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Meet Agora Sci-Fi: Nathania Rubin’s darkly hypnotic blend of music and animation from the underbelly of a broken world

By Tom Barnas
4/16/2025

Connection.

It’s real. It’s vital. And it’s something so many of us crave—especially when the person we’re longing to connect with is no longer here. But how do we reach across that void? Can we find connection through rhythm, rhyme, or the flicker of animation? Maybe… just maybe.

Agora Sci-Fi is more than a music project—it’s a deeply personal and visionary fusion of lo-fi pop, animated storytelling, and raw emotional resonance. The creator behind it all is Nathania Rubin, a singer-songwriter, visual artist, and animator who is not only writing and performing the music, but also crafting the entire visual universe around it.

At the heart of Agora Sci-Fi is “Z,” an animated character navigating a surreal, capitalist dystopia. Z has recently been released from prison for ambiguous crimes against society. Her wealthy family poisons her with sugary, memory-erasing confections, leaving her disoriented and disconnected from her past. She spends her nights swimming in the polluted East River, a strange and poetic ritual of resistance.

Nathania Rubin brings this world to life with haunting beauty. Based in New York City, she’s no stranger to the world of animation—her music video for Advance Base’s The Tooth Fairy showcases her signature style. Her short film Crowded won the Grand Jury Prize at the Seattle International Film Festival, premiered at DOK Leipzig, and qualified for the 2021 Academy Awards. It’s been screened at festivals including Cannes AVIFF, Boston Underground, Brooklyn Film Festival, and Animafest Zagreb, among others.

Her visual art and animations have been exhibited in over 20 countries, and she currently teaches art in the Midwest. Before stepping into the solo spotlight, Nathania played bass and sang in the NYC indie rock band Locket (not to be confused with the current group by that name).

Agora Sci-Fi’s debut EP, Finding It Hard to Explain Something So Obvious, is set to release in early summer—a five-song journey through loss, identity, and the strange poetry of survival.

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