Pride Party

Saturday, 22th June, 23:00–05:00

Coproduction: Ljubljana Pride Association and Clubs Tiffany and Monokel

Club Monokel, DJ program: Deena Abdelwahed, Warrego Valles, Volk and Club Tiffany, Dj program: Dj Naj

DEENA ABDELWAHED

After starting out in Tunisia as part of the World Full of Bass collective, Deena went on to Toulouse to play with the Arabstazy collective. She met the InFiné team in 2016, quickly securing a range of tour dates from Concrete – of which she is still a resident – to Boiler Room, Villette Sonique, Wet for Me, CTM (“Hail Mother Internet“), Room for Resistance, Saüle (Berghain), and Rewire Festival. Deena undoubtedly put Tunisia on the electronic music map, but it would be off-topic to categorize her on the basis of her origins alone: Deena is the archetype of a globalized generation of internet natives for whom borders are an outdated concept. This self-taught musician also didn’t wait to have her knowledge delivered to her on a silver platter.

What Deena wants is to discover the sound of the future, and regardless of geographic origins, all are welcome to the mixing board. Her DJ sets throw open the doors of her research laboratory, on the razor’s edge of club music and avant-garde, where only as-yet-unheard rhythms on the outer reaches of sub-cultures are allowed to come and play. The foundation for this future that she is building is a wake-up call – an alarm, even – tuned to break the pathological indifference ravaging our jaded times: novelty and audacity are required to get even a shot at a place in Deena’s transgender, hybrid playlists. A human and artistic sincerity that is without fail feeds her work as a composer, which should be distinguished from her DJing endeavours. Because while the DJ draws from all that the world has to offer, it is the inner landscapes that her composer alter-ego explores. Traces of the history from which Deena formed herself as an artist and a person are thus uncovered: a self-construction made of frustrations and constraints, borne of retrograde mindsets which are not the prerogative of either the East or the West, she tirelessly strives to expose and break down.

Her debut album, «Khonnar», released in November 2018, synthesizes a new tipping point between North and South, a post-revolution response from a connected generation that is in the process of emancipation; the decline in the influence of the West, but also of the patriarchy, a new decolonization… Deena is the figurehead of a new world order of musical creation. «Khonnar» is the manifesto of a generation that does not seek to please or to conform, but which pushes our backs to the wall, and abruptly takes back control of its identity, with all the inherent losses and chaos.