An architect of textured, neo-ambient soundscapes, Dania explores both sound and identity, focusing specifically on how the latter has fractured in a post-colonial world. Born in Baghdad, raised in Tasmania, and now based in Barcelona, she moves between cultures and continents, her amorphous creative vision directly tied to her transient existence. The founder of the experimental platform Paralaxe Editions, Dania divides her time between Spain and the remote corners of Australia, where she works as an emergency doctor. Her musical practice, however, is preoccupied with harmonics and tonality, weaving together manipulated vocal fragments, processed field recordings and meditative atmospheres.
Hi Dania. When I first approached you, you mentioned you were busy working in Australia as an emergency doctor. So, in addition to being a musician and a label founder, you also work in medicine. Can you talk about these seemingly distant professions in terms of lifestyle and modus operandi? Do these two career paths influence each other? If so, how?
Hi. Yes, Iām an emergency doctor. I work in remote areas of Australia where about 40% of my patients are indigenous Australians, who have extremely poor health outcomes. I see diseases that have not existed in European populations since the 1800s. A lot of my work is stabilising patients and organising patient transfer flights to bigger hospitals. My lifestyle is quite split; I spend about half the time working in Australia and half the time in Spain, where I focus on music and art. The lifestyles are very different. When Iām in Australia, my days are fixed, structured, long, and challenging, and I have terrible insomnia. I often donāt have the emotional bandwidth or energy to do anything creative after hours, although sometimes Iāll bring my flute along with me.
In Spain, the tempo is different. In a way, my brain is always on, as there are no fixed workdays, so a lot of time is spent thinking, reading and creating. It takes a while for me to switch into this mode of operating, as Iām used to having immediate and tangible outcomes from a day of work at the hospital. In Barcelona, I spend my days either in my studio or at home experimenting with sounds and machines, finding different ways to extract sounds from objects.
The two aspects of my life donāt often intersect, but sometimes there are moments, like when I listen to someoneās chest with my stethoscope, interpreting the different frequencies and rhythms of their internal organs to make a diagnosis. The body is an instrument. Iām still thinking of collecting these sounds, but they might be too medically coded to be artistically viable, although Milton Graves did a lot of work with the human body and rhythm, so who knowsāmaybe Iāll explore it in the future. I do sometimes draw on human experiences. l just wrote a song called āHeart Shaped Burnā about a patient of mine who was scalded with hot oil by her partner. He left a perfectly shaped heart-shaped burn on her chest. She was initially very intimidated by the hospital environment, but I broke the ice by pointing out the strange burn. I think we both understood the dark irony of the situation.
One thing is that sometimes I see performing complicated emergency procedures as similar to performing live. Take inserting a drain into someoneās chest. There are certain steps to follow, buttons to push and an order to the āperformanceā, but there is also an improvisational aspect, where you need to think quite quickly and creatively on your feet when things change or when there are complications.
You were born in Baghdad, raised in Tasmania and are now based in Barcelona. Your multicultural background and upbringing, as well as your current situation, do not allow for stasis and conformity. I guess fluidity and openness are embedded in you and your work. Can you tell us more about your background?
Yes, I was born in Baghdad, and I left as a child during the Iran-Iraq war. Most of my family left as refugees; we were against the Western proxy war and Saddamās regime. I have never been back to Iraq since then, and have only ever met a handful of other relatives. This has fundamentally coloured the way I see the world.
I grew up in Tasmania in the ā90s, when there were very few Arab immigrants. It was overwhelmingly white, and we were the only Arab family in the town where I lived. Over time, more immigrants arrived, but we were alone for a while. I think Tasmania is quite different now. I finished my medical degree there and then moved to Western Australia.
After a few years of medical training, I felt this overwhelming urge to do something creative. I was spiritually defeated, lost, and was struggling with medical burnout. I eventually decided to take a year off to travel and clear my mind. At that point, I wanted to visit some music festivals, most notably SĆ³nar. What was meant to be just a visit to Barcelona has turned into more than 13 years of being here and making it my home. And in a strange twist of fate, Iām actually playing at SĆ³nar this year.
You also run the Paralaxe Editions label. What led you to establish it, and what kind of music are you searching for?
I started Paralaxe in 2014 with the idea of publishing books and making limited-edition tapes. When I first came to Barcelona, I fell into the free jazz scene, where people were home dubbing and exchanging tapes at zine fairs in squats, and concerts were being held in printing workshops. It was all very DIY. I was really into the scene, so thatās how I got into tapes. I make limited-edition tapes, but not really that many each year, as my time is quite limited for obvious reasons. I donāt run the label the way others might, with release schedules and planning or a label manifesto. I donāt hold onto artists’ masters or put music on DSPs; itās more about creating beautiful objects by artists I admire.
You’ve also created conceptual works, such as Replica – Relic, five custom-built instruments based on colonial acquisitions of Mesopotamian artefacts from the British Museum.Can you talk about this project?
The British Museum is one of the only places where I can access my heritage. This institution is a monument to British Colonialism, funded by the British governmentāwhich also funded the Iran-Iraq war that I escaped. I visited their gift shop once, where they were selling replicas for 2000 pounds. Not only are they showing off their imperial exploits, but they are continuing to profit from them. It really made me think about consent, access and gatekeeping of cultural heritage.
So, I decided to make my own replicas. I went to the British museum on a busy day and followed a tour group. I took up to 500 pictures of certain artefacts on my phone. Using those pictures, along with photos from the museumās website, I was able to extrapolate and create 3D prints, which became moulds for ceramic replicas. These replicas have metal discs embedded in them that will generate electrical impulses on touch, which are then converted into MIDI signals. Essentially, they are ceramic samplers. Some of the replicas appear incomplete because the photos were taken of objects that are behind glass, so you canāt get a full 3D viewābut I like that. Itās a reminder that there are both real and metaphorical barriers when it comes to accessing history and culture, and that a pervasive, imbalanced power dynamic still exists in that realm.
Iām debuting Replica – Relic at SĆ³nar festival this year, where I will be playing the instruments and triggering manipulated samples to create a kind of alternate-reality soundscape, imagining how Southern Iraq might sound if it had never been adulterated by colonial interference. It will be an AV show, and I’m working with Mau MorgĆ³, a Catalan artist, who will be interpreting the work visually.
In October, you released a collaborative album with Portland-based guitarist Ilyas Ahmed entitled Enough For Me To Remain. Can you talk about this album?
Ilyas and I have both released on Geographic North, an experimental label based in Atlanta, and weāve been circling each otherās orbit for a while. Heās an incredible guitarist. He sent me some guitar work that he had recorded on his iPhone, which became the framework for my voice. It was actually a very simple album to make, as we didnāt really edit the guitar parts. They were already quite beautiful bones for songs, and I only wanted to gently layer a few additional elements to let everything breathe. The title of the album is āEnough For Me to Remain,ā which is taken from a poem by Palestinian writer Fadwa Tuquan.
What themes and subjects are important to you right now?
Big question. There are a few things on my mind right now. One is gradients, the in-between spaces and people. I just finished an album inspired by a particular flower that only blooms at night called the Japanese Snake Gourd flower, which I low-key became obsessed with. Itās so beautiful and alien, but it only unfurls at night. I started to see parallels between this flower and people who operate and thrive in the in-between, and those people who, despite societal norms and regulations, bloom in the shadows. I work a lot of night shifts at the hospital and I see a flip side of society, a parallel ecosystem.
Iāve also been reading about decolonisation of music and the arts. I just watched this incredible lecture by Palestinian musician Sami Abu Shamays, who grew up in the States, studied Western classical music, but later returned to the Middle East to study Arabic music. I suppose this goes back to my thoughts about gradientsāhow European music exists on a strict Pythagorean 12-note scale, while a lot of other music exists on a gradient, with microtones, taking advantage of the in-between. Perhaps people are microtonal too, not always fitting the labels assigned to them or even the ones they assign to themselves.
Of course, Iām constantly thinking a lot about the Middle East, immigration, borders, covert power and cultural distortion. These issues are inextricably linked to who I am as an Arab and a war refugee. I recently picked up a book called āThe Case for Open Bordersā by John Washington after watching this lecture, which focuses mostly on immigration in the US but its arguments can be extrapolated to a more international context.
Lastly, Iām a doctor, so I naturally think a lot and read a lot about international public healthcare policies, but if I start talking about that, this interview will be about 10 pages long.
Finally, can you tell us about what youāre working on at the moment and planning for this year?
Iām currently working on Replica – Relic, which is quite an intense process. Just today, I was in the ceramic studio of my friend Helena Civit Kopeinig, who is helping me create these instruments. At the same time, Iām composing the music and thinking about how this would translate into a live show. Iām always searching for samples that I can manipulate and shape into a body of work. Later this year, Iāll be heading to EMS studios in Stockholm to work more on the composition, which I hope to turn into an album. Iām thinking of trying to tune their Buchla to a microtonal scale.
Iām also working on a performance called objecto ā territorio, which Iāll present at an art gallery (La Capella) in Barcelona in October. Iām collecting objects from different immigrant communities in Barcelona and will extract sounds from them during the performance, using sound as a dataset to map and define a space.
Next month, I have a collaborative tape coming out with Italian experimental duo Rosso Polare, and I have a solo record coming out in the latter half of the year, which is more art rock and trip-hop. Iām also working on a video for that record with my friends Valentina Alvardo Matos, an amazing Venezuelan experimental filmmaker, and Carolina Spencer, who creates incredible alien floral arrangements.
In between all that, Iāll be going back to Australia to work as a doctor, with a couple of residencies splattered here and there, to be confirmed.
Interview Lucia Udvardyova
Photo Cecilia Diaz Betz