Alejandra Cárdenas Pacheco (also known as Ale Hop) is a Peruvian-born artist, researcher, and experimental musician based in Berlin. Her body of work includes live shows, record releases, sound and video artworks, research on sound and technology, and original music for film and dance. 

Her live performances merge the physical qualities of music with raw emotional states. She builds layers of sounds by blending a complex repertoire of guitar techniques processed by synthesis devices, to create a music of deep physical intensity. 

She began her career in the 2000s in Lima’s experimental and underground scene. In 2012, following several years of taking part in different pop and electronic bands, she finally started her solo project after performing alone for the first time in Boiler Room, during her residence at the Red Bull Music Academy New York.

Her studious approach to the subjects covered in her albums and pieces is constantly informed by her background as a researcher. She completed a BA in Art History, her master’s in Sound Studies, studies in History of Science and Technology, and is PhD candidate at Berlin University of Arts. She also co-founded the Berlin-based festival Radical Sounds Latin America (of which she was co-curator from 2019 to 2021) and, nowadays, directs the editorial platform Contingent Sounds, which facilitate critical discourses, and artistic research on listening.

Ale Hop is currently an artist of Shape Platform. She has performed, screened and exhibited work internationally at institutions and festivals, such as UNSOUND (2022), Sonic Acts (2022), CTM Festival (2022), Taiwan C-LAB (2022), REWIRE (2021), Haus der Kulturen der Welt (2021), New York’s Museum of Arts and Design (2021), Australia Independent Film Festival (2021), Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (2020), Somerset House Studios (2019), Heroines of Sound (2019), MALBA Latin American Art Museum of Buenos Aires (2015), among others.

Photo:Udo Siegfriedt