Admina is a versatile artist who blends roles as a DJ, producer, visual creator, and advocate for inclusivity in electronic music. A resident of LYL Radio in France, they host the show URZICA3000. As a founding member of Corp., a platform supporting female and non-binary electronic music artists, Admina also co-hosts the radio shows Arp 148 and Corpcast, which explore themes within the queer community. Their artistic practice spans feminist poetry, experimental audiovisual projects, and performances in dance and theatre.
Can you tell us about your background? Where did you grow up, and how did you get into music?
I was born and raised in Timișoara. As a teenager, I was quite connected to the anarchist and punk scene there. In 2005, when I was 15, I started playing in a punk band that never really had a fixed identity.
By 2010, when I was 20, I began organising a series of queer events where I also DJed a few times—that’s how I first got into DJing. Not long after, I started working as a DJ at a gay club in Timișoara.
In 2015, at age 25, I moved to Bucharest, where, together with Chlorys and Cosima, I co-founded Corp., the first feminist platform for electronic music in Romania. With Corp., we managed to influence gender equality policies and contribute to integrating the queer scene into club culture—from artists to community members.
Later, we also opened a physical space where we experimented with both economic models and safe space practices. In parallel, my career as a DJ and music producer was reaching what I’d call my best era, haha. With Corp., we also launched DJing and music residencies, supported by Rezidența 21.
You’re a DJ, producer, and visual creator. How do these roles represent your creativity, and are you pursuing them simultaneously?
A large part of my identity comes from the fact that I’ve always managed to find the creative intersection between all the art forms I practice. I studied Fine Arts at university, specialising in artistic anatomy, but music was always present alongside my visual work. Every artistic inclination I had, I took seriously. I wanted to see where it could take me.
Music has often been therapeutic for me—from listening and letting my mind roam free to experimenting with playing and producing. I approached it with intention, because at some point, it became a language I couldn’t exist without. Art hasn’t only been a refuge; it’s also been the way I’ve navigated who I am today.
Now it’s easy for me to see how all these practices are connected. That connection carries me naturally into photography, video, film, graphic design, performance, theatre, and beyond.
Your artistic pursuits span feminist poetry, experimental audiovisual projects, and performances in dance and theatre. Can you talk about a few projects in these fields that you cherish most?
In 2021, I performed as a DJ and radio host with Corpcast, and later at TodaysArt Festival as an artist in residence. That same year, I also appeared in the HBO Romania series Ruxx.
In 2022, my practice expanded across film, animation, fashion, and music. I composed Lucifer, which was later featured in Anhell69 by Theo Montoya, a hybrid documentary-drama reflecting on queer life and violence in Medellín. I also voiced the Romanian version of the main character in Dead End: Paranormal Park (Netflix), the first animated series with a trans protagonist. In parallel, I launched the hand-painted clothing collection GLUGA and co-created Blue G, a duo with Pusi. Together, we perform as DJs and host a show on Black Rhino Radio, highlighting strange, absurd, and overlooked sounds from club culture and the hidden archives of the internet.
2023 marked a deepening of my involvement in theatre and community projects. I performed and produced music in TransLucid, the first Romanian theatre show with a cast that was 80% trans. More than a performance, TransLucid functioned as a living archive, tracing histories of gender-affirming surgeries, legal struggles, public debates, and the painful realities of discrimination. Later, I collaborated with Paula Dunker and Raj on Cosmic Chronicles: The Body and the Mythology of Gender, an interdisciplinary choreographic research project exploring the cultural and historical roots of gender identity. Alongside this, I contributed as a graphic designer for CUTRA #4, organised Queer Night events, and founded Radio Arp148, an online platform dedicated to queer, trans, non-binary, and sapphic artists.
In 2024, my work took on new forms of experimentation. On LYL Radio Paris, I began hosting Urzica 3000, a bi-monthly show marked by abrasive, stinging textures that challenge and re-energise the listening experience. I also played in PROTO as part of the Rokolectiv Festival x SHAPE Platform programme, together with Kinga Ötvös and Sofia Zadar. The performance reimagined the sounds of sports—breaths, impacts, frictions, the vibration of crowds—through a queer and sapphic lens, transforming them into an experimental sonic landscape. For this project, I not only performed but also composed music, contributed scenography, and co-developed the conceptual framework, shaping a space where sound, light, and movement intertwined organically.
Today, I continue to curate and host Radio Arp148, Corpcast, Internet Blue G, and URZICA 3000, carrying forward my vision of building a constellation of queer sound and presence. My practice always moves between theatre, performance, radio, music, and design, weaving together sound, body, and community into spaces that challenge, archive, and reimagine worlds.
You’re also an active member of the Bucharest electronic music scene and a member of Corp., a platform supporting female and non-binary electronic music artists. Can you talk about Corp. and the Bucharest scene as a whole? What led you to take on a more activist role in the community?
Corp. is one of the most important and longest-standing projects of its kind. Founded in 2015, it emerged as a force that not only responded to the needs of the moment but also managed to change the trajectory of queer clubbing in Bucharest.
For example, through Corp. X, our space, we were able to create a venue that hosted music events grounded in inclusivity, warmth, and openness for everyone: trans people, intersex people, sex workers, people of colour, the financially precarious, non-binary people, and other marginalised communities. It became a focal point and a welcoming meeting place, by and for our community. We challenged mainstream notions of what a “safe space” is and explored how to implement change on a larger scale.
Through this space, we were able to re-contextualise the idea of a party, facilitating access to knowledge about the history and roots of electronic music, and fostering the self-representation of queer culture in line with its diverse needs and questions. Specifically, we used the space to build connections between community members, encourage emerging local artists, offer mixed-format courses and training, and provide access to technology, information, and documentation.
The clubbing scene in Bucharest still suffers, as it always has, from the lack of consistent or permanent spaces dedicated to communities. This absence is deeply felt in the way the local scene tries to organise and sustain continuity. Fragmentation, caused by the lack of a space that truly meets the needs of the community, is visible everywhere. The energy of new generations has nowhere to be carried forward and instead disperses into venues more interested in profit than in addressing the needs of the community.
The music, however, is there. I think that in recent years, Romania has learned more about both its own history of parties and the imported genres and events coming from abroad. Yet there is still much to learn when it comes to race, to Roma communities, and to acknowledging how Roma music has shaped the very concept of partying in this country. Equally crucial is the self-representation of Roma artists within club culture.
Some organisations, platforms and NGOs have already started taking steps—adopting inclusive policies and booking Roma DJs and artists. However, many clubs and venues, for example, still ban manele*, a form of exclusion that isolates and discriminates against Roma communities. Until racism is addressed, I don’t believe we can truly speak of a healthy clubbing scene in Romania.
*a music genre rooted in traditional Roma music, blending Turkish, Greek, Arabic, and Balkan influences with modern pop and reggaeton-inspired electronic elements
What inspires you?
For me, the most important source of inspiration comes from lived experiences, emotions, and the belief that something might bring value to the community or carry social and cultural significance. It’s about creating something that can make you dream or imagine, that can become personal and can reach you in such a way that you feel someone else is out there living the same experience and you’re not alone. For example, when I watched the 1999 film Boys Don’t Cry, I didn’t feel alone; I deeply empathised with certain scenes. Inspiration sometimes has to be familiar enough that you mistake it for instinct—like a mirror shaped by our response to survival.
Interview by Lucia Udvardyova
Photo @urfather4eva