IASA-BAAC 2026 Conference

Name: Relistening for Aural Justice: The Case of Alternative Community Radio in Ukraine
Start: 2026-10-20T12:00:00+0300
End: 2026-10-20T12:30:00+0300

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Relistening for Aural Justice: The Case of Alternative Community Radio in Ukraine

Tuesday October 20, 2026 12:00pm - 12:30pm EEST

Statehood hall: Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania

“They were singing about burning churches and the churches are burning now”
(20ft radio host, interview, 2022).

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has exposed the fragility of both material and living memory: destroyed archives and libraries, killed artists, knowledge from the occupied territories cut off from information exchange. In an almost instantaneous grassroot response, local musicians and music lovers joined broader shifts to preserve – but also search for gaps in Ukrainian cultural memory and history.

This presentation, based on broader fieldwork with online community radio practitioners in Ukraine, explores how such alternative sound media offers ways to listen to both the more distant and immediate pasts. From the re-releases of the niche 90s new wave and post-punk recordings to podcasts on Ukrainian poetry; rediscovering folklore music tradition; or archival recordings from the national radio and television studios, hosts and DJs recontextualise various aural traditions in contemporary popular and electronic music culture. By becoming an ad-hoc archive, and a platform to recontextualise historical recordings and musical traditions, analysed stations engage with two questions: how can the lesser explored pasts of Ukrainian music – and its absence in the mainstream public memory – connect the systematic epistemic pressure from the imperial centre(s) with the war; and how can the aural side of life at war be remembered in the future.

Read through Carolyn Birdsall’s notion of “earwitnessing”, Gascia Ozunian study of sonic memories of Armenian genocide survivors, Ana Maria Ochoa Gautier’s decolonial approach to the aural epistemologies, Maria Sonevytsky’s work indigenous archival silences in Crimean War, and Diana Taylor’s critique of an object-centric archival practices, I argue that such animation of a sonic memory is a way to relisten to the past from the wartime perspective in search for the useful knowledge – and a practice of sound-based epistemic justice seeking.

Speakers

Ieva Gudaitytė

Doctoral Research Fellow, University of Oslo

Dr Ieva Gudaitytė is a music, sound, and media researcher at the University of Oslo. Her recently defended doctoral work, Listening to War Through Community Radio in Ukraine and Beyond investigates the aural politics of alternative sound media communities in Ukraine and their partners across Eastern and Central Europe. Following her previous research and current involvement in the independent community radio scene in the region, her practice operates on the inte... Read More →

Tuesday October 20, 2026 12:00pm - 12:30pm EEST
Statehood hall: Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania

Short Presentation, In Person

Zoom link https://us06web.zoom.us/j/86939636277
Zoom password 289030

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IASA-BAAC 2026 Conference

Ieva Gudaitytė

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IASA-BAAC 2026 Conference

Ieva Gudaitytė

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