The DJ who last performed at the festival attacked by Hamas: The music stopped at 6:29

When Artifeks performs, it 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 be able to guess that story. However, his eyes witnessed things that are hard to digest.

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Security evacuates festival visitors, Photo: Printscreen/Telegram
Security evacuates festival visitors, Photo: Printscreen/Telegram
Disclaimer: The translations are mostly done through AI translator and might not be 100% accurate.

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 announced by a computer voice. A world that is more colorful, more beautiful and more cheerful than reality.

When Artifeks – that's his artistic pseudonym – performs, he plays on stage, raises the atmosphere and jumps to the rhythms. If you didn't know what he went through a year ago, you wouldn't be able to guess 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 on October 7 last year. He was the last disc jockey to play music at the festival. The DJ who in the morning, during the Hamas attack, first made the crowd dance, 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.

Magical world - five kilometers from Gaza

"It was still dark," he recalls when he started playing music at 5:35 in the morning. Perfect time 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," says Ilovic. 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 fantastically made-up, wearing eye-catching jewelry with their tattoos, and some consuming "consciousness-expanding" drugs.

The festival was supposed to look 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 half past seven. He didn't 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 are 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: Shall 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, at first there was no panic. 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 recalls.

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.

festival Supernova
foto: Printscreen/Telegram

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 get to the nearby Reim Kibbutz 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 sound from the walkie-talkie Tokyo. "You hear: 'They killed us.'"

Nevertheless, the policemen 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.

"We will play again"

In the first months after the attack, says Ilovic, 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 allow them to 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.

In recent weeks, DJ Artifex has often performed for the "Tribe of Nova", a community of fans of Supernova parties, which now represents the community of survivors. They gather regularly after October 7, 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

Ilovic, who has consciously stayed away from most demonstrations against the Israeli government, although he makes it clear how little he appreciates the current Israeli government, 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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