INHABIT #13 // Kaj Duncan David
Photo: Mayra Wallraff
September – December 2025
Rooted in computer music and classical performance, Kaj Duncan David’s artistic practice moves fluidly between music theatre, audiovisual installations, and electronic live performance. Influenced by posthumanist theory, speculative fiction, and media archaeology, his work explores the boundaries between sound, language, and consciousness—often through the use of synthetic voices that oscillate between meaning and nonsense.
During his residency, he is developing a new 60-minute solo performance and a corresponding album that continue his exploration of speculative sonic worlds and synthetic vocal expression. Building on previous works, the project investigates how early human vocalisations, child language acquisition, and the musicality of speech can be used as compositional material. It also explores how human and synthetic sound sources can interact in musical dialogues reminiscent of conversational dynamics. Another focus lies on the media archaeology of synthetic voices—their cultural and emotional resonance from early vocoders to contemporary AI. In collaboration with researchers in the fields of music and speech cognition, Kaj Duncan David seeks to combine intuitive composition with theoretical and scientific reflection.
Biographie
Kaj Duncan David is a composer and performer of electronic music based in Berlin. He studied sound art, composition, and electronic music at Goldsmiths (University of London), as well as at music academies in Aarhus and Dresden. He has released two solo albums: All Culture Is Dissolving (2021) and Only birds know how to call the sun and they do it every morning (2025). Together with Rodrigo Lemos, he composed the soundtrack for Michelle Moura’s tão carne quanto pedra (2025), a commission from the São Paulo City Ballet. He has also composed and performed music for several dance works by Moura and other choreographers.
He has created two large-scale collaborative music theatre works, including the award-winning Up Close and Personal with Troels Primdahl and Daniel Gloger (2018), commissioned by the Munich Biennale for New Music Theatre.
His notated audiovisual works for ensembles such as ensemble mosaik (Berlin) and Scenatet (Copenhagen) have been presented at festivals including Manifeste (Paris), Spor (Aarhus), Wien Modern (Vienna), Maerzmusik (Berlin), MATA (New York), and Música Estranha (São Paulo). He has received multiple grants and fellowships, including the Young Academy Fellowship (Academy of Arts, Berlin) and Progetto Positano (Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation).
