Dis Fig
GOETHE-INSTITUT X SOMERSET HOUSE STUDIOS RESIDENCY 2024

Somerset House Studios continue its annual collaboration with Goethe-Institut London on an international residency programme to support a Germany-based female or non-binary artist working with music and sound, this year in partnership with CTM, Berlin’s festival for adventurous music and art.

From February 2024, vocalist, performer, and DJ Dis Fig (Felicia Chen) joins the community for a three-month residency, with a focus on developing new processes of production and performance which will delve more into improvisation. Dis Fig’s practice explores cinematic sonic expressions with weighty emotional intensity.

This residency supports the presentation of a new work commissioned by Somerset House Studios in collaboration with Goethe-Institut London and CTM Festival in Assembly, Somerset House Studios’ experimental sound, music and performance series.

Returning for its fourth edition, Assembly continues its focus on producing original live works developed in residence and through partnerships. March’s multi-day programme will feature a series of new commissions, putting sound and music in dialogue with a variety of disciplines.

Following its premiere at Assembly, this new work by Dis Fig will travel to CTM Festival in 2025.


 

Bio

Dis Fig (Felicia Chen) is a a producer, vocalist, performer, and DJ, who creates cinematic sonic expressions with weighty emotional intensity. As an artist who has long resisted simple categorization, she cut her teeth operating in New York City's scrappy DIY and experimental club scenes, channeling a passion for pop music, metal, rap, and global dance forms into unpredictable multi-layered DJ sets that harmonized with the US East Coast's relentless noise. When she released her debut album PURGE on the PTP imprint in 2019 it substantiated her artistic voice, refining her vast pool of influences into a cathartic distillate that oozes between vulnerable beauty and retching chaos. "This ain’t just your run-of-the-mill wall of power electronics and angry screams," wrote The Quietus.

As a DJ she's become notorious for her curiosity and restless energy, but as a live performer she edges away from the club completely, using her acrobatic voice and entire body to transmit emotional complexity that's deeper than language. 

During her 3-month residency, Dis Fig will focus on new processes of production and performance which will delve more into improvisation, developing a new work which will premiere at Assembly, Somerset House Studios’ experimental sound, music and performance series in March 2024, before traveling to CTM Festival in 2025.