InterviewsScene
Tomorrow, August 25, 2025, marks the opening of this year’s edition of Street Art Poreč festival. The first day will feature the premiere of Stephanie Prekali’s performance Dead Wax: A Vinyl Set, which concludes her five-year cycle dedicated to exploring the role of the DJ through music, the body, and the city.
Stephanie Prekali grew up in Poreč, and her first experiences behind the decks were in Italy, where she spent a significant part of her youth. Upon her return to Croatia, she began to develop her own expression on the Zagreb-Istria route, combining the urban and coastal scenes. Her style intertwines diverse influences and strong contrasts: she brings gentle sea tones and hard city notes to her sets. Her repertoire extends from Balearic, house and funk, through Italo disco and indie dance, to electro and acid.
“The collaboration with Street Art Poreč came about naturally, shaped by both geography and necessity. Being raised in Poreč, I’ve always felt a layered connection to the city. In time, it evolved into a setting where the edges of my thinking felt welcome. The festival recognized something in that blend of experimentation and self-aware absurdity and gave me the platform to explore the line between act and effort. Somehow, it kept making sense“, Stephanie explained.
Along with festival stands and club nights, her journey has also been marked by the other, more realistic side of her DJ career: hotel gigs where music serves only as a backdrop, weddings where everyone is expected to have a hit, corporate parties tailored to protocol, and even nights in half-empty bars where sound and effort go unnoticed. These are experiences that shape almost everyone in this business, but they rarely enter biographies, even though they often erode the very connection with music. It was these “invisible places” – spaces of fatigue, compromise, and doubt – that left a deep mark and prompted Stephanie to ask herself what it really means to be a DJ.
“Vinyl – a medium that reveals everything at once”
She began developing a series of performances as part of the Street Art Poreč festival and turned each of them into a metaphor for her own career and inner questioning.
“Inspiration often finds me in the parts of DJing that don’t make it to the dancefloor. Over the years, I’ve used objects like a paddle boat, a bed, or a wheelbarrow not just for spectacle but because they carry symbolic weight. They point to how invisible labour, especially in performative fields, often gets masked by what’s most visible. What I hope to convey isn’t a fixed message but rather an invitation to reflect. That naturally led me to vinyl, a medium that reveals everything at once. It felt like the right gesture to close this phase“, Stephanie explained.
In this way, she explored the space between two worlds—the everyday DJ life with its compromises and the artistic, introspective one, in which music once again becomes a sincere question and a search. 24 hours before the premiere of her upcoming performance on Street Art Poreč festival, she shared a retrospective of her previous gigs and its messages.
2019 – Karijola [Wheelbarrow]
Stephanie’s first edition was with Karijola (eng. wheelbarrow) performance. The DJ booth was placed in a construction cart and pushed through the streets of the old town. Karijola was much more than a backdrop in its scenario: it symbolized work, everything that goes on behind the scenes, but it remained hidden.
“At first glance, the scene seemed almost absurd: a DJ – a figure normally associated with spotlights, stages and glamorous performances – now pushes a cart, sweats, plays music and drives along the cobblestones. It was precisely in this absurdity that the power of the performance lay. Karijola revealed what the audience usually does not see. Behind every party, night and song lies a mass of invisible work – hours of effort and work that are often overlooked in the story“, Prekali explained.
This performance hinted that DJing is not only hedonism, but also physical effort and mental strain. For the audience, it was a moment of surprise and recognition – because, as she walks through the streets with a counter in a wheelbarrow, the DJ is no longer a figure but someone who walks the same sidewalks and shares the same reality. According to her, it was the beginning of the road towards debunking the myth of DJ.
2021 – Pedalina
As 2020 was marked by the pandemic and the lockdown, the next edition of the festival was held in 2021. For Stephanie’s second performance called Pedalina, the DJ booth was placed on a pedal boat and taken out to sea.
“At first glance, the scene gave the impression of a summer joke, something light and carefree. However, the reality was different – behind the smiling image, a struggle hid. Moving without solid ground under your feet required constant energy expenditure. The sea became a symbol of the journey, and its instability was the core of the performance – showing that behind every cheerful image lies effort. Those who listened more carefully could hear the lightness and transience in the music, but also feel the presence of the one standing behind it – exhausted and vulnerable. Just like in many performances – when you play for people who are not listening, when you maintain an atmosphere that is falling apart, when you push on, wondering if it is worth it“, she explained the key message.
The pedal boat spoke about the loneliness of a DJ and the uncertainty of a career that is never a straight line, but an endless pedaling between moments of doubt and joy.
2022 – Apnea
The following year, the Apnea performance was marked by the stage in the sea that overwhelms the DJ and her equipment, as a metaphor for drowning in an oversaturated music industry. The seemingly simple idea turned into a demanding task that required endurance and precise coordination in unusual conditions. Stephanie Prekali swam with her equipment, disappeared, and returned to the surface. The music continued to play, as if she didn’t care about what was happening in the water.
“The scene suggested a feeling of being overwhelmed by musical events, names, and content. Apnea materialized the pressure of an industry that turns music from a source of strength into fatigue, and performers into expendable figures. The performance itself did not offer ready-made answers or solutions, but rather confronted the audience with the question: how long is it possible to stay afloat in a system that constantly produces new waves and rarely allows for a break?“, she asked herself.
In doing so, Apnea opened up space for thinking about boundaries, but also about what happens when the industry starts consuming those who drive it.
2023 – Sanjam [Dreaming]
After physical exertion and a struggle with the sea, the performance Sanjam (eng. Dreaming) placed a bed on the waterfront, in the very center of the public space. In it, the DJ lies, on the border between sleep and wakefulness, while the music quietly fills the environment. In contrast to the hot summer evenings, full of crowds and loud conversations, the bed seemed unreal – almost like an illusion.
“Dreaming spoke of the exhaustion and insomnia that are part of DJ life. Sleepless nights, constant travel and gigs that follow one another without a break leave a deep mark. The bed, which should be a place of rest and peace, has become a public stage here. Fatigue and privacy, exposed to everyone, became the key to the performance“, Stephanie reflects.
The performance opened up questions about sleepless nights, fatigue that cannot be compensated for, and the thin line between real life and what a DJ is expected to be. For the audience, it was a quiet scene, and for Stephanie, a scene of her own exhaustion.
2024 – Self and Sound
In last year’s performance Self and Sound, the DJ booth was placed in front of a mirror, and during the performance, Stephanie wrote sentences of a personal manifesto on its surface. The scene was simple but merciless: a DJ who simultaneously plays and looks at herself, up close, without a filter, without the possibility of escaping her own reflection. The mirror became both a stage and a witness to the performance.
“The performance turned into a dialogue about perception: who actually creates the image of the DJ – herself, the audience, the media, or the industry? In a space full of reflections, everyone could find their own answer. On the opposite wall was a reflective paper on which those present could leave their comments. The mirror surfaces gradually filled with different handwritings, layers of thoughts and reflections“, she said, explaining the industry nowadays.
The idea behind the Self and Sound performance was to open up the question of identity on the scene, on which the DJ is often more of an image than a sound.
2025 – Dead Wax: A Vinyl Set
After a series of unconventional performances in public spaces, Stephanie Prekali ends the five-year cycle with the performance Dead Wax: A Vinyl Set, which emphasizes the very essence of DJing: the act of attentive listening, patience, and connecting with the performers.
“Dead wax refers to the silent, empty part of the vinyl between the last track and the sticker in the middle – a space that is not played, but is still present. The choice of this name refers to the closing of an era. This return to vinyl is not a spectacle or a show, but a confession and an apology – a DJ who, after years of doubt, compromise, and fatigue, is returning to basics”, Prekali explained.
Without smoke, lights, and illusion, it is about the desire to restore music to its place, and to give DJs the dignity and freedom to be who they are – guardians and interpreters of sound.
“This year marks a threshold. The completion of Dead Wax: A Vinyl Set will close a long cycle of building something that was never meant to be permanent but became more significant than I expected. Now I’m entering a quieter phase. I want to step out of performance mode for a while, reconnect with sound, and dust off a few old synths. I don’t have big expectations, but I do feel something shifting: a quiet desire to reconnect with music in a less exposed way and to allow space for new things to emerge,” Stephanie concluded.
The upcoming performance Dead Wax: A Vinyl Set can be heard and viewed tomorrow, August 25, 2025, starting at 7 p.m. at St. Eleuterius Square in Poreč.
