06/10/2024 – 12:51
Yarin Ilovich was at his mixing desk in the early hours of October 7, 2023, when the terrorist attack by the Palestinian group Hamas began. A year later, he recalls the moment when, suddenly, the music stopped. DJ Artifex – Yarin Ilovich’s stage name – has traveled a lot around the world in recent months. In September he was in the United States, in August he played in Brazil and, shortly after, he flew to Berlin.
Artifex has also just released a new song: Cyber fever, which celebrates a “magical world”, as a computerized voice announces, more colorful, beautiful and happy than reality. When it plays, Artifex dances and jumps on stage to the beats. Anyone who doesn’t know what he experienced isn’t capable of imagining it.
But, exactly one year ago, his eyes saw things that hardly anyone can overcome. Ilovich is a survivor of the terrorist attack on the Super Nova music festival in Israel on October 7, 2023. He was the last DJ to play at the festival, which made the audience dance in the early hours of the attack by the Palestinian group Hamas – and which Suddenly the music stopped.
In Berlin, when interviewed by DW, Ilovich appears nervous. He says he has given few interviews so far, and only in Israel. But he considers that speaking English might help him create the distance he needs to tell what happened on October 7th without having to remember all the horrible details of that day.
A festival in the middle of the desert
He remembers the moment he started DJing. “It was still dark”, it was the end of the morning, more exactly 5:35 am. The time was perfect for his performance as soon after the dawn announced itself, and the sky gradually lightened. “This is a special moment at a psytrance party”, comments Ilovich.
Psytrance, psychedelic trance, is a style of electronic music with fast beats born in Goa. “This change from darkness to light has something mysterious about it. People see each other for the first time. You recognize the smiles on the faces on the dance floor. This creates a special energy, it’s a rewarding moment.”
More than 3,000 people enjoyed themselves to the sound of these psychedelic beats in the middle of a desert landscape, on the morning of October 7th. A colorful tent covered the dance floor, the place had been decorated. Several participants wore makeup and jewelry to match their tattoos, and many had taken hallucinogenic drugs. The festival was supposed to feel like a magical world, an alternative reality – just five kilometers from the border with the Gaza Strip.
He did not notice the first missiles fired from Gaza, a few minutes before 6:30 am. Nor did he react when some of the partygoers saw paratroopers descending towards them from Gaza. Artifex was entirely focused on the music, on the right beat. “As a DJ, you are full of adrenaline, all you feel is the crowd dancing to your music.”
“Red alert” at 6:29 am
But then one of the festival producers approached him from behind and said in his ear: “Turn off the music! We are on red alert.” Upon obeying the order, at 6:29 am, the DJ received a boo from the public. “Red alert, red alert!” shouted the producer to the dance floor. This scene is recorded on videos.
Ilovich recalls that although there was almost no protection, there was no panic at first. In Israel, everyone has experienced a missile alarm. But this time there were hundreds of them.
He soon took care of a German friend who, unlike most of the participants, was already having a panic attack. It helped her and also others who wanted to leave by car. He himself remained there, even when friends called him to say they were being shot at on the way. “I thought, ‘There are security people here,’ and I felt safe.”
At around 7:00 am, terrorists from Hamas and other Palestinian groups arrived at the Super Nova site. Like many others, Ilovich tried to take shelter in his cars, but by then the parking lot was already chaos, with the exit blocked and the roads blocked.
Shots were fired at close range. Hundreds ran to a nearby open field, including Ilovich and some friends. “They were shooting at us, people were hit and left on the ground, some fell because they were scared, others because they were drunk”, he recalls. A friend who was running with him started vomiting, he dragged her and told her not to look back.
On October 7, 2023, members of Hamas and other Palestinian groups from the Gaza Strip killed more than 360 Super Nova festival attendees, 44 were taken hostage to the Gaza Strip, and countless were injured. In total, around 1,200 were killed in the terrorist attack on Israel, and 251 were kidnapped and taken hostage to Gaza.
Ilovich survived. He and some friends managed to reach the nearby kibbutz Re’im, where a few police officers were trying to fend off the attackers. He waited for hours, hiding under a patrol car, listening on the police radio as people were being killed everywhere, while the officers feared for their lives. And the desperate cry was repeated: “Where is the Army?”
For the DJ, the walkie-talkies “were the worst thing”: “You heard ‘They’re killing us’.” But the police managed to take him and several others to Ofakim, a 15-minute drive away, on an “apocalyptic” journey.
“Burned cars and dead bodies everywhere on the road. Nothing but desert and dead bodies everywhere.” But Ofakim was also in a state of war. Only on the morning of October 8 did he and three friends truly feel safe.
The same set, until the end
In the first few months after the attack, Ilovich visited a psychotherapist weekly. But the best therapy for him was music, his “safe space”, the place where he feels safe and happy.
“We will dance again” is the slogan formulated by survivors of the massacre. It is an act of defiance, of resistance, a way of saying “they will not defeat us”. But of course this doesn’t work for everyone.
In the weeks and months following October 7th, there were numerous reports of sexual violence, rape and other atrocities during the terrorist attack on Super Nova. Many survivors of the massacre have shown symptoms of severe depression, saying they can no longer carry on with their lives. Israeli therapists have recorded several suicides.
DJ Artifex has performed several times in recent weeks for the “Tribe of Nova”, as the Super Nova festival fan community calls itself. After the terrorist attack, they became a group of survivors who meet regularly to talk and try to heal the body and mind through yoga, meditation and music, in the spirit of psytrance, created by former hippies in Goa.
Ilovich also participates in these meetings, who makes a point of staying away from demonstrations against the Israeli government, despite making it clear that he does not support it. He barely follows the news, neither about the war in the Gaza Strip nor about the hostages that continue to be held in that Palestinian territory.
He says he is a positive person, who believes in better times. You don’t want to be seen as a traumatized victim, a dejected person. He wants to be someone who helps others, who gives festival survivors the opportunity to process what they experienced.
And Yann Ilovich doesn’t simply play psytrance music for Tribe of Nova: he often plays exactly the same set that he had to interrupt at 6:29 am on October 7, 2023.
“For many people, it is important to hear me finish the presentation, without interrupting it in the middle. They tell me that being able to hear me without the noise of the missiles helps them get over that experience.” And DJ Artifex plays his set until the end, as it should have been, if there really was an alternative reality.
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