The Glossary: Kai Sundermann | Founder & Lighting Director, WILDBLUR
Introducing: Kai Sundermann | Founder & Lighting Director, WILDBLUR
RA and Doors Open are partnering with New York's Queer Nightlife Community Center (QNCC) to host RA25 UNLOCKED: Expanding Careers in Nightlife with QNCC, a free, one-day programme focused on developing sustainable careers in nightlife.
Taking place at the East New York venue on October 15th, the event will feature workshops covering sound engineering, lighting design and event production, alongside discussions on career pathways, event safety and harm reduction.
The programme is aimed at local nightlife workers and community members from East New York and Brownsville looking to expand their skills and improve financial stability. Applications will prioritise groups including FLINTA individuals, LGBTQIA+ community members, disabled workers, lower-income applicants and residents of East New York and Brownsville.
Kai is next up in this special Glossary series introducing the speakers at our upcoming New York community event and exploring their careers in nightlife.
What is your role in music and what does your day to day look like?
I run WILDBLUR, a lighthouse that designs and builds lighting rigs, mostly for transient, non-club dancefloors in NYC. We help set an event’s visual tone and create lighting instrument-systems that respond live to music and dancers.
On job sites, I organise crews, direct labor for installation and strike, coordinate with venues and vendors, program lights, busk . Weekdays are spent on studio organisation, interfacing with clients, developing design concepts, bureaucratic toiling, and general scheming.
How did you get into your line of work?
I came into lighting work through theatre, by having to stand in as the lighting designer for a hospice-rendition of Beckett’s Act Without Words I directed in Singapore. After moving to Brooklyn, I went out a lot during the summer of 2018/9 (Shock Value, GHE20G0TH1K, Unter, Gush, Fourth World, DISCAKES ect.) Curious about the people building some of these undergrounds, I began interning with the lighting company Nitemind. After working with them on Sustain Release Year Six, I decided to pursue lighting full-time and started WILDBLUR soon after that.
What skills are important in your job?
Being an intuitive problem-solver is central to this kind of renegade lighting design. Pre-conceived blueprints can quickly be rendered useless based on rigging limitations, haphazard power circuits, or unforeseen architectural contours. The ability to improvise on the fly and find creative and safe solutions under pressure and limitations is essential.
Having the fluidity to move between solo and team-based modes of working is also key. Certain gigs will require you to shoulder every lighting production responsibility alone, from equipment transport to de-installation, while more complex productions require interfacing with multiple other roles.
In terms of busking, it’s critical to develop endurance and diversity in listening and sensing.
What have you found surprising about your role?
I didn’t expect that lighting work would bring me to some of my most treasured and enduring relationships. The beating heart of nightlife is surprisingly slippery. Even among the most nefarious attempts to pin it down, the function remains a gathering place for people trying to carve liveable lives for themselves outside of the grip of normativity. Finding your people makes the trials and tribulations more than worthwhile.
If someone is excited to do what you do, what advice would you give them?
Programming-wise, don't wait for technical mastery to act: take aesthetic risks during gigs,
experiment with and against the intended use of a given software, pour your heart into busking with imperfectly programmed fixtures.
Our workplace is rife with various forms of extraction. Seek to change that, first and foremost, on an interpersonal level, rather than being pressured by scarcity to continue these cycles. Regenerating with your peers away from the nocturnal carry is also vital. And always have a record of payment agreements for clients, whether you draft your own contract or have it listed in an email exchange.
Read more about RA25 UNLOCKED: Expanding Careers in Nightlife with QNCC here.
Explore jobs in electronic music on Doors Open here.