If one is not an expert sociologist but wishes to have a glimpse of where new experimental creativity, social behavior, sustainability and collective ideas are moving to, then participating to an independent music festival is a recommended option. Especially after a two-years long forced stop and amidst the uncertainties of new pandemic waves, monkeypoxes, five major wars – including that in Ukraine –, energetic crises, global heat and draughts.
Among the many festival options around the world that claim to be sustainable – from the more commercial DGTL in the Netherlands to Wonderfruit in Thailand, Shambhala in the UK, Green Man in Wales, or Dayzero in Mexico and Israel, just to name a few –1 the most representative of all remains the Burning Man in Black Rock City, Nevada. Here a vast, social utopia has been shaped year after year since 19862 putting “experience before theory, moral relationships before politics, survival before services, roles before jobs, embodied support before sponsorship.”3 A temporary experiment – born in the form of what Bey Hakim referred to as TAZ (Temporary Autonomous Zone) – a city4 where radical inclusion, self-expression, self-reliance, communal effort and decommodification are values that have been shared and spread by thousands of burners over the years, with an environmental policy of “leaving no trace”.5
Terraforma festival organized by Threes, Villa Arconati, Milan, 2022. Photo credit: Domenico Laterza
A crucial aspect of how festivals are evolving is their capacity of being transformational [...] “spaces of identity construction through exploration of alternative lifeways and spiritual experiences.”
A crucial aspect of how festivals are evolving is their capacity of being transformational, meaning that they are not just places for music performance but “spaces of identity construction through exploration of alternative lifeways and spiritual experiences.”6 The scale of the event and its consequent organization philosophy is, moreover, another fundamental step to deliver an ever more thoughtful experience to its visitors: a smaller gathering, when is well planned, is likely to be less harmful to the environment, possibly enhancing a sense of belonging, where spectators and performers become all participants. This is the type of approach Terraforma and Nextones have.
Armin Linke, "Alpi", Villa Caselli, Masera (Italy), Nextones 2022. Photo credit: Domenico Laterza
The idea was to observe how sustainability and architecture were now interpreted and shaped, or misshaped, after two years of forced pause.
Participating to these two Italian festivals - both produced by Milan-based studio Threes and largely populated by an international audience - was a way to sense the Italian after life of electronic music and spatial participation, beyond the traumas of the rigid pandemic restrictions in the country.7 The idea was to observe how sustainability and architecture were now interpreted and shaped, or misshaped, after two years of forced pause. This was possible thanks to the reading of the festivals’ art director, Ruggero Pietromarchi, approached a couple of days after Nextones was concluded in the beautiful Val D’Ossola mountains.
Terraforma. Thoughtful Baroque
For those who are unfamiliar with Terraforma, it is a three-days electronic music festival that takes place once a year in the baroque gardens of Villa Arconati, just outside Milan. It declares itself as a festival where electronic music, sustainability and experimentation come together, and where “new dimensions can be terraformed” (terraforming stands for a hypothetical process in which life on a planet becomes possible through the creation of an atmosphere).8
After the pandemic break – during which Threes Productions kept very active with multiple collateral initiatives including the Terraforma Journal, Radio Safari, Il Pianeta creative incubator and the Terraforma Simposio – what used to be a multifaceted event that puts together music, workshops and talks, in 2022 turned into “just dance. No talks, no panels, no screenings, no lectures, no workshops, no meetings, no streamings”, announced the Terraforma Journal.
The idea was to focus on “the only element that we have been missing most of all: joyfully dancing and coming together through music,” as read in the open letter shared with all the Terraformers during the event. A music flow, in a continuous uninterrupted sequence that traced a sonic journey. Its refreshing lineup included performances by French-born Ivoirian-Guadaloupean dj Crystalmess (probably the best show of the whole festival), Higher Intelligence Agency, Italian artist Paquita Gordon and many other artists that generously filled over 40 hours of live sets in four different stages.
It all happened while this year’s weather was exceptionally hot and dry: Milan hadn’t seen a drop of water in months. Placing the wooden stages under the lavish shadows of the villa’s trees was, therefore, the best choice for an optimal gathering, where the climatic qualities of trees preceded the festival’s functions just as described in Philippe Rahm’s Histoire Naturelle de l’Architecture (2020).9 The possible controversies on disturbing the local fauna, on the other hand, had been appeased in the past by Pietromarchi, who had declared to have received the green light by the LIPU, the Italian League of Bird Protection. The topic has become sensitive in Italy after polemics on the massive music tour of famous Italian singer Jovanotti in fragile natural environments where endangered species live and procreate.10
Recycle, Reuse, Replant
The reuse of stages and structures from previous years, makes Terraforma always look familiarly the same, maybe with the risk that “a thoughtful festival can feel understated”,11 far from the overlapping of spectacular structures that mark the majority of festivals (Coachella in primis) resembling what Guy Debord would refer to as the immense accumulation of spectacles.12 Most notably, the only new stage (the Vaia Stage) was designed by Space Caviar using leftover trunks from the 2018 wind storm that destroyed 42.500 hectares of forest in Northern Italy.
The only new stage (the Vaia Stage) was designed by Space Caviar using leftover trunks from the 2018 wind storm that destroyed 42.500 hectares of forest in Northern Italy.
Space Caviar also designed the communal showers in the festival’s campsite, displayed in semi-circle so that everyone could face each other naked while taking a shower and using a very limited amount of water. The plantation of a hundred trees and the reconstruction of an ancient, previously existing labyrinth (designed by Fosbury Architecture) completes the picture. Overall, the festival coincides with several points of Gilles Clément’s Manifesto on the Third Landscape (2014) where it is stated, for example, that unproductivity should be elevated up to having political dignity and the Third Landscape (the one unattended by men) should be the privileged place for biologic intelligence.13
I see it as a reflection of what’s happening today in the world: temperatures are rising in a psychophysical sense, so both mentally – especially after two years of lockdowns – and environmentally.
“Once again Terraforma manifests itself as a relevant mirror of reality,” says Ruggero Pietromarchi when interviewed. He continued: “it has been a chaos, in some ways wonderful, in others destructive from every point of view: social, environmental, even economical. It became almost suffocating with extreme temperatures and loads of people. I see it as a reflection of what’s happening today in the world: temperatures are rising in a psychophysical sense, so both mentally – especially after two years of lockdowns – and environmentally.” In this great social overheating and tension – greatly forecasted by sociologist Zygmunt Bauman in his liquid series14 and synthetized in the lesson the Queen gives to Alice, “it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”15 Pietromarchi sees music as an aggregating factor that luckily survives. “Music works as an artistic and energetic catalyst for this dense human mass,” he adds.
Nextones. The festival as a free experiment
Nextones is a one-week festival that takes place in Val D’Ossola, in the Italian Alps, throughout different locations that vary from high altitude lakes to tiny churches lost in the woods, abandoned quarries or infamous witches’ towns. The first part of the week consists of a friendly gathering of a tiny group of artists, musicians and curious guests that share their time together in workshops, seminars, hikes, food, meditations and sound experimentations. It then culminates in a three-days electronic music event held in an abandoned Gneiss quarry that has been revitalized by Tones on the Stones,16 a larger music and arts festival that has been active for 15 years with concerts and site-specific installations in the mountains.
This year, Nextones invited names such as Armin Linke to present his film Alps and who is currently working on projects in the Val Grande with the help of Threes, Tomas Saraceno’s Aerocene workshop with air balloons that fly without fuel, or Berlin’s Berghain guest Rrose who performed James Tenney’s Having Never Written a Note for Percussion – a minimal piece dating back to the 60s that is just one long climax played with a gong – in the spectacular Orridi di Uriezzo canyons. Alongside the music residencies, like Milanese duo BAUBAU, Deep Listening meditations, there are locally harvested and naturally prepared food. The ending parties included the participation of Catalan composer and performer Marina Herlop, the supreme rallentato electronic sounds of Front de Cadeux, composer Electric Indigo and the chill vibes of Verynice’N’Sleazy DJset, among many others.
But even after participating for six full days, and after having meditated with my feet, or walked in dark tunnels to end up listening to an Arpabong, having had dinner at a priests-founded summer campsite for kids, or sleeping in communal train wagons, it is not fully clear what Nextones wants to be. Maybe the seed of another transformational festival? “There was not much rationality in it, and what you are asking is the proof of the experiment” Pietromarchi explains.
“In an experiment you put ingredients together, but you don’t really know what the result will be,” he continues. “This is valid for any festival. The festival itself is a platform for experimentation. Then there are ingredients that definitely have a greater impact on the kind of experience you get, one of them being the numbers. The more you raise the numbers, the more massive the experiment will be, therefore it will be less human, less sophisticated. Nextones is extremely sophisticated because, as you say, it is a group of friends that come together, without being self-referential”. Pietromarchi explains that compared to Terraforma, Nextones represents a utopia, a Platonic idea that has a more human dimension: if Terraforma gives the pulse of contemporary society, Nextones is a taste of future cohabitation possibilities.
Sustainable culture, or Destroy the fear of money-making
Deciding how to deal with money is a priority for any festival organization in order to achieve economical sustainability. Burning Man, for example, opted to form an LLC where money that came from ticket selling and private donations would be used only to finance artists, full-time staff and festival facilities.17 In Terraforma or Nextones there is no trace of sponsors, no banners, no stands, no gadgets. But they are there, just very hidden. One of the partners, for instance, was Californian sporting shoe brand Teva, which published an Instagram promotional artsy video made together with Threes, where one could see some participants wearing their shoes during the event. I came aware of this only after the festival, looking at Nextones Instagram page and, therefore, understanding why the number of photographers and video makers documenting the event was almost equal to the number of participants. But during those days nothing seemed to be influenced by this presence.
“It is important to look for sustainability on an economic level, so that if tomorrow there is no municipality, no call for proposals or no foundation to support you, you can still stand up,” Pietromarchi explains. But how to keep such initiatives independent when there is someone right behind you that provides money? Apparently, enlightened sponsors support the cause they are financing, seeing the cultural value of these festivals and their mission in seeding ideas. “This is why we created the Terraforma Journal,” concludes Pietromarchi, “to have a tool that transcends the trends and becomes useful for anyone who wants to explore certain issues in the future, the way it happened to us with The Planet as Festival by Ettore Sottsass: a vision that inspired the creation of Terraforma.”18
Ettore Sottsass’ words seem, in fact, to best summarise this incredible experience:“I designed these projects as if they had been proposed by someone else - someone far removed from the trajectory of thought concerned with the city, since I considered that thought concerned with the city has, up to now, only projected, wherever it comes from and wherever it goes to, the insane, sick, dangerous and aggressive idea that men must live only to work and must work to produce and then consume.”
Bio
Designer and journalist, born in Milan in 1987, Marianna Guernieri trained as an interior designer at the Politecnico of Milan and the Rhode Island School of Design. She has been part of Domus editorial staff for over 10 years, working as a web editor, writer and content manager covering design, architecture and art stories with a special interest in radical sustainability and the margins. In 2022 she started her own independent activity that includes writing, designing and art making. She lives between Italy, Mexico and the United States.
Photos: Domenico Laterza
Notes
1 See “The Road to Circularity”, DGTL, Available at https://dgtl.nl/sustainability; “To Fight Construction Waste, We Can Stop Wasting Things”, Wonderfruit, Available at https://wonderfruit.co/wonderpost/construction-waste/; “Green Shambala”, Shambala Festival, Available at https://www.shambalafestival.org/essential-info/sustainability/; “Being Green”, Green Man, 2022, Available athttps://www.greenman.net/information/being-green/; “Sustainability”, Dayzero, Available at https://dayzerofestival.com/sustainability/
2 Anthony J. Colella Sir, “Utopian Visions in Radical Communities: Burning Man”, SIT Graduate Institute, Spring 2015, Available at shorturl.at/bcnY0; Rachel Bowditch, “The Somatic City: Rehearsing Utopia at the Burning Man Festival”, Streetnoes n.18, edited by Blagovesta Momchedjikova, Spring 2010, Available at shorturl.at/ELPR5; Larry Harvey, “Consensus, Hierarchy, Authority and Power”, Burning Man, February 2011, Available at shorturl.at/lU046; “Timeline: The early years”, 1986, Burning Man, Available at https://burningman.org/timeline/1986
3 “Our Mission”, Burning Man, Available at https://burningman.org/about/our-mission/
4 Steve Pepple, “What Burning Man Taught Me About Cities”, Beyond Burning Man, Medium, September 10, 2014, Available at shorturl.at/ESYZ6
5 Alessia Clusini, “Why Society Needs Burning Man: Can Transformational Festivals Be a Source of Change?”, Medium, April 19, 2017, Available at shorturl.at/iqy28
6 Amanda J. Lucia, White utopias, (Oakland: University of California Press, 2020), 21.
7 Ruggero Pietromarchi,“Terraforma, are we ever going to dance again?”, interview by Marianna Guernieri, Domusweb, January 28, 2021, Available at shorturl.at/BCOS6
8 Terraforma, Available at: https://www.terraformafestival.com/
9 Philippe Rahm, “L’espace public naît aussi à l’ombre d’un arbre”, in Histoire Naturelle de L’Architecture, (Pavillon de l’Arsenal, 2020), 64-66.
10 Mario Tozzi, “Caro Jovanotti, stavolta sbagli”, La Zampa, La Stampa, August 9, 2022, Available at shorturl.at/coQ49
11 Resident Advisor, “Terraforma and Horst, Two Festivals Unifying Music and Metamorphic Architecture”, July 1, 2022, Available at https://ra.co/features/4035
12 Guy Debord, La Société du spectacle, 1967, translated by Paolo Salvadori, (Firenze: Vallecchi, La società dello spettacolo, 1979), n. 1.
13 Gilles Clément, Manifeste du Tiers paysage, 2005, translated by Filippo De Pieri and Giuseppe Lucchesini, (Macerata: Quodlibet srl, Manifesto del Terzo Paesaggio, 2014), 61-65.
14 Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid life, 2005, translated by Marco Cupellaro, (Bari: Economica Editori Laterza, Vita Liquida, 2008), 135-135.
15 Lewis Carroll, “Chapter 2. The Garden of Live Flowers”, Through the Looking-Glass, 1871, (eBook: The Millennium Fulcrum edition, 1991 via Project Gutemberg), Available at https://www.gutenberg.org/files/12/12-h/12-h.htm
16 Tones Teatro Natura, Tones on the Stones, Available at https://tonesteatronatura.com/en/the-theatre/
17 “Where Does My Ticket Money Go?”, Burning Man, Available at shorturl.at/finpT
18 Ettore Sottsass, “The Planet as a Festival”, Casabella, May 1972.
