing Arts.

Part of the Voices Berlin Festival

Tickets: https://voices.berlin/en/event/forever-lost

(DE) https://voices.berlin/de/event/forever-lost