Joana Seguro

Portrait: Eva Vermandel

Joana Seguro is an independent producer working in electronic music and new technology, with a growing interest in linking these across other forms and disciplines. She came to London from Portugal ten years ago as a pharmacology student, and pursued her passion for the underground music scene she found here. Since then, she has built her career in this area of music, creating an eclectic and fluid range of projects and events with the artists that excite her. These range from producing her own club nights to curating international festivals, managing artists, and producing tours and one-off projects, alongside work for some of the major record companies specialising in electronic music. In 2001, she set up her own company Lumin, of which she is owner and Director, and throughout has pursued partnerships with some of the major music institutions active in contemporary and electronic music.

Joana's energy is for new ideas, new technology, and new ways to connect these with an audience. Increasingly, her concerns take her beyond music to work across disciplines. She is excited by new digital technologies and how these can be explored in performance, and combines these with a fast moving energy and lightness of touch, and a connective breadth of vision in her field.

As she builds her experience and insight as a producer, she is grappling with how best to function as an independent - how best to realise ideas, how to survive financially, and how to combat the isolation that independence can bring. As someone energised by innovation, she knows that the fleet of foot life of an independent is the best way to pursue this. But the challenges of sustaining and taking forward her work in this way - as she herself and others on this path know - are tough, and at times overwhelming.

I grew up in Portugal, an only child and part of the new generation after the Revolution. My parents were challenging and supportive, and gave me great confidence, but it was claustrophobic too, and school and university were restrictive. It was an expansive period when people were allowed to say what they were thinking, and we were all engaged intellectually, politically, philosophically, but not so focused on putting ideas into practice. I saw some incredible theatre - La Fura dels Baus, Els Comediants - but the music scene was terrible. I've always, always loved music, and I went to whatever I could find - the big rock bands who visited or the minimal underground scene around me. I read NME when I could get it, and, when I decided to come to study pharmacology in London rather than stay in Portugal, I soon was involved with the student newspaper, reviewing what I wanted to, and understanding for myself what was really going on.

Pharmacology required me to work with animals in a way I could not accept, and so I did not continue with it. But my scientific background gave me logical methods and a practical influence on how I work that still continues now.

My passion was music, and after graduating I talked my way into being able to launch my first club night Rota, with the support of Rough Trade Shops. We showed an eclectic mix of bands and genres at a free weekly event which won Best New Live Venture from Time Out in 2001. This got me a job with Mute doing A&R, and about the same time I started to talk with the South Bank Centre about them starting an electronic music festival. I helped them conceive and establish Ether - what has since become an annual festival. I've been involved with Ether in an advisory programming role and running certain projects within it since those first discussions; the relationship still continues.

Since Mute, I've worked with Warp Records and Virgin, and alongside my work with record companies I've programmed and curated events with the V&A, with the Sonar Festival from Barcelona here in London, festivals in Portugal and France, and many of my own club nights. After a couple of years, I realised I should create a company to give more identity to what I was doing, and I created Lumin, of which I am director. Alongside my club nights and the other projects and events I created, I started to work first with Chicks on Speed, and then other artists whose work I loved, acting essentially as an agent, though more flexibly, helping them to develop how they were working. In 2002 the Arts Council approached me to set up a consortium of promoters interested in electronic music, and I created a network around the country and produced four tours, handing it over after a couple of years to other members of the group.

Once Lumin existed and my projects grew in ambition, I started taking on staff, and soon the business issues began to take over - the need to earn money to pay for the team, the cashflow issues, the projects to hold Lumin itself together. This can quickly become overwhelming if it's not your driving force to run a business in itself. So to give myself new perspectives, I decided to apply for a Clore Fellowship, and to my surprise I got it. Whilste others on the programme were thinking about their future in relation to organisational structures and needs, I was trying to understand my path in more individual terms, and it was difficult to draw the right conclusions. It made me wonder whether I should be working for an organisation, and, while it has helped me understand better the organisations and structures which I collaborate with to realise my ideas, I know now that I need to continue as an independent.

Through my relationship with composer and musician Mira Calix, who was in residence there, I discussed with Jonathan Reekie of Aldeburgh Music how he could be more fully involved with electronic music, and that Aldeburgh was the perfect context to bring together contemporary classical music, soundscaping, sound engineering, and electronic artists.Together we conceived Faster Than Sound at Bentwaters Airbase in Suffolk in July 2006, as a co-production between Aldeburgh and Lumin. I could immediately see the potential of our idea, and found a natural creative dialogue with him about how best to realise it. He was very empowering, and with Aldeburgh's fundraising muscle, such an ambitious idea became feasible. Faster than Sound will happen again in new ways next year, and we hope then to integrate these areas of work more fully into Aldeburgh's programme at Snape.

I want now to expand my experience as a producer in other areas as well as music - dance, and opera, to work in a more interdisciplinary way and to follow my fascination with technology in performance and interactive audience experiences. In music, I have found over the years that I see connections, links, possibilities that others don't, and that I'm good even in a commercial sense at seeing things that should be happening early on. But I'm not someone whose motivation is to persist commercially in order to make my money back, or to exploit the full commercial potential of an idea. For me, it's about finding ways to think creatively, experiment with formats and combinations of artists, explore new ideas, and challenge the way things are done.

That's why I am not so well-suited to work in an organisation: I would be pushing in too many new directions, following too much the potential for new ideas rather than what is right for that organisation. But my ideas are really ambitious, and often I need to work with organisations to realise these. I am interested to help them be more innovative. Independent producers can offer the larger organisations so much: we are connected with what's going on out there in a different way, and we can make really interesting links across ideas, possibilities, maybe even across the very organisation that we're working with, that others cannot.

In the arts in the UK, there is creativity, but too little innovation: the subsidy focuses too much on delivery and what people can prove they already know how to do, and in fact some people don't like things to change that much. A few organisations and individuals have managed to make a strong case for innovation, and they really inspire me. They have been clear: everything we do is different. The amazing innovation in the UK is in design, new technology and industry, not the arts. I think long term. I have ideas, I want to make them happen, but sometimes I can sense they're ten years away, so I have to learn patience, waiting for the right time to pursue them, keeping conversations going. I believe that, at the point the project is ready to come to fruition, when the right elements are there, it will happen.

The question of financial stability, of basic viability, is the biggest problem I face - and the loneliness. It is so hard to survive financially, and too often I've not paid myself properly, putting the projects first. I am trying to learn that I can't do this; I end up struggling, stressed, underpaid, and I know this is no way for me to build a future. I know I can be doing my best work in another twenty years, but the question is how to get there. Before I can go on to the next level, leading on larger projects and working in new interdisciplinary areas, I have to find a way to stabilise myself so that I can build from there.

I love people, I really love people, but as an independent this means I spend a lot more time on my own. I long for a work partnership that provides strategic discussion and support. If I'm down, there's no-one to pick me up. You have to be aware when you go off balance or are running yourself dry, or you won't survive. In the end, not looking after yourself is one of the weakest things you can do.