Words by Ilaria Sponda
Stemming from Terraforma — the decade-long experimental music festival initiated by Threes Productions — Terraforma Exo is a participatory research platform launched in 2024. Designed to embed itself within diverse urban contexts, it investigates the role of sound in shaping and responding to the environment. Evoking a centrifugal force, Terraforma Exo embodies a transformative impulse — one that emerges from within and radiates outward, pointing toward new ways of co-existing with the environment. As Creative Director Ruggero Pietromarchi puts it, Terraforma Exo is a practice of designing events that do not take over but rather “tune into the context.”
The second edition of Terraforma Exo unfolds in Milan on June 28 and 29, taking place across Parco Sempione and a spin-off by Gatto Verde at Teatro Principe with Sister Effect, MI-EL, HiTech (live), and Dj Plead. It marks a significant evolution in a journey that has, from its inception, defined a radically site-specific and flexible cultural model. In recent years, Milan’s music scene has faced sweeping changes — from the closure of independent venues during the pandemic to persistent funding shortages for cultural initiatives of any size.
The question remains: what space is still available for cultural experimentation, collective gathering, and creative resilience?
Set within a hybrid urban-natural soundscape, Terraforma Exo challenges the perceived separation between nature and the human-built environment, proposing a model for coexistence. The festival’s programme and aesthetics are defined by a sense of lightness and fluidity — think open-air architectures integrated into natural surroundings, stages resembling archaic settlements, and ephemeral zones of free expression that bring together moving bodies into a collective organism. Milan: a dense, fast-paced, layered city, where “sometimes it’s difficult to slow down, to create spaces where sound is not consumption but experience and meaning,” says Pietromarchi, “but it’s possible to deconstruct that productive automatism and restore a different quality to time and space. Milan is hungry for depth. And if you can intercept it, surprising energies are activated.”
Five locations — Torre Branca, Palazzina Appiani, Castello Sforzesco, Teatro Continuo di Alberto Burri, and Giardino Triennale Milano — will host performances that intertwine natural, human, and technological sound. At Torre Branca, Lorenzo Senni’s “EUREKA! (Mix Legacy 2011–2025)” revisits fifteen years of his conceptual “composed-mixes,” isolating and recombining trance build-ups into intricate, non-linear sonic structures that interrogate the emotional and formal language of electronic music. At Palazzina Appiani, Florian Hecker presents “FAVN”, an entrancing, automated performance inspired by Mallarmé’s “L’Après-midi d’un faune” and Debussy’s composition, inviting the audience to reconsider the construction of sensory experience through sound.
In the Giardino Triennale Milano, “The Talk” — a collaborative A/V performance by Heith, James K, and Günseli Yalcinkaya, with scenography by Andrea Belosi — conjures a dreamlike dialogue on temporality and technology, drawing from the mythic Antikythera mechanism. Meanwhile, “The Drum and the Bird” by Bill Kouligas and Forensis transforms the landscape into a sonic archive, weaving generative audio with traces of colonial memory through research into Germany’s imperial past in Namibia conducted by Forensic Architecture.
The diverse programme is designed to trigger a condition of break out of the temporal and spatial confines of the festival to build a more expansive, more agile, and more relational format. As Pietromarchi unveils, the inspirations are many: from the land art of the 1960s and 1970s to rave culture as a temporary and communal experience, from Hildegard Westerkamp’s soundwalks to urban activism. But also the rituality of African festivals, the Japanese idea of ‘Ma’ (間) – empty space as an active element – or radical experiences of participatory architecture contribute to the formation of Terraforma Exo. Teatro Continuo by Alberto Burri – a landmark open-air theatre and exemplary work of participatory architecture – will serve as the stage for DJ sets and live performances by Marylou, Jim Nedd, DJ Anderson Do Paraiso, and a back-to-back set from alysalysalys and Piezo.
“Our horizon is not fixed and it moves, but it’s always rooted in the belief that art, if thought of as process, can change the conditions of the present. And this, after all, is already a form of movement,” concluded Pietromarchi. Movement – both physical and conceptual – is a driver for innovation and participation and knowledge sharing are key to keep a process of movement alive. Therefore, Terraforma Exo invites the public to explore sonic heritage and contemporary experimentation through immersive listening, public talks, and participatory workshops. In particular, the guided sound laboratories led by Walter Prati (MMT Creative Lab) at the Museo degli Strumenti Musicali at Castello Sforzesco emphasize collective composition using archival materials and works by Henri Pousseur. The participatory programme also features an immersive sound walk with spatialised headphone featuring original recordings from the RAI Studio di Fonologia archive and new compositions by Laura Agnusdei, Katatonic Silentio, Massimiliano Viel, Paine Cuadrelli, and Alberto Ricca (Bienoise).