Hannah Viti

This interview was conducted with Hannah Viti on October 9, 2022 in Hillsdale, NY. She begins by describing the importance of Chicago as the place she was born and raised in a communal way by her parents and grandparents, having had a mother working as an ER paramedic on the weekends and spending them with her grandmother. She discusses growing up with care, respect, and admiration for these women but also with a lot of alone time and independence which she believes fueled an interest in creativity and music. She describes the big culture shock going to school in Indiana and studying conflict mediation in college but ending up feeling unqualified to do restorative justice as an outsider in a community. Having struggled to find a job in the field she wants, she talked about her decision to invest in sound, and getting a masters in sound arts. Hannah mentions having been a first generation college student and therefore being encouraged to apply to school, but not telling her family it was in the arts because of their anxiety. She discusses her current life of balancing DJing with a sound design career. Hannah developed her own belief system after being raised Catholic, remembering how as a young girl she wondered why women couldn’t be priests. She describes trusting that divine justice is acting within us and her belief in deep listening. Hannah discusses coming out in college as a Lesbian and having gotten sick trying to pretend to be someone else. She is grateful to be playing with her two woman DJ mentors and feels committed to the documentation of elders within the house music community. Hannah ends by speaking about her belief that all humans deserve access to pleasure.