Cultural Cadence | Moehecan & Udi Raz

In a special edition of Cultural Cadence:ParadiseLost&Found, Brooklyn-born Syrian artist and organizer Moehecan steps into the interview seat, with writer and activist Udi Raz guiding the conversation.

For the first time, Moehecan shares his story — growing up in Brooklyn during the height of the opioid epidemic, developing a deep interest in psychology, trauma, and resilience, and later moving to Berlin where he immersed himself in the city’s nightlife. He reflects on both the beauty and the contradictions of these spaces, and how questions of care, exploitation, and belonging shaped his journey from being part of a collective to founding his own.

Through a mix of personal experience and perspectives shaped by psychology, interpersonal neurobiology, and sociopolitical analysis, Moehecan explores how culture and community shape us — and how nightlife can either reproduce harm or provide care and connection.

At the heart of the conversation is a meditation on the legacy of the Paradise Garage — not only as a legendary New York club, but as a model for what nightlife can be: a place of care, safety, and liberation. Today, Moehecan examines how that spirit is too often commodified or stripped of its history, and why protecting cultural memory matters in the ongoing struggle for community, solidarity, and justice.