Terraforma Exo 2025 in Milan: growth, space, perceptions
June 28–29, 2025

On stage on the June 28th in the gardens of the Triennale for Terraforma Exo 2025, The Talk is a hybrid device that remixes concert, theatre, and audiovisual art. Presented as a surreal talk, the project evolves into an immersive performance that breaks narrative linearity, generating an evocative and cyclical temporality. With contributions from multidisciplinary artists, The Talk investigates the perception of reality through technology and a ipercontemporary performative language, filmed live.

This year, Terraforma hones its focus. As per its primordial instinct, the festival reaffirms music and visuality as political, cultural, and social vehicles, drawing in a public increasingly inclined to study, understand, and engage. To concentrate, precisely. The festival has matured, becoming more intentional and incisive, while maintaining a flexible interaction between concept and content, between club culture and performance, between intellectual critique and artistic language. The lightness so often central to summer festivals is consciously scaled back, not out of intellectual elitism, but through a radical choice aligned with the times we live in. A time when carefree abandon is ever harder to sustain. Terraforma chooses not to distract, but to direct attention, bringing to stage and space artistic practices unafraid of complexity, ambiguity, confrontation.

In Milan, Terraforma tightens around a clear intention: to transform sound, image, and space into active tools for political, cultural, and social reflection. Its cohesive and now loyal audience is prompted to investigate, deepen, and question. Terraforma’s Milan programme, in particular, takes shape as a series of critical mechanisms, connecting the aesthetics of clubbing with the urgencies of performance art, activism, and theoretical research. There is a vision here unafraid to sacrifice pure entertainment in favor of a meaningful experience, one that leaves traces, not just impressions.

““Two days of sonic and environmental explorations in the green heart of the city, among artistic practices, ecological imaginaries, and new forms of listening.””

The second chapter of Terraforma Exo marks a decisive evolution in a path that, from the beginning, has defined the coordinates of a flexible, radically site-specific cultural model.
The urban contexts where contemporary languages interlace across themes of memory, archive, and experimentation include the Triennale Gardens, Castello Sforzesco, Torre Branca, Palazzina Appiani, and the Teatro Continuo by Burri.

The lineup on the 25th includes Lorenzo Senni with Eureka, a composition of high melancholic density; Florian Hecker; a lecture by Forensic Architecture; The Drum and the Bird performance by Bill Kouligas & Forensis in the garden, preceded by The Talk featuring Heith, James K, and Günseli Yalcinkaya, with Andrea Belosi curating the set design. The day culminates in Gatto Verde’s classic clubbing moment (featuring Sister Effect, MI-EL, HiTech, and DJ Plead).

““We live in a time where every cultural gesture carries political weight. The climate crisis is no longer an abstraction—it is a structural condition of our present. Terraforma Exo is born from this awareness, from the desire to rethink cultural formats through an ecological lens. It’s also a matter of collective responsibility: we believe that art can still be a tool to activate healthier relationships between people, environment, and institutions.” ”

— Ruggero Pietromarchi, co-founder and artistic director of Terraforma

Special mention goes to the evening programme by Forensis and Bill Kouligas, a powerful journey through sound, memory, and history. It all starts with research on German colonization in Namibia conducted by Forensic Architecture, materialized here through soundscapes, archival voices, and evocative imagery.

The idea is simple and powerful: memory doesn’t only live in books, it inhabits places. The micro-sounds of nature, diagrams and charts, historical and archaeological data, rocks, sand, trees, wind, each natural element becomes a witness to a too-often forgotten story, a living archive for us, new generations of aware researchers. The Drum and the Bird attempts to give voice to these silences, silences that speak of the human, economic, and environmental cost of colonial amnesia, altered and distorted. It is a poetic, political, and immersive work, one that keeps the audience seated on the lawn in hypnotic stillness, where even time behaves differently. Using dub theory as an interpretive lens, the performance examines the edges of listening and loss. An experience that left us deeply moved.

““The wind tells us about the land transformation” ”

— Forensic Architecture & Bill Kouligas

Several new or renewed collaborations define this edition of Terraforma, alongside the ongoing partnership with Triennale Milano, which, through the opening of its new space Voce, further strengthens its bond with music and sound.

Foremost among these is the alliance with TIMES (The Independent Movement for Electronic Scenes), a cooperative project uniting ten European festivals to promote original works that combine the musical sector with the visual arts across Europe. Another is SHAPE+, a European platform for innovative music and audiovisual art, co-funded by the Creative Europe programme, which supports emerging talent through collaborative residencies, commissioned works, and singular performances, linking artists to local communities.

Additional collaborators include MMT Creative Lab (Musica Musicisti Tecnologie), dedicated to musical research and the application of advanced technologies, and NOMUS, a cultural non-profit organization focused on promoting research in 20th-century and contemporary music.

This year’s core themes are sustainability, championed by Terraforma since day zero, the global climate crisis and the relationship between humans and the environment, urban dynamics and infrastructures, and the entanglement of lost ecologies and colonial exploitation. Underpinning these themes is a solid theoretical, historical, and archaeological foundation, designed to decode and make tangible the complexity of the present, to imagine new forms of coexistence, and to act accordingly. In the garden of the Triennale, which, with the new Voce space, deepens its connection to music and sound, we witnessed two exclusive live performances presented for the first time in Italy.

In 2025, Terraforma Exo expands within Italy: in addition to Milan, two more cities will host dense programs not only of music, but also talks and performances, on September 27 at Forte Antenne in Rome, and on October 25 at Villa Tasca in Palermo.

The Talk
A hybrid panel as a fictional device

“ “A body is always a body in time Pay attention to the secret codes and answers.””

At the heart of the evening on the 25th, in the gardens of the Triennale, The Talk [A/V Show] appeared as a hybrid, refined, and deeply layered piece, breaking down the divisions between concert, theatre, conceptual art, and audiovisual installation. Framed as a surreal panel talk, the performance immediately revealed itself as an immersive occasion in which narrative linearity gives way to a fractured, cyclical, evocative temporality. The title is deliberately misleading: is it a talk? A night-time performance? A roundtable.

The piece is authored by Milanese producer and sound designer Heith, who performs with a Fender Telecaster; the enigmatic and experimental James K; artist-researcher Günseli Yalcinkaya; and set designer Andrea Belosi. Each brings a clear and distinct vision to the project, contributing to a performative organism that is unified yet polyphonic.

Over the course of three residencies and further remote collaboration, the artists behind The Talk developed a concept that investigates our perception of reality through the lens of technology, producing an “all-in-one” proposal that merges shoegaze-inflected pop ballads, hypnotic soundscapes, spoken word intervals, and real-time manipulated video.

What takes shape on stage is not a concert, it is an immersive performance, where sound, voice, and image combine into a dynamic visual-sonic event, evolving in real time as if the piece were coming to life before the audience’s eyes. Archaic yet futuristic atmospheres are evoked. This is not music that accompanies the scene, it shapes it, interacting with space and image in the moment.

Festivals often include panels, workshops, and roundtable discussions in their afternoon programmes. In this context, The Talk plays with the format itself, delivering something completely unexpected, while preserving the clear boundary between audience and stage.

The Talk is an artistic commission by TIMES (The Independent Movement for Electronic Scenes, a European Union–funded cultural project bringing together ten festivals across Europe to promote cross-disciplinary, transnational collaboration). It was co-commissioned by Nuits sonores, reworks (Thessaloniki, September 2025), Terraforma, and Sónar. The performance premiered at Le Sucre in Milan during Nuit 1 of Nuits Sonores 2025 in Lyon. Its development took place over several months, across three different countries, including Greece.

As the artists explain:
“We thought it would be interesting to combine the aesthetics of a group panel with a live music performance, because it subverts people’s perception and questions what constitutes a theatrical show today.”

The Talk is constructed as a remixed format that reflects the cultural flattening we’re experiencing now. Nothing is purely a music performance or a fashion show anymore, everything is an all-in-one.

The Greece Residency and the Antikythera Mechanism

The declared inspiration behind the project is the Antikythera mechanism, an ancient Greek astronomical calculator, which serves not merely as a thematic reference but as a conceptual structure: a guiding matrix for a work that develops according to orbital, non-linear logics. Like ancient interlocking gears in motion, the different elements of the performance intersect and echo each other in a network of symbolic and perceptual correspondences.

The Antikythera mechanism is a mechanical device from ancient Greece, widely regarded as the first known analog computer. Discovered in 1901 in the wreckage of a ship near the island of Antikythera in the Aegean Sea, it dates between 150 and 100 BCE. It is an engineering marvel, one that predates any comparable mechanism by over a thousand years. Its creator remains unknown, some speculate Archimedes, others suggest schools linked to Hipparchus or Posidonius. The device was activated by turning a hand-crank that set in motion a precise system of gears with mathematically calibrated ratios. These gears controlled dials that displayed various astronomical data: one showed the position of the Sun and Moon within the zodiac; another indicated the current lunar phase, accounting for its elliptical orbit; a third predicted upcoming eclipses based on the Saros cycle. The Antikythera reflects an advanced understanding of astronomy and mathematics in ancient Greece. It reveals mechanical techniques previously thought to have emerged only in the medieval period, and it stands as a direct forerunner to mechanical clocks and modern scientific instruments.

The performers on stage

On guitar is Heith, the stage name of Daniele Guerrini, a Milan-based producer and composer. Founder of the Haunter Records label, one of the principal channels for underground music publication in Italy, he previously served as artistic curator of Macao, the celebrated self managed space in Milan. In recent years, his musical research has covered multiple territories: from rave music through ambient and electroacoustic sonorities, incorporating influences and suggestions from realms close to folk music, with a particular interest in mysticism, science fiction, and experimental languages.

His latest studio work, X, wheel, was released on PAN, the label founded by Bill Kouligans in 2008, who also follows him in the evening’s lineup, in collaboration with musicians such as multi-instrumentalist Leonardo Rubboli and drummer Jacopo Battaglia (of ZU). I had already met Heith in Turin in 2024 during the project i hate texting i just want to hold your hand, presented at Artissima as part of Cripta747’s Residency Programme. The performance investigated the imaginative association between subterranean tunnels and galleries and the most occult, immaterial traits of the web world. The proposal sought to reference the deadly overproduction of online content generated by algorithms and bots, as suggested by the “dead internet theory.”

“I find it very interesting to hack technology in some way to let something more spiritual surface,” he tells us. “Every ritual in ancient times employed technology,” underlining the relationship between technology and spiritualism at the core of his artistic and musical practice: a “bridge between logic and fantasy, mathematics and myth, the inner and the outer world.” Heith’s philosophy also embraces the ritualistic qualities of the rave. “The main influence was rave music, but more generally the attitude of the rave,” he explains regarding his time at Macao.

On stage, the ideas of James K and Günseli Yalcinkaya “dialogue.”

Based in New York, artist and musician Jamie Krasner, known by several names including James K, is sought after for her magnetic voice, lyricism, and sonic production. She studies the internet, its personas, and social media dynamics, with a cyber punk sensibility and a “post modern diary” style illustrating the hyper-contemporary. She began playing violin at five and guitar at twelve, which allowed her to write songs and harmonies. She studied at RISD from 2007 to 2011 and entered the noise scene in the early 2000s. Expanding the limits of online identity, her Instagram bio reads “cosplay yourself”, James K released PET in 2016, named after her alter ego “meta-fetishized girl.” The ten-track album includes multiple personas she describes as “cultural jump points based on aesthetics from which I can investigate further depth and finally challenge.”

She followed with Random Girl, an album of dreamlike sonorities with dazzling ambient pop, shoegaze, and distorted soundscapes propelling the listener into a state of digital disorder. “Random Girl is about the search for self, it’s a map of myself,” she explains. “Our society now more than ever relies on highly advanced algorithms that dictate our experiences and ultimately form our sense of self.”

James K also produced Ultra Facial!, a 15 minute film completely self-funded and produced, moving across the five tracks of the EP in collaboration with Yves Tumor. The 3D short film showcases the artist’s cyberpunk alter ego, PET, representing the “meta-fetishized girl”, a character trapped in a feedback loop. Each moment of the film is a symbol to dissect, references both blatant and cryptic, from Japanese culture and memes to subliminal language and the message of a smartphone.

From London comes Günseli Yalcinkaya, writer and researcher whose work focuses on internet folklore, the relationship between developing technologies and the myths embedded within these systems. She is External Research Affiliate at Moth, investigating the creative application of quantum technologies within culture. Günseli is Features Editor at Dazed and co-curator of Cybernetic Serendipity: Towards AI, a one-day symposium held at London’s ICA in 2024. As a contributor to Dazed, she curates a column titled Logged On, a spin-off of the monthly podcast analyzing the details of Internet culture, from memes and evolving trends to deep web conspiracy theories and beyond.

Each episode features leading voices from the frontlines of online discourse, offering trusted insight into the “terminally online” topics young people face today. She writes for many major online outlets, where she has shared (in various and entertaining articles) her professional journey as a creative and, above all, as a writer, fields where it’s especially hard to make space. Her tone is candid, fresh, and intimate. She writes about niches, connections, finding one’s scene or community, becoming familiar with “no” and rejection. This assertion of self is central to the text she and the other performers interpret in The Talk, a symphony above all about being an adult, or becoming one, assuming the term “adult” still means anything.

The scenography and set design for The Talk is by Andrea Belosi, a multidisciplinary architect based in Berlin with academic and professional backgrounds in architecture, scenography, and multimedia installation design. Through extensive collaborations with musicians and artists, his work has appeared at festivals such as Unsound, Berlin Atonal and CTM.

A conscious present at Terraforma Exo 2025

The Talk is not a performance to be “understood,” but rather to be navigated. It is a sensorial and mental encounter that asks the audience to abandon the pursuit of linear meaning and instead surrender to flows of sound and image. The result is a kind of contemporary liturgy, where myth meets code, science becomes poetry, and technology becomes a tool to evoke the invisible. In an artistic landscape often fragmented and self-referential, this performance stands out for its poetic cohesion, visionary force, and conceptual rigor. The Talk speaks to the present, but from an oblique perspective, like an echo from the future or an ancestral memory.

A singular moment, brought to Italy thanks to Terraforma Exo, for those who believe in a new way of imagining dialogue between artistic forms, and a renewed approach to the festival format, always rooted in live encounter. More than a performance: a portal.

Awaiting the Italian dates in Rome and Palermo. See you soon!