The Connections
Have you noticed the DJ uptick? Not just at the clurb, but at every event. Even showing up for mornings!
My hunch? COVID-19.
For some, the pandemic created the space, time, and motivation to take a chance on their creativity. What may have started as a creative outlet for some eventually became a business, a livelihood, or at least another way of navigating an increasingly unstable economy.
COVID-19 revealed something else, too: both our natural yearning to be artful beings and the economic fragility of the arts and culture ecosystem.
I use revealed intentionally because none of this was new. The arts have long operated within funding structures that, intentionally or not, leave creatives comparatively starved of resources despite the near-universal recognition that life without arts and culture would be worse off.
But the pandemic made that harder to ignore. Creators canceled entire seasons, losing hundreds or even thousands of dollars in anticipated income. Institutions faced their own financial crises. And questions were raised: What is art for? Who is it for? And what happens when the structures that sustain it disappear?
Perhaps that helps explain the DJ uptick.
Consider Carnegie Museum of Art’s Inside Out summer programming in Pittsburgh. The series placed performing arts, including local DJs, at the center of an outdoor museum experience, with visual art functioning alongside it rather than necessarily as the primary draw.
From my vantage point, this was a way of filling a pandemic-era gap: the need for human connection, movement, gathering, and shared experience, while remaining conscious of health considerations. Outdoor programming reduced some complications, while a positive experience might also encourage audiences to return to the museum.
This isn’t necessarily new. What feels different is how visible, and increasingly institutionally embraced, the crossover has become.
“…an institution putting resources behind DJing reads less like extraction and more like one of the few well-funded rooms willing to keep the culture alive.”
That matters because when institutions put resources behind practices that have historically existed outside their walls, the question becomes whether they are extracting cultural relevance, or actually investing in the people and communities producing it.
Camden Art Centre’s Dr. Matt Williams speaks to this tension, arguing that if reaching audiences means shifting direction, institutions have to “push, shape, and think about how you best use public money to engage people,” rather than simply continuing to speak to those already converted.
Inside Out has now reached its fifth year, and there’s something worth paying attention to in that longevity.
It suggests that these crossovers aren’t simply a pandemic-era gimmick. They may reflect something deeper: “neither field can sustain a creative life on its own anymore, so people are finding whatever rooms will still have them.”
And, honestly, there’s something uncomfortable, and beautiful, about that.
One of poverty’s strengths, if we can call it that, is its ability to create connection through necessity. People share resources, knowledge, space, networks, and ideas because they have to. That is very different from buying your way into someone’s life.
And where can we find that kind of resourcefulness? In creative industries.
COVID-19 accelerated this reality. The economic instability of the arts, the growth of the gig economy, and the need for institutions to remain relevant pushed disciplines into closer proximity. Multidisciplinary practice stopped feeling like an optional creative exercise and increasingly became an economic and cultural necessity.
Perhaps there’s something more fundamental happening, too. We are multifaceted people. Why shouldn’t our creative lives be multifaceted as well? The crossover between DJing and visual art makes this especially apparent. Consider the DJ as curator.
Both practices involve choosing what gets presented, but neither is only about selection. It’s about juxtaposition, pairings, context, themes, history, personal background, lived experience…knowing when something belongs, and when it doesn’t.
Creator Oda Haliti captures this idea:
“I don’t necessarily see myself as entering the art world. I think I’m bringing a practice that has always existed between different spaces.”
DJing, when taken seriously by both the practitioner and their community, is an act of authorship. It can shape an experience through intuition, knowledge, memory, taste, experimentation, and feeling.
In that sense “…DJing [is] not as adjacent to artistic practice but as an extension of it, with the same authorship and claim to legitimacy running through a mixer as through a paintbrush.”
And institutions centering DJs in their programming creates another interesting parallel: recital culture. Liszt helped popularize the modern solo recital by shifting instrumental music from something that could exist primarily as accompaniment or social background into the foreground of the event. The audience came to hear him. Today, we see a similar phenomenon with DJs as someone might attend because XYZ DJ is performing, while there’s also some cool art happening. That distinction matters because today’s club culture has made the DJ an experience-maker. The right DJ can make or break a night. Our preferences can shape where we go, who we encounter, what communities we enter, and even how we understand a city.
Sound becomes a gathering tool, and gathering has always had political consequences. The article that prompted these reflections points to the UK’s historical restrictions on gatherings around “music characterized by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats.” That language is striking when placed alongside the history of genres like rap and hip-hop, which emerged from Black communities and have repeatedly faced scrutiny, criminalization, and institutional dismissal. In other words, music is never just music. Who gathers, where they gather, what they listen to, who gets paid, who gets policed, and which institutions decide something is worthy of investment are all connected.
So, notice those upticks.
DJs in the Museum.
Dancers in the Gallery
Musicians Collaborating with Visual Artists
Creative Practitioners Building Businesses Out of Practice.
They’re painting stories with deep pasts and promising futures.
Especially in our late-stage-capitalism hellscape, economic conditions don’t just determine how we live, they influence what gets made, where it gets made, who gets to participate, and ultimately, what we consume every day. So I’m hopeful that these crossovers can become more than clever programming. Maybe they can help us rethink who gets resources. Maybe they can help institutions understand that innovation isn’t always about inventing something new; sometimes it’s about recognizing the value that communities have been creating all along. And maybe they can help us ask the bigger question: We’re all within the game, but how do we get more power in shaping its rules?
So a local DJ spotting at an art museum can lead us anywhere.
Read Hallström’s Article Here
