Terraforma 2023 draws inspiration from Organic Music Society, a social experiment involving art, music, and more by American multi-instrumentalist Don Cherry and multidisciplinary artist Moki Cherry
Terraforma
In science fiction ‘to terraform’ means to transform a space or planet that is not suit for human life into something that can sustain a complete ecosystem, humans included, by creating an atmosphere. In the northern outskirts of Milan, Villa Arconati – a long abandoned baroque complex built in the 18th century, located in the little town of Bollate – started its own process of ‘terraformation’ in 2014. Through culture.
The occasion was the first edition of Terraforma Festival, musically focusing on avant-garde electronic music. The organizers had one project: the restoration of the spaces surrounding Villa Arconati, mostly its gardens. «Our goal was to terraform new contexts through cultural contents. If music is our language, sustainability wants to be our modus operandi. This is what ‘terraforming’ means to us. Arts turning into habitable something that it wasn’t», says Ruggero Pietromarchi, founder, curator and project manager of Terraforma.
A short circuit induced by music
From day one, Terraforma has always been different from other electronic music festivals. «We had the idea to create something that was an experience rather than a traditional festival. It’s a 3-days camping journey where people sweat if the weather’s hot and get wet if it rains. The necessity to develop this temporary community brings complexities to the table. Such as providing services where usually there are none», explains Pietromarchi. But the founder wants to remark that Terraforma was born from a «need». The urgency was to erase the schizophrenic dimension of everyday life while entering «a new space-time dimension where there’s room for a short circuit induced by music».
Pietromarchi has stated many times in the past that – oddly enough – Terraforma Festival isn’t really a festival. Or better: it’s not if your idea of festival resembles Coachella and similar events. He explains: «I’m not a fan of traditional festivals. I’m not into their fair dimension. Not into new trends. Not into the need to chase anything that comes up as ‘new’. None of that». This vision morphed Terraforma.
The event, seven editions into its life, is still mostly a place «that is defined each time by the people who are attending and by the contents that are presented and given a platform». A space thought for «the birth of a new form of spontaneity». Even after Covid-19 changed «everything». «During these two years of pandemic the world has changed and so did I», says Pietromarchi – the premise of the project remains the same: to come together and enter this «short circuit» that allows to escape reality.
Terraforma 2023: multi-instrumentalist Don Cherry and multidisciplinary artist Moki Cherry
In Terraforma 2023, a community is created through a human, do-it-yourself, sustainable, and constrained access dimension. Terraforma 2023 draws inspiration from Organic Music Society, a social experiment involving art, music, performance, nature, teaching, daily life, family, and spirituality by renowned American multi-instrumentalist Don Cherry and multidisciplinary artist Moki Cherry.
Discussions and matinee performances are organized in partnership with the publisher Blank Forms, which also features concerts by Exotic Sin feat. TYSON and Still House Plants as well as the book Organic Music Societies by the same writers, Lawrence Kumpf and Naima Karlsson, which was published in 2021.
Exhibitions, discussions and workshops at Terraforma 2023
To learn, share, experience the present, and envision a better future, exhibitions, discussions, and workshops will be held in The Dome, the geodesic dome that was originally designed by Bengt Carling, this time with the assistance of the architecture firm Salottobuono and Domus Academy. This is similar to what Don and Moki Cherry did for Utopias & Visions 1871-1981 at Moderna Museet in Stockholm. We will learn about the Mediterranean and its coastlines, circular fabric manufacturing, the effect of archive practice in Black music, and looongplay from Invernomuto, Vitelli (an experimental knitwear business), critic/journalist/teacher Christine Kakaire (with assistance from SHAPE+), and BABAU.
The music selection for 2023
This year’s music program flourishes and further diversified Terraforma’s usual continuum of live concerts and DJ sets extremely selected from the international scene: Actress, a British A/V genius in the labyrinth of Villa Arconati; The Master Musicians of Jajouka, a legend of the Sufi trance tradition from Morocco; Belgian-Congolese producer Nkisi, between polyrhythms, body-crossing vibrations and ancient traditions; Scotch Rolex and Shackleton, a recent collaboration between two electronic veterans; the Italians Salò, between theater, noise, avant-garde and psychedelic rock; Thomas Ankersmit with his Serge Modular, a peculiar analog synthesizer that has been reaching for infrasound for 50 years; Lamin Fofana, with a multisensory collage between migration, alienation, belonging; and DJ sets by ASMARA-just after a collaboration with Kelela on Warp, Deena Abdelwahed and OKO DJ B2B Nosedrip from LYL Radio and Stroom, between Baltimore, avant-garde dance, Arabic music and more.
In further attendance will be Beatrice Dillon with Kuljit Bhamra, master of Bhangra, music of the Punjabi diaspora in the UK; Hudson Mohawke, with a live version of his third album ‘Cry Sugar’ between sampling, experimentation, electro and hip hop; New York’s Dawuna, between R&B, free jazz and religious existentialism; Parisian Aho Ssan (SHAPE+), soon to be featured on Nicolás Jaar’s Other People with “Rhizomes”; Patrick Belaga and Tapiwa Svosve (PAN), together for cello and saxophone experimentations; dub/raggae vocalist Paul St. Hilaire aka Tikiman with Scion (Substance & Vainqueur), the originators of Berlin’s musical legacy for the past 20 years; DJ sets by Batu, Josey Rebelle, Low Jack B2B STILL (PAN), upsammy (PAN), Dennis Bovell – reggae recordist, Terraforma’s residents Donato Dozzy B2B Marco Shuttle and Paquita Gordon, between acid house, tropical disco, drum’n’bass, techno, dub and spiritual jazz; Exotic Sin, a duo formed by Kenichi Iwasa and Naima Karlsson this time with TYSON (singer-songwriter from London with collaborations with Dean Blunt and Coby Sey), for vocals, piano, trumpet, flutes, percussion and Don Cherry’s ‘zen saxophones’; Still House Plants by Jessica Hickie-Kallenbach, Finlay Clark and David Kennedy, with edgy experimental pop between samples, slow core and R&B.
2022 edition. For once, We just dance
Coronavirus, in fact, has pushed Terraforma’s creators to put together an even more ancestral kind of festival. «When Christmas was approaching, we realized that there were solid chances to organize the festival again. We asked ourselves: ‘Where are we now? What do we want to do?’», recalls Pietromarchi. The answer self-revealed. «The only thing we really wanted to do was to reclaim what has been canceled by the virus. Dancing and gathering». And they wanted to be very clear about it: Terraforma’s motto for 2022 is ‘For once, We just dance’. Which means: no talks, no workshops, no panels, no screenings, no lectures, no meetings.
In its imposed two-years break, Terraforma as a brand explored and worked on aspects «that covered the intellectual and speculative part of the project». There’s Terraforma Simposio, a day of workshops and meetings dedicated to cultural and creative ideas aiming at sustainability, and there’s Terraforma Journal, a publication analyzing the intersection of sound, art, culture and ecology. ‘Il Pianeta come Festival’ – borrowing its name from Ettore Sottsass’ 1972 series – left Villa Arconati and dived into different locations in Rome and Milan to bring attention to the acoustic dimension in urban landscapes through visual, performative and installative interventions. «These are the satellite planets to our sun», says Pietromarchi. A sun that in 2022 wants to do nothing but dancing.
Terraforma and sustainability
From 2014, Terraforma has always been clear on one thing. It has to go down as the most sustainable version of itself. Especially, but not exclusively, to protect and promote its location: Villa Arconati, its park and its wooden area. Pietromarchi, who is also co-founder and artistic director of Threes Productions – the agency that produces, amongst other events, Terraforma and Nextones – explains that «it’s not just about telling people to sort their trashes properly». It’s more of a «cultural thing».
During the past seven years, after managing to clean and requalify Villa Arconati’s historical garden and Labyrinth alongside Fondazione Augusto Rancilio and Borotalco, Terraforma and Threes Production analyzed the impact of the festival in different ecological fields: water supply, wastes and so on. In 2022 a new partnership was launched with Legambiente, in order to certify Terraforma as one of the association’s promoted Eco Events. To obtain the certification, an event must prove to respect a long list of good practices, including sustainable waste management.
Terraforma
Terraforma is a festival that embraces psychedelic music and culture in many forms, and its location has been picked and primed to accent that.
