In Conversation with Régina Demina between shadows and screens

Régina Demina is a creature of thresholds. Her practice moves across disciplines—filmmaking, visual art, performance, voice, and text with the fluid urgency of a dream unfolding at night. Born from a hybrid of cultural identities and artistic lineages, she builds contemporary myths from unlikely textures: sink estates and fairy tales, rave rituals and family folklore, digital landscapes and childhood forests.

There’s something unsettling and sacred about her world, where morbid romanticism meets uncanny tenderness, and where each work becomes a labyrinth, threaded with questions about violence, femininity, and the spectacle of the self. Part digital oracle, part urban storyteller, Demina reclaims the suburban and the surreal as spaces of deep emotional resonance.

In this conversation with RED-EYE, she opens up about her latest single "La Dague" and the shadows she chases from dusk till dawn.

“La Dague” isn’t just a track—it feels like an incision. What were you hoping to cut open or expose in this remix version?

I often go through a sort of "crisis" with music, feeling sure I’ll quit for a while—mainly because of the industry and how it works. Sometimes I lose interest in all this—not because of the music itself, but because of the people who run the system and how it functions today. At some point, I just decided I didn’t care about fitting into the industry anymore, or about what people told me to do to be streamable, bankable, or whatever. I’m not good at playing that kind of game—it doesn’t suit me at all. So yes, you're right: the idea behind this remix was to create a more cinematic soundtrack for my show LIMINAL SPACE (ONDINE) and my upcoming album.

I wanted to keep the emotional depth, but make it even more intense and shocking—because that’s what I needed dramaturgically for the stage.

The remix by HOm is both fractured and intimate, like a love letter torn in half. How did this collaboration come about, and what did it unlock in the original composition?

HOm intuitively understood the essence of the track (which I originally created with Charle Caste). I was mourning the end of a love story—I left someone because of their drug addiction, not because of a lack of love. It was painful.

At the same time, Charles had just lost someone close to him. So it’s a very emotional track, and I wanted to go even deeper in that direction.

I approached HOm because we share similar references—dark, ambient, deconstructed music. I instantly felt that when I heard one of his mixes in the U122ae club, one of my favourite places. We worked together using one of his new modular synths, which turned out to be precisely what I was looking for.

Liminal Space – Ondine casts a girl into a world more myth than memory. What drew you to this character—and in what ways is she an echo of yourself?

I love the character of Ondine. I’ve been obsessed with her in literature and films. In Giraudoux’s version, she says, “I am 15, even if I was born 100 years ago.” I think about that line a lot—it speaks directly to my heart. She’s apart , a bit lonely : magical and fascinating—graceful, playful, direct, and frightening like a spontaneous child. She has an old and a baby soul in one body. She’s a lover, she’s impulsive. I genuinely love her— she comforts me. And I recognise myself in many of her traits.

She survives even though she’s totally inadequate: when she leaves the sea and marries a knight, she doesn’t fit into the human world, doesn’t know the codes, and makes mistakes. She only bonds with a weird-looking poet. She’s obsessed with truth and sincerity—to the point where it becomes a handicap. She resonates with me. Like her, I’m kind of a transfuge de classe. I’m a migrant, quite autistic and strange. I often feel I don’t know how to communicate. I’m clumsy with social interactions. But I connect through creation, lyricism, and play.

It’s difficult for me to connect with people otherwise. I don’t know how to introduce myself or interact most of the time.

Your project dissolves genre, identity, and even body. What possibilities do you find in shapeshifting, both sonically and narratively?

It’s a form of protection, a way to communicate, to have fun, and to free myself. It allows me to play and to work with dissociative states that I don’t always control. Strangely, it becomes a playground that brings me closer to my core.

From film to performance to sound—your work resists hierarchy. When you’re building a world like Ondine, what comes first: the image, the emotion, or the noise?

It’s hard to explain, but it’s easier for me to think in terms of a total, layered universe rather than starting from a single detail and building up. But I guess it’s always the emotion that draws me first. It’s not that intellectual at the beginning.

You describe monsters as more merciful than men. What kind of mercy does your chimera offer in a world like ours?

She escapes from a world like ours—so I hope she offers others a rest from the violence of reality, which is often worse than the darkest fairy tales.

Interview by @danielface_

Concept, performance, scenerio, text and vidéo @reginademina

Mapping @omarlavalle

Music @reginademina @carlchaste @benchollet @hashishbb @ytemmm @h0m_______

Sound design et mix @ytemmm

Editing @romainbeaujard @tristan.savoy

@baeimhomealone

Post prod @guillaumehugon

Color grading @jardin.dop

Hair @paintedbyemiliano

Makeup @g_ermafrodita

RED•EYE WORLD