Future Ruins by Zosia Hołubowska to be released on November 23, 2026
Zosia Hołubowska explores the sonic afterlives of nuclear testing
Out November 23, 2026 on our website, Bandcamp and streaming platforms.
Zosia Hołubowska’s sophomore album is an exploration of the Anthropocene, nuclear legacies, and the invisible forces that continue to shape our planet long after human intervention has ceased. Originally conceived as a nine-channel sound installation for Testing Grounds, Katrin Hornek’s exhibition at Secession Vienna in 2024, the work finds a new form as a recorded album, transforming an immersive spatial experience into a series of speculative sonic landscapes.
Built from digital synthesis, field recordings, and voice, the album moves through desolate coastlines, abandoned infrastructures, and imagined landscapes marked by the passage of geological time. Its sound worlds evoke places where the consequences of human activity remain embedded in the environment, unfolding beyond the limits of immediate perception. Radiation, extraction, and nuclear power become both material and metaphorical presences, haunting a world in which the boundaries between the natural and the artificial are increasingly difficult to define.
Rather than offering a conventional narrative, Hołubowska develops an immersive composition in which sound becomes a means of navigating uncertain futures and confronting unresolved pasts. Shifting textures, subtle transformations, and fragments of voice create an atmosphere suspended between documentary traces and speculative fiction. The result invites attentive listening, encouraging a deeper awareness of the temporal scales and ecological consequences that shape our understanding of the present.
The album also raises questions of responsibility and remembrance. What remains after the experiments, the infrastructures, and the political decisions that have altered landscapes for generations? How can we conceive of the long-term stewardship of radioactive materials, whose effects extend far beyond human lifespans? Through its carefully constructed soundscapes, Hołubowska approaches these questions not as abstract scientific or political problems, but as experiences to be felt, imagined, and listened to.
Developed in collaboration with Karin Pauer, Sabrina Holzer, and other performers in the context of the original installation, the work occupies a space between sound art, experimental composition, and ecological reflection. The track “No Songs”, co-developed with Karin Pauer and based on a poem by Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner, brings an additional dimension to the album, connecting its sonic explorations to the human and cultural consequences of nuclear histories.
Based in Vienna, Zosia Hołubowska is a sound artist, researcher, producer, and queer music activist whose practice explores the intersections of sound, memory, identity, and more-than-human relationships. Their work spans sound installations, performances, radio, and composition, often engaging with the politics of archives and the possibilities of alternative forms of knowledge. As a member of the feminist collective Oramics and founder of Sounds Queer?, Hołubowska also works at the intersection of electronic music, sound art, and queer activism.
Their solo project, Mala Herba, draws deeply on Slavic traditions, magic, and demonology. Its songs explore the darker side of club music, combining ritual ambient, deconstructed techno, and post-folk.
In 2023, Hołubowska released Singing Warmia on the Hungarian electronic music label Exiles. The album addresses the absence of family archives and the difficulty of establishing a relationship with one’s birthplace. Instead of family stories, it draws on photographs of the artist’s favourite places around Olsztyn, the capital of the Warmia region, which were sonified using processes developed by the artist.
Hołubowska has performed at Mumok in Vienna and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. Their work has been presented at Brut and Secession in Vienna, Galeria Arsenał in Białystok, and the Research Pavilion in Venice.
Community of Grieving, recorded with Julia Giertz, was presented at Unsound in Kraków in 2020 and subsequently performed live at Unsound in 2021, Elevate Festival in Graz in 2022, and Dark Mofo in Tasmania in 2023.
An invitation to listen to the traces we leave behind, and to imagine the futures they continue to shape.
Credits
Release date: November 23, 2026
Composed, recorded, and mixed by Zosia Hołubowska
“No Songs” co-developed with Karin Pauer, based on a poem by Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner
Originally composed for a nine-channel speaker environment in the context of Testing Grounds, Katrin Hornek’s exhibition at Secession Vienna in 2024, in collaboration with Karin Pauer, Sabrina Holzer, and Zosia Hołubowska, with live performance by Karin Pauer, Cat Jimenez, Mani Obeya, and Martina De Dominicis
Bonus track “Sea Breath”: voice by Alex Franz Zehetbauer, text by Katrin Hornek and Sabina Holzer
Artwork: Julia Witas
Artist photograph for this article: Filip Preis
Published and released by Elektramusic Berlin – Paul Clouvel