As DJs increasingly move beyond nightclubs and into cafés, bookstores, trains, public spaces and even intentionally unexpected locations, the DJ booth itself is taking on a new cultural role. Crab Culture's collaboration with UK artist Elijah explores that shift through Booth Built From Words, an installation that transforms the booth into a space for ideas, using bold statements about dance, community and creativity to reflect Elijah's belief that music scenes thrive through language, criticism and shared culture as much as through the music itself.
No place is un-DJ-able. Over the last decade, club culture seems to have detached itself from the club. Boiler Room turned the DJ into the heart of a room. Then Berlin's HÖR took us to a sacred corner of rave culture — the bathroom, with fluorescent lights, white tiles and memories of bump breaks between sets. Coffee shops now host weekend DJ sessions, trains and buses double up as dancefloors, cafés, bookstores and retail spaces regularly invite selectors behind the decks, and pop-up sets have become part of everyday public life. So much so that a DJ where there shouldn’t be a DJ has become an inside joke within the community. Like DJ Anna Sofia whose ongoing series ‘I ❤️DJ Sets’ see her performing at tattoo parlours, judicial court, couples’ therapy, surgery, funeral and even exorcisms.
For a craft that's often reduced to "just pushing buttons" and made fun of, especially when you tell someone you’re dating a DJ, it has surely become a statement in itself — as a canvas for everything from resistance and solidarity to a little self-deprecating humour. In Crab Culture's collaboration with UK artist Elijah, created for the Simba Uproar Pre-Party in Mumbai, the DJ booth becomes an installation with oversized black typography inside a vivid, yellow box. Inspired by a New York art studio, the space was brought to life with a popcorn station and a sofa set for guests to chill, alongside an art exhibit by Revant. The invite-only event brought together around 100 people with performances by Elijah, Sickflip, Dhiraaj and Racing Nokia, spanning drum & bass, bass, amapiano, gqom and club music.
Best known for co-founding the influential grime label Butterz, Elijah is a London-based DJ, writer and cultural strategist. His now-famous Yellow Squares began as a series of Post-it-like notes on Instagram, unpacking everything from creative burnout and independent music to the economics of being an artist. Elijah has consistently argued that scenes grow stronger when they develop a vocabulary around themselves. Music needs criticism, archives, dialogue, and documentation alongside parties. Those ideas have since grown into lectures, books, installations and even music, turning social media into a place for critical thinking instead of endless promotion.
Booth Built From Words presents itself as a manifesto of dance culture as a sovereign community-led practice with lines like ‘Dance is the physical embodiment of optimism,’ ‘Interesting cities cannot be quiet,’ and ‘You can't copyright vibe.’ The installation stems from a long history of dance as a political act. Across movements, communities and generations, people have gathered to dance in defiance of fear, to claim public space, and to imagine more inclusive futures. Dance is synonymous with our freedoms as human beings, and the booth, with its words, asks who we will be when we have, in Fred Again's words, ‘lost dancing.’
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