A Queering Audiotopia of the 1990s: The Women, the Freaks, the Ukraine

• In Event: Queer Encounters: Defying Imperial and Racial Violence

Abstract

Acknowledging the largely DIY, and intimate, operation of Ukrainian popular culture of the 1990s — a site of hope and anxiety, and locating the Utopian impulse in the landscape of the real (following Jameson), this study focuses on the Ukrainian audiotopia (to draw from Josh Kun) of the 1990s. It tries to identify, and grasp, the queer ways to imagine a Ukraine-to-come, against the binary workings of the apparatus of area and in a condition of the (post-imperial) event of post-Sovietness.
To this end the study mobilizes songs, performances, and authors coming from diverse scenes such as anarcho-punk, pop, or mainstream singer-songwriting and explores a queering transgressive stance in Braty Hadiukiny, Sestrychka Vika, Skryabin, and Iryna Bilyk who work with and around Ukraine’s uncertainty and Ukraine’s imperative Utopian desire.

Author

• Iuliana Matasova, Independent Scholar