Now in its twelfth year, Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine has transformed from a singular rupture into an enduring state of crisis; from a suspension of law into a law of suspension. At a moment when grief and anger dominate public and private life, envisioning the future can feel out of reach. Solomiya No. 5—After Now reflects on hope and freedom not as a triumph, but as a complex, often compromised condition, entangled in inequality, shaped by trauma, and co-opted by power. By gathering voices from Yemen to Ukraine, from Georgia to Germany, we turn our attention to the present, to the conditions shaping the paths that futures may follow. With contributions from 21 artists, journalists and scientists, we navigate the deadlocks of communication and the paradox of imagining a post-war future within ongoing war. They hold space for doubt, contradiction, and the possibility of being wrong—through testimonies of soldiers and veterans, and expressions of embodied experiences of dancers, imagined chess figures, dopamine supermen, astronauts, and dried watermelons.

Now in its twelfth year, Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine has transformed from a singular rupture into an enduring state of crisis; from a suspension of law into a law of suspension. At a moment when grief and anger dominate public and private life, envisioning the future can feel out of reach. Solomiya No. 5—After Now reflects on hope and freedom not as a triumph, but as a complex, often compromised condition, entangled in inequality, shaped by trauma, and co-opted by power. By gathering voices from Yemen to Ukraine, from Georgia to Germany, we turn our attention to the present, to the conditions shaping the paths that futures may follow. With contributions from 21 artists, journalists and scientists, we navigate the deadlocks of communication and the paradox of imagining a post-war future within ongoing war. They hold space for doubt, contradiction, and the possibility of being wrong—through testimonies of soldiers and veterans, and expressions of embodied experiences of dancers, imagined chess figures, dopamine supermen, astronauts, and dried watermelons.