Hurled to the Moon: Kamila Batavia Brings “Baroque Galactic” to Kampnagel International Summer Festival
Press Release | August 13, 2026
A multilingual chamber-pop performance bringing music, storytelling, and the imagined Kingdom of Batavia to the stage with band and string ensemble.
Hamburg, August 2026 — “Once upon a time, there was a princess from a kingdom far away…”
With these words, Indonesian singer-songwriter and composer Kamila Batavia opened Hurled to the Moon, a music and storytelling performance presented at Kampnagel International Summer Festival in Hamburg on 13 August 2026.
Kampnagel is one of Europe’s leading independent production and performance centers for contemporary arts. Every August, the three-week Kampnagel International Summer Festival brings together international work across theatre, dance, performance, music, visual arts, film, and discourse, with a particular focus on encounters between the avant-garde and popular culture.
On the festival stage, Kamila brought the musical world she calls “Baroque Galactic” into a live setting alongside her band and string players from Unimusik Hamburg. The performance brought together chamber pop, piano, string ensemble, storytelling, and multilingual works in Indonesian, German, and English.
Photo: Rey Tampubolon. Pictured from left: Lennart Beck, Gundula, Leon, Kamila Batavia, Fendi & Indra.
The princess introduced at the beginning of the performance, however, is more than a fairytale character.
Through the figure of the Princess of Batavia and the imagined Kingdom of Batavia, Kamila uses the language of fantasy to speak about something deeply real: loss, memory, the passage of time, and the ways in which we rebuild something beautiful when life has fallen apart.
“The Princess of Batavia built a castle from the ruins of memory. Whenever life has become hard and shattered, she builds something beautiful out of it.”
This metaphor has become one of the foundations of Kamila Batavia’s artistic world. Batavia—the historical name of Jakarta, the city where Kamila was born—evolves within her work into an imagined realm where personal memory, her experiences of life in Indonesia and Germany, music, and mythology converge.
In Hurled to the Moon, this world took on a broader live form through the combination of piano, band, and string ensemble. Kamila performed works from her catalogue including “Hilang dan Tak Kembali,” “Als Ich Einschlief,” “Berakhir dan Berlalu,” and “Tayomi,” while also introducing new material, “The Astronaut.”
The collaboration grew out of Kamila’s connection with Hamburg’s university music community. Working with violinist and arranger Lennart Beck, who developed the string arrangements for the performance, Kamila’s compositions were translated into a live ensemble format—bringing piano, band, and strings together in the chamber-oriented sound that forms an important part of the Baroque Galactic musical language.
Between songs, storytelling became an integral part of the performance’s dramaturgy. Kamila guided the audience back and forth between the reality of an Indonesian songwriter living in Hamburg and the world of the Princess of Batavia—a realm filled with castles, moons, memory, and questions about the passage of time.
The performance culminated with “Tayomi,” a deeply personal work Kamila wrote for her late mother. Performed as the encore with the full ensemble, the song brought the performance to its close before Kamila invited the musicians to stand and receive the audience’s applause together.
For Kamila, Hurled to the Moon was more than a festival performance. It marked another step in translating Baroque Galactic from a musical and visual language into a live theatrical experience—a space where songs, storytelling, characters, and an imagined world can exist together.
Hurled to the Moon — In the Press
Selected press coverage documenting Hurled to the Moon, its Kampnagel performance, and the evolving world of Baroque Galactic.
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Radio Republik Indonesia— “Melalui sosok Princess of Batavia dan dunia imajiner Kingdom of Batavia, Kamila menggunakan bahasa fantasi untuk berbicara tentang sesuatu yang sangat nyata: kehilangan, ingatan, perjalanan waktu.” [Read more → Hurled to the Moon: Kamila Batavia di Kampnagel Summer Festival]
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VIVA.co.id— “Di situlah konsep Baroque Galactic menemukan bentuknya yang lebih luas. Musik tidak berdiri sendiri. Namun, musik berjalan beriringan dengan karakter, cerita, visual, dan simbol-simbol yang membangun sebuah semesta artistik.” [Read more → Kamila Bawa Kisah Princess of Batavia ke Panggung Festival Seni Eropa di Hamburg]
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TVRINews— "Melalui karakter imajiner Princess of Batavia, Kamila membuka pertunjukannya dengan mengusung narasi dongeng yang sarat akan pesan filosofis kehidupan." [Read more → Komposer Indonesia Kamila Batavia Pukau Penonton Festival Kampnagel Hamburg]
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Kabari News — "Kamila mengajak penonton bergerak di antara dua dunia, yakni realitas dirinya sebagai songwriter Indonesia yang kini hidup di Hamburg dan dunia Princess of Batavia yang dipenuhi kastel, rembulan, ingatan, serta pertanyaan mengenai waktu dan kehilangan. " [Read more → Kamila Batavia Hadirkan “Baroque Galactic” di Kampnagel International Summer Festival]
What began as an imagined world continues to take shape—in music, on stage, and through the stories told around it.