1 — Terraforming is the theoretical process in which life on a planet becomes possible through the creation of an atmosphere. Terraforma is the manifest of our belief that new dimensions can now be terraformed. A three days festival where music is the catalyst: a timeless centre of gravity for energies, with a breaking point from which sounds and images create a sense of suspension capable of pointing us towards new perceptions.
2 — Terraforma innovates the concept of musical experience by emphasizing the relationship between event and impact, incubating moods and forms of sensibility durable in time. We want to breed a new concept of listening, to encompass everything that music expresses and reveals; let it be inside, around or outside us, our society and the world.
3 — Terraforma takes place in the woods of Villa Arconati just outside Milan and involves artists who experiment new ways to reduce the distance between art and life. Music and its listening take man back to his natural frequencies where sense of rhythm is once again bound with the environment. Terraforma is organized according to sustainable practices, integrating aspects from production to consumption of resources.
4 — An organic structure where the musical aspect is integrated with installations crafted by artists and artisans, and where gatherings and workshops will provide opportunities for meditation, actively involving the public. The interlace of musical, artistic and environmental dimensions will form an atmosphere capable of stimulating the listener’s sensibility to think about the present and the future in a new way, a cultural innovation sprouting from respect of the other and of the environment.
Excitement blossoms as we’re getting closer.
We’re very proud to disclose the Terraforma 2023 full music program!
Adding eleven acts to our line up, including live performances from Actress who will present an immersive a/v experience in the festival’s labyrinth; the legendary and historical group of Sufi trance musicians from Morocco, The Master Musicians of Jajouka led by Bachir Attar will grace the audience with their highly complex rhythms and melodies performed with traditional instruments. The Congolese-Belgian polyrhythmic maven Nkisi will perform her visceral new live show, “Invisible Gestures,” drawing on her research on the vibrational effects on the body alongside ancient traditions. On the heels of their collaborative album Scotch Rolex and Shackleton will present a live act combining their surrealist punk ethos and cosmic synth freak outs and dubbed-out reverberations. Italian performative act Salò who combine psychedelia, noise, avant rock, theatrics, and a distinct taste for interaction with the audience. Plus, Thomas Ankersmit who will light up the Labyrinth stage with a performance celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Serge Modular synthesizer, his primary instrument, which is one of the most powerful and versatile electronic instruments of the analog era for its powerful acoustic phenomena such as infrasonic vibrations.
While taking control of the DJ performances will be ASMARA an artist who collaborated on Kelela’s latest album, will lay down a Baltimore club inspired set; Tunisian-born, France-based producer and DJ DEENA ABDELWAHED will deliver a set showcasing the diversity of Arabic music together current avant-garde dance music; Lamin Fofana, known for his work questioning movement, migration, alienation, and belonging of people and time, will deliver a multisensory performance featuring original music compositions, field recordings, and archival material; as well as OKO DJ b2b Nosedrip, the unique meeting of Athens-based French artist and founder of LYL Radio, OKO DJ, with the founder of Belgium’s admired Stroom imprint, together form a bond of leftfield, deep-seated selectors
“The most distinctive feature of Terraforma is its magnificent setting: a palace and holiday home acquired by the Milanese Arconati family of Italy’s noble societal class. Years of on-site restoration have renewed and salvaged some of the original sculptural masterpieces that make up the marble-sandstone theaters and fountains plotted around the grounds.” – Notes on the Spectacle: Terraforma & Nextones 2022 by Jazmina Figueroa on Flash Art.
Jim C. Nedd – ‘To Your Scattered Bodies Go’
For every edition, Terraforma invites a guest artist to interpret the festival’s visual identity. For 2023, the Milan based artist Jim C. Nedd developed the edition’ imagery. It is the first time that an artist brings the photographic language into Terraforma’s history. The series is a photographic journey through the details of human bodies merging from the dense mud of the Volcano El Totumo in north Colombia. Taking cue from folk mythology as the Mud Parade in Rio de Janeiro and post-modern festivals such as Re Nudo or Woodstock, when at the apex of collective euphoria people started to jump and to dance into the mud, Nedd’s work focuses on the act of plunging into muddy waters as a moment of emotional and physical release. Because it is symbolic of Earth’s infinite creativity, mud also becomes representative of the Terraforming process, of a shape-making and form-giving gesture innate in all of us.
Terraforma will return to Villa Arconati on June 9-10-11 2023. After last July’s insanely intense edition, we’re more than motivated to bring the festival to a finer level. The first step is to anticipate the dates in order to avoid heat waves in a time of ever-rising global warming. The second consists in reducing the capacity of the festival, bringing it to what it was before the Pandemia. We don’t believe in growth at all costs, and these two steps will allow us to not overstress the environment of Villa Arconati’s green lands. For the present we are working hard to provide a better experience and to improve our capabilities to fulfill the community’s basic yet essential needs. Meanwhile we’re putting together the most diverse and shattering program ever, reintroducing workshops, panels, plus a new exhibition space.
In 2022, Terraforma and Space Caviar presented the new Vaia Stage, named after the extreme weather event occurred in 2018 in some north-eastern regions of Italy destroying about 42.500 hectares of forest. The stage is entirely build out of wood from trees felled by the Vaia storm in order to help the community make use of the vast amount of lumber they have invested in removing from the mountains before it rots. Thanks to the volunteers, the Vaia Stage was assembled during the Vaia Stage Workshop held at Abraxa. Full video.
Terraforma Journal is a new editorial project by Terraforma. A biannual publication exploring the intersection of sound, art, ecology and contemporary culture at large. Terraforma Journal — issue #3 explores the generative possibilities of the synthetic process through a multifaceted research line that connects sound, music, and the adjacent methods of sound generation in audio electronics to fields such as artificial intelligence, ecology, language, logic, and everything in between. In chemistry, physics, electronics, philosophy, linguistics, music, sound, art, and literature, “synthesis” is the combination of components or elements to form a connected whole. The Issue explores the subject through the words and images of Amnesia Scanner, Deep Fake, Chris Korda, Hanne Lippard and many more.
