NFNR & Denys Torchylevskyi: Strength and Fragility
More than half a year after the full-scale Russian invasion, music and art made no sense to me. I could not create anymore. Denys Torchylevskyi and I remained in Kyiv and were actively engaged in volunteering and supplying all necessary stuff from abroad to the Ukrainian Armed Forces. The very desire to write music took on a sense of guilt. After six months, the first attempts to return to the composition sounded like horror, anger and hatred in the roar of synthesizers – disgusting and scary. I abandoned those attempts. It felt like I would never be able to write music again. Periodically, Denys was documenting the surrounding reality with the phone camera and handycam for personal usage, and thus archived some interesting material. Finally, after almost a year, in order to heal psychologically and support myself, I decided to return to music creation. These are the first tracks written since the beginning of the full-scale war.
Composition „Fragility“ which accompanies the video work „Lukashivka“ is about the true understanding of fragility of life that comes with war, with the fall of the first enemy missile near our house, when all material objects become unimportant at once. The lives of Ukrainians are still being broken as simply as glass every day…
Video essay „Electricity“ to NFNR’s composition „Sprotyv“ (mean. `resistance` in Ukrainian) is the footage of darkness into which Ukrainian cities, de-energized by Russian missiles, plunged. Darkness engulfed the capital as well. Despite the tragic circumstances and the initial fear, as if the entire civilization had collapsed, the darkness began to attract at some point: the city lit only by car headlights, the play of shadows, the pace of life slowing down, relaxation, flame of candles, funny situations in dark supermarkets…
Denys Torchylevskyi graduated from the Kyiv State University of Cinema and Television. He works with stage lighting, video art and documentary.
NFNR is a stage name of electronic musician, cinema and theater composer Olesia Onykiienko. NFNR is a Shape Platform artist 2022/2023, a participant of Ars Electronica 2018, Skaņu Mežs 2022 etc. She is a curator of an experimental platform for women in Ukraine `Womens Sound` and `Institute of Sound`. Since the start of the full-scale war, she continues living in Ukraine, collecting donations and arranging supplies for Ukrainian Armed Forces.