DUBAI: When the artist, producer and audio-visual archivist Mark Gergis DJs, he does so with three cassette decks. Not with turntables, not with controllers, but with one small portable cassette deck and two tape consoles. “It’s an interesting, clunky sort of way to DJ,” he admits, “but it seems to be in demand. I think people like to see that kind of tactile engagement with the technology.”
Cassettes have been a part of Gergis’ life for as long as he can remember. As a child he loved the sounds they brought into his family’s home, and by the time he was four or five he was operating the family deck. He would record his family and friends, experiment with audio, and perform radio plays with his brother.
“It was a very normal part of our lives and when I was a teenager it was just the best way to record songs off the radio or put ideas down on tape,” he says. “It was economical. I used to carry a portable cassette deck wherever I went in the Eighties and we knew what the format was and what its limitations were. We all knew it was prone to extra noise and…
