Jarin Ilovic was a DJ at the Supernova festival in Israel on October 7 last year, when members of Hamas killed 360 people and kidnapped 44 people. In an interview with Deutsche, he talks about what happened at 6:29 a.m. that day, when he turned off the music because of the red alarm.
In the last few months he has traveled a lot around the world. In September he was in the United States, in August he played music in Brazil, and shortly after that he flew to Berlin.
He recently released a new song called "Cyber Fever," which celebrates the "magical world," as a computer voice announces. A world that is more colorful, beautiful and cheerful than reality, he writes Mother said.
When Artifex - that's his artistic pseudonym - performs, he dances on stage, raises the atmosphere and jumps to the beats. If you didn't know what he went through a year ago, you wouldn't have guessed that story. However, his eyes witnessed things that are hard to digest.
Jarin Ilovic survived the terrorist attack on the Supernova music festival in Israel October 7 last year. He was the last disc jockey to play music at the festival. The DJ who is in the morning, during the attack Hamas, first got the crowd dancing and then abruptly stopped the music.
When we met him in Berlin, he seemed nervous. He says he has given very few interviews so far, and only in Israel.
But he hopes that speaking in English will help him create the distance to tell what happened on October 7 without having to relive all the brutal details.
Photo: Sarah Hofmann/DWJarin Ilovic
Magical world - five kilometers from Gaza
"It was still dark," he recalls of the moment he started playing music at 5:35 in the morning. Perfect weather for Ilovic. Not long after that, it slowly began to dawn, and the sky was getting brighter by the minute.
"It's a special moment at a psychedelic trance party," Ilovitz says. It is fast dance music with spherical sounds. "That change from darkness to light." There is something mysterious about it. For the first time we really see each other. You recognize the smile on the faces of the people on the dance floor. A special energy is created, it's a fulfilling moment."
More than three thousand visitors celebrated that morning in the desert landscape with psychedelic beats. A colorful marquee was draped over the dance floor, the grounds were artistically decorated, and many of the visitors were fabulously made up, wearing striking jewelry with their tattoos, and some consuming "consciousness-expanding" drugs.
The festival was supposed to feel like a magical world, an alternate reality, even then. The location was only five kilometers from the border fence with the Gaza Strip.
Jarin Ilovic did not notice the first rockets that were fired from Gaza towards Israel a few minutes before seven thirty. He did not even react when some visitors noticed paragliders coming from the direction of Gaza. He concentrated only on the music, on the right rhythm.
"As a DJ, you're full of adrenaline, and the only thing you feel is the crowd dancing to your music."
"Red Alert" at 6:29
Then one of the producers of the festival approached him from behind and whispered in his ear: "Turn off the music!" "I asked: Should I turn off the music? And he said: 'Yes, turn off the music. We have a red alert.'"
At 6:29, Artifex turned off the music. Silence. And the crowd began to resent. "Red alert, Red alert!" shouted the producer on the dance floor.
This scene was captured on video. Ilovic recalls: although there was almost no protection in the desert, there was no panic at first. In Israel, every resident has already experienced a missile alert. However, hundreds of rockets soon followed.
In the background, he took care of a German friend who, unlike most Israelis, suffered a panic attack. He helped her and others who wanted to escape in a car – and he stayed on the festival grounds, even when his friends called him and said they were being shot at on the way. "I thought, 'The guards are here.' I felt safe."
Around seven o'clock in the morning, terrorists from Hamas and other militant-Islamist groups arrived at the Nova festival grounds. Ilovic then, like many others, tried to find shelter near the car, but there was already panic in the parking lot: cars were stuck at the exit, and the roads were blocked.
Shots were heard from nearby. Hundreds of people fled to the neighboring field, including Ilovic and his friends. "They shot at us, people were hit and remained lying down, some fell from fear, others because they were drunk," he recalled.
A friend who was running for her life with him started vomiting, and he dragged her along, telling her not to look back.
That October 7, militant-Islamist terrorists from the Gaza Strip killed more than 360 visitors to the Nova festival, 44 people were kidnapped and taken hostage to Gaza, and many were injured.
In total, about 1.200 people were killed in the Hamas attack on Israel, and 251 people were taken hostage to Gaza.
Jarin Ilovic survived. He managed to reach the nearby Kibbutz Reim with a few friends, where several policemen tried to repel the attackers.
He hid under a police vehicle for hours, listening to police radio frequencies of people being killed everywhere, policemen begging for their lives and constantly calling out desperately, "Where's the army?" "That was the worst," he says of the walkie-talkie sound. Tokyo. "You hear: 'They killed us.'"
Nevertheless, the police managed to transfer Ilovic and several other people to Ofakim, a 15-minute drive. "It was apocalyptic," he recalls of the trip, "burnt cars and corpses on the road everywhere, nothing but desert and dead bodies."
However, there was no peace in Ofakim either. It was not until the morning of October 8 that he and his three friends were safe.
Photo: artifex_musicBefore the attack, three thousand people swayed to his rhythms
"We'll play again"
In the first months after the attack, Ilovic says, he went to psychotherapy every day. However, the best therapy for him is music. Music is his "safe space". A place where he feels safe and happy. Still.
The slogan "We will dance again" was created by the survivors of this massacre.
It is an act of defiance, resistance, which means: We will not surrender. We will not let them take away our faith in a magical, different world.
However, it does not work for everyone. In the weeks and months following October 7, numerous reports of sexual violence, rape and other brutality during the terrorist attack on the Nova festival were documented.
Survivors report severe depression, unable to move on with their lives. Israeli therapists talk about numerous suicides.
DJ Artifex has been performing frequently for the "Tribe of Nova", a community of fans of the Supernova parties, which now represents the community of survivors, in recent weeks. They gather regularly after October 7th to grieve, talk and heal body and mind together through yoga, meditation and music.
In the spirit of psytrance philosophy, which arose from the hippie movement at Goa festivals. Many fans describe "Nova" as a community of love.
He plays the music until the end
Ilovitz, who has consciously stayed away from most demonstrations against the Israeli government, although he makes it clear how little he holds the current Israeli government in high esteem, now plays music for Nova Community.
He is playing exactly the set that he stopped at 6:29 am on October 7. "It's important for a lot of people, to hear me finish the set and not stop it in the middle of the chaos. They tell me, when they listen to me without the sound of rockets, they can put an end to that experience."
Now he plays the music to the end, the way it should have ended, in a different reality.
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