Ben Babbitt and Steph Kretowicz | Live Performance at FormaHQ

Line up

Ultra Instinct
Enhancement
Kenichi Iwasa
Aloisius

with DJ sets by:
Coby Sey
Conrad Standish (CS + Kreme)

and films by:
Cristine Brache
Geistė Marija Kinčinaitytė
Andra Nadirshah
Yelena Zhelezov

Ultra Instinct is a collaboration between Steph Kretowicz and Ben Babbitt, Ultra Instinct's busted tragic loser pop draws on spoken word text, collaged field recordings, and live-mangled CDJ edits of original tracks to explore the time-tested ritual of combining words and song.

For their debut show in London, the Los Angeles-based duo also present performances from Babbitt's solo project Enhancement, as well as Japan-born improviser and multidisciplinary artist Kenichi Iwasa, and Life is Beautiful label founder and artist Aloisius.
There'll also be DJ sets from CS+Kreme’s Conrad Standish (Melbourne) and Coby Sey (London), along with a short film program featuring Cristine Brache, Geistė Marija Kinčinaitytė, Andra Nadirshah, and Yelena Zhelezov.

Artist Biographies

Ultra Instinct is a new iteration of a collaboration between composer and musician Ben Babbitt, and interdisciplinary writer and editor Steph Kretowicz. Since 2020, the duo have been working together utilizing a palette of spoken word, collaged field recordings, voice memos, samples, and original music to explore the synaesthetic potential of storytelling through music and text. Pieces include "BSAD (buy shit and die)”—premiered via Berlin’s 3hd Festival—“Brutal” for Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, and the autofictional radio play, I Hate Here, commissioned by Radio Gallery, Finnish Broadcasting Company, as well as a number of DJ mixes for Dublab and NTS Radio.