ARTISTS + PORTRAIT | VANESSA MARINO

FLETCHY BOY

Brings his background in choirs and classical piano to the dance floor, adding live vocals and piano to original house music. Fletchy writes for the club, and his original tunes alongside live emotive vocals/keys create a unique and energetic dance experience, aiming to create a moment of introspection within a night of ecstasy.

Originally from New Zealand, Fletchy arrived in Berlin writing RnB with his brother, but was quickly intoxicated with the way electronic music was consumed in Berlin clubs. Fletchy saw an opportunity to give people a taste of vulnerability amongst the pleasure, starting with weekly balcony concerts during the pandemic and building towards the big players in Berlin and beyond.

JUNO FRANCIS

Psychedelic and sparkling, hypnotic and dramatic: Juno Francis whisks us away to a hazy, glamorous world, enchanting our ears with their gentle voice and making us dance ecstatically. The musical lovechild of Angelica Ranåsen and Jacob Fagerstål combines elements from the 60s and 80s and brings them together in their band project, which lays us on a bed of silky-smooth synth pads with reverberating disco vibes and artful grooves. The Swedish duo has been sparkling through Berlin and the rest of the country for some time now – and soon through our forests as well.

AÉREA NEGROT

(9 October 1980 – 11 October 2023) was a Venezuelan performer, singer, electronic musician and remixer.

Negrot lived in Berlin, Germany. Her name was inspired by her fascination with travels and planes and her admiration of the voices of Toña La Negra and Olga Guillot. Her music is a pastiche of electronica, techno, cabaret and pop. She was also part of Hercules & Love Affair, and sings on several tracks of their second album Blue Songs. Her debut album, Arabxilla (2011), was released on BPitch Control.

AMULETO MANUELA

is a sound artist based in Berlin. Her process-based work – which includes the crafting of soundscapes, sound sculptures, DJ sets, listening collective practices and radio shows – all builds on listening as its core principle and arises as a context-driven response to the search for spaces of encounter. Born and bred in what we today know as Colombia, she addresses diaspora and identity questions in her work, with the will to unlearn and remember other ways of inhabiting our collective life experience.

RASHA NAHAS

Berlin-based Palestinian singer-songwriter and instrumentalist Rasha Nahas was born and raised in Haifa. Rasha has long been crafting a sound that moves seamlessly between the resonances of early rock ‘n’ roll and the reckless echoes of free jazz, complemented by her distinctive approach to songwriting, storytelling and performance. While Rasha’s musical projects are always an exploration into new territories, one staple in her works is her dedication to the narrative. Her debut album, ‘Desert’’ chronicled a personal and political journey from Palestine to Germany and back again. Rasha now turns to exploring themes of home, belonging, doubt, freedom and her relationship with her mother-tongue. Weaving between acoustic tracks inspired by her homeland to deeper electronic sounds influenced by a more chaotic urban life, Rasha takes the listener on a journey of self-discovery and introduces a fresh perspective on traditional and alternative Arabic music genres.
Credits: Producer: Lorenz Junghans, Styling: Esteban Pomar Festival: Pop Kultur Berlin 2023

PROJECT GESTALTEN

Head of the queer identifying VRAAA label and a celebrated protagonist in Berlin’s nightlife, both Projekt Gestalten is the identity of Brazilian producer and DJ, Diego Garcia. Adorning their DJ sets in various forms of white wedding dresses and baroque embroidery, Projekt Gestalten’s queer desire and bold feminine spirit flaunts a unrivaled promiscuity of tongue-in-cheek tawdry that’s pushing techno music and its artistic, sexual appetites that much further. Having found pride of place as an established entity controlling soundtracks at risque nightspots and parties the world over - namely making their way through London, St. Petersburg and New York to São Paulo and Paris - Diego Garcia’s emergence from the obscure raves of Berlin and its presiding internet culture now sees the artist, with a burgeoning discography and remix catalogue for the reckoning, as an out and loud center stage presence and trailblazing queer, music identity.
Photo for :KALTBLUT MAGAZINE
MUAH by Samantha Pottmaier

JAO MOON

Dancer / Performer
The experience of growing up in the marginalized periphery of Cartagena de Indias, Colombia, transformed Jao Moon into a political body. Living in an environment of constant resistance led Moon to question the prevailing social orders, which became the subject of Jao Moon's work. Jao Moon's works include Memory of Dislocation - Exactly the same in the opposite direction at Ballhaus Naunynstraße, The Lifetime of Fire - Manifestos for a Queer Futures at HAU, Everybody can be / Everybody can not be My at Ballhaus Naunynstraße. His collaborations and works have been shown at: Volksbühne, Sophiensaele, Studio Я Maxim Gorki Theater, Deutsche Oper Berlin and at the Centre Pompidou in Paris.

SENNERT

artist, musician, and sound & video engineer based in Berlin. His work spans audio, electronics, hacking, and art—combining technical innovation with creative expression. audio, electronics

He is currently collaborating with Henrik Schwarz and TEILE Elektronik on a groundbreaking electronic instrument set to launch in spring 2025.

Music under the artist name EFE EFE, available on all major streaming platforms.

CARLOTA GOMEZ

Architect and visual artist currently based in Berlin. Her art explores a new vision of reality, and reflects on aspects of this unstable and changing life. Her images, or as she calls them, 'Reveries', immerse us in an unreal and illusory world that invites us to look inside ourselves.

She has exhibited her work in solo and group shows. In addition she has also worked for the creation of images for events and book covers.

MOURNING STAGE Simon(e) Jaikiriuma Paetau and Carlos Motta

Mourning Stage (2022)

The two narrative works are complemented by the performative video Mourning Stage (2022, 16 min, directed together with Carlos Motta), whose protagonist is Paetau. Starting from drawings depicting various representations of feminized demons and the devil in hell, Paetau uses his body and facial expressions for a high-intensity ritual performance. It can be read as a work of mourning and anger at the Catholic Church's imposed colonial guidelines regarding sexual orientation and gender identity. At the same time, it is also a tribute to the resilience of the body fetishized and colonized by moral concepts.
Simon(e) Jaikiriuma Paetau and Carlos Motta