Naavikaran, a Naarm-based South Asian trans artist who identifies as an asylum seeker and lives with disability, has set out on her first national stage run while releasing a new six-track EP titled MYSTIQ DISCOTHEQ. The project is not just a sequence of concerts and recordings: it is a deliberate attempt to create space for narratives that are often marginalised, bringing together sound, film and community practice. The tour and record form part of a wider creative umbrella called DISCOTHETICA, a South Asian Futurist exploration of identity, resistance and joy that threads together music, spoken word and visual work.
The national tour opened with a quickly assembled, sold-out show in Alice Springs, a decision rooted in a desire to begin in a location with deep connections to country. What had been planned months in other cities became whole when a friend who DJs at the local festival, fabALICE, rang up and suggested a collaboration. Within weeks the venue was cleaned and configured by the local scene, demonstrating the appetite for diverse programming. For Naavikaran the moment was instructive: remote places can be vital sites for intersectional exchange and new audiences.
Community-led touring and creative infrastructure
The MYSTIQ DISCOTHEQ national tour is run on a grassroots, self-funded model that intentionally centres collaborators who reflect the artist’s politics. Across seven towns more than fifty creatives are participating as performers, producers and technical crew, many of whom identify as IBPoC, queer and trans. The tour’s structure foregrounds local specificity: each stop is programmed to relate to place and to local histories of performance and kinship rather than offering a one-size-fits-all spectacle. This makes the tour less of a commodity pipeline and more of a platform-building exercise that invests in networks and cultural labour outside mainstream circuits.
Creative collaborators and sonic approach
The six-track EP was co-produced with Simo Soo and moves through electronic, grungy and soulful textures while incorporating South Asian melodic and rhythmic influences. Songs feature lyrics in Tamil, Marathi, Hindi and English and fold in spoken-word elements, reflecting an intention to make space for multilingual queer storytelling. This release is framed as the third instalment in the DISCOTHEQ series, and it sits inside the broader DISCOTHETICA practice that links sound to film and performance. The collection aims to map the many registers of queer and trans life—celebratory, defiant, intimate and experimental.
Release strategy and the politics of platforms
Naavikaran has chosen a staggered release that aligns with political visibility and distribution ethics. The EP is due to drop on Bandcamp on 31 March—timed to coincide with Trans Day of Visibility—and to appear on most streaming services on 7 May. Crucially, the project will not be released on Spotify, a deliberate choice that reflects a critique of how major platforms distribute value and visibility. By prioritising direct-to-listener channels and community-supported touring, the campaign seeks to reconfigure how independent, intersectional work reaches audiences while keeping control with artists and collectives.
Show formats and themes across the route
Each performance on the itinerary is curated to foreground a different facet of queer and trans culture: the opening night in Alice Springs was billed as an “Ode to Queer House Parties,” Sydney will host a “Trans Femme Rave Night,” and other stops include Castlemaine, Brisbane, Geelong and Newcastle. The programming intentionally shifts between poetry-forward evenings and DJ-led dance nights, refusing a single-genre label and honouring the plurality of queer expression. The tour concludes with a homecoming in Naarm on 10 May, a show foregrounding chosen family and queer kinship that doubles as both celebration and reckoning.
What this tour signals
Beyond the immediate excitement of sold-out rooms and new music, the project acts as a model for how artists can combine creative practice with activist intent. MYSTIQ DISCOTHEQ and the associated events give recognition to lineages of queer creativity—music, fashion, languages, poetry and community care—while acknowledging there are many threads that cannot be exhausted in a single run. Tickets and further details are available at naavikaran.com, and local coverage can be followed through outlets such as QNews, which has been documenting the tour and the conversations it sparks. The work invites audiences to participate in a different logic of art-making: one that centres care, multilingual expression and community ownership.