US-born, Berlin-based multidisciplinary performer Darling Fitch challenges and entertains with a unique blend of performance, poetics and riveting electronic music that has been described as somewhere between Laurie Anderson, Fever Ray and “Britney Spears meets Throbbing Gristle”. Their one-person shows broach topics from gender transition and club culture (A Stranger Sound, 2015) to climate change and gentrification (REVELATIONS, 2019) to collective crisis (Rise, forthcoming) with a surprising tenderness and eye for connection in moments of discomfort.
They have played legendary underground venues like NYC’s The Glove and LA’s Hushe Clubbe and in experimental art contexts such as Berlin Art Prize, the Dixon Place HOT! Fest (NYC), the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and the Month of Performance Art – Berlin. Past and current collaborators include Elle Peril (Lena Chen), Strip Down, Lady Gaby Bila-Gunther, Polly Trope, Cypress Atlas, S0MA Art Space, Fifty Percent Magazine, and a long list of international feminist, queer and outsider artists.
From 2015-19 Fitch toured their multidisciplinary solo shows A Stranger Sound (a dark transgender coming of age story set in Berlin’s queer club scene) and REVELATIONS (a hopeful, harsh noise poetry pop opera about the end of the world and our place in it). Combining spoken word, music, and interactive performance elements, Fitch’s shows bridge the traditional artist vs audience divide, fostering a sense of connection and community, however fleeting. In 2020 Fitch (along with the rest of the world) took a break from live work to focus on the craft of recording, transforming their signature intellectual-but-intimate ethos into a series of soon to be released songs.
In 10+ years of traveling and performing across Europe and the US, Fitch has honed their highly experimental, often interactive, and always engaging style. An adaptable and versatile performer, Fitch creates work that is at home everywhere from college campuses to raves, art galleries and black box theaters, bars, living rooms, and museums.
Darling’s writing has been published by venues such as the Berlin Art Prize, Ghost City Review, Anti-Heroin Chic and Transnational Queer Underground, and they hold a merit award in fiction writing from the National Foundation For Advancement of the Arts. Fitch has run the international performance series Yes/No/Other/All: Performance on the Boundaries of Identity since 2015.
*Fitch uses they/them pronouns
