Awards
LULA.XYZ (Lula Mebrahtu) is an award winning multidisciplinary artist at the intersection of Art, Music & Tech. Unconventional thinker with technology as her enabler, she is breaking norms. Her artistic expression is a sensory experience garnering support and success across multiple fields. Credits include: North Star Fading Animation (shortlisted for an inspiration award); Lead in feature film Semret (2022); BBC Documentary long-listed for an Amnesty award; Oram Award for innovation in sound.
‘I don’t believe in monogamy in art!”
Using her voice to liberate truth, Lula speaks about a lived experience past, present and future. Her soulful timbre, which carries the weight of her heritage, facilitates transcendence. As a pioneering practitioner of the wearable tech MiMU Gloves (midi gestural controller), she makes levitation through sound waves possible.
“One of 2019 most breathtaking discoveries, @LULA.XYZ created an unforgettable performance around her mesmerizing stage presence’ MoogFest, North Carolina”
In 2018, Lula gave the MiMU gloves their theatre premiere in the children’s play ‘Ruffus Longbottom & The Space Rabbit.’ And currently, she is preparing to take her one woman show OommoO to Edinburgh Fringe Festival. This production will be her debut as a writer.
An acronym for ‘One of many, many of One’ – OommoO is a one woman theatre series that depicts the true life events of a 1st generation ImMigrant Lula Berhane, as she navigates the duality of two cultures, her Habesha (Eritrea/Ethiopian) heritage and British identity.
A modular live show, OommoO is presented with a cinematic sensibility interweaving language + customs with innovative high tech storytelling tools like the wearable tech MiMU gloves and stitches the story together with visuals+music+soundscape to teleport you to a different world. It is an emotionally visceral, poetic reflection of an experience unpacked through an Afro-Futuristic East African lens.
OommoO is neither a musical, drama or gig theater… It is a new kind of storytelling.
This story is about a family whose native tongue is Tigrinya. Members of this community have never been to the theatre before, and as such OommoO will be available in English (w. Tigrinya subtitles) and Tigrinya (w. English subtitles) because theatre should be inclusive.
To encourage dialogue about the themes of the show, excerpts will be presented in an interactive conversation staged within a COFFEE CEREMONIES experience (a traditional Habesha custom). This format of the show has low-no tech requirements & can be housed anywhere.
The MiMU gloves are wireless, wearable gestural MIDI controllers, fitted with sensors that track the movement of your hands and fingers, allowing control of software with a degree of complexity and expression.
Pioneering practitioner LULA.XYZ has spearheaded the use of micro gestures over global gestures to create imagery relating to otherness, a practice that is specific to her movement identity with the gloves.
“We listen with our eyes and ears, and as such, in considering my movement language, I think about what will serve the story.”
