Lyra Pramuk’s manifesto for Robot15: Transition
In its fifteenth edition, the Italian electronic music festival reaffirms its research-based and experimental nature by presenting emerging names and a few great comebacks – Lyra Pramuk drafted the manifesto
Robot15: Transition – Gender, Digital, Green
«What is life if not a transition? Day and night. Inhale and exhale. We are born toothless, with soft bones. Our first breath is a scream, and then the cord is cut». With these words, singer, performer, and composer-producer Lyra Pramuk opens the manifesto for the fifteenth edition of ROBOT (10-13 October), the electronic music and digital arts festival based in Bologna. «Every year we choose a theme to trigger reflections and debates, it is not a political manifesto, nor do we want to impose a single point of view – explains Marco Ligurgo, Founder & Director at ROBOT. This year we will address the notion of transition from different angles: digital, green and gender. We have chosen Lyra Pramuk because she is first and foremost an artist, singer, musician, and producer whose work is rooted in the digital world, but she is also an activist who writes about climate change and ecology. And finally she is a person who has undergone gender transition firsthand. During the festival she will also hold a panel to delve into the issues she has tackled in the manifesto».
According to Pramuk, transition is a political moment to break away from reasoned positions. Every time we abandon a certainty we move towards a new horizon. Life itself is a transition, from when we are born to when we die everything changes inside us and around us. Human civilization is also in transition; from the dawn of history, human beings have tried to give meaning to their existence by confronting and clashing with nature, ideologies, discoveries, and with other human beings in a continuous succession of events.
ROBOT festival celebrates its 15th anniversary
The ROBOT festival itself has undergone a transition. Born in 2008 as an initiative of the cultural association Shape, which has been promoting electronic music and digital arts for almost twenty years, the festival has expanded in the following years to become a regular event for industry professionals and clubbing enthusiasts. «Travelling around Europe we discoverd the model of Sonar festival in Barcelona and we liked it. The Bologna councilor for culture Mauro Felicori believed in the project right away, giving us Palazzo Re Enzo as the venue for the first edition. From the beginning we imagined a festival of digital arts and electronic music which explored everything revolving around this world. In addition to DJ sets and live performances, we organized workshops, talks, a section dedicated to cinema, and much more. From there, a long journey began which has bow brought us to this milestone», says Ligurgo.
After an initial growth phase which brought international electronic music to many places in the city, around 2014 the festival landed in the Bologna trade fair space. After two major editions with over 20,000 attendees, ROBOT soon returned to its original widespread format with more venues and events. «We want to have a direct relationship with the public and give people the opportunity to enter new spaces and connect to the territory. This new model is inspired by international festivals such as CTM in Berlin or Rewire in Holland. We offer a musical experience in an urban context and in doing so, we promote the territory and the architectural heritage. We allow people who listen to electronic music to discover places where perhaps they would otherwise never enter». Today ROBOT, now in its 15th anniversary, is a rough contamination of places, music, and audiences.
ROBOT15: the lineup
Over the years, ROBOT has specialized in the search for emerging, niche, raw artists. «We work all year round to make everything fit together perfectly. This year there are many preview shows or special performances designed just for us, this is a peculiarity of contemporary festivals», explains Ligurgo. First of all, the inauguration inside the Basilica S. Maria dei Servi, where a monumental and culturally significant organ will be used for an exclusive performance by Kali Malone. In the former church of S. Barbaziano, Marta Salogni & Francesco Fonassi present the absolute preview of a new project, Orafiore. The public will thus have the opportunity to see the live performance of one of the most relevant contemporary producers; among the artists she collaborates with are Depeche Mode, just to name one.
«We are also very happy to bring Toccororo, an artist who is increasingly establishing herself in the electronic music scene, and the new 3D show by Max Cooper. The closing of the festival at the TPO (Teatro Polivalente Occupato) will be a sort of synthesis of the research we do for the festival. We will start at 6.00 pm with soft concerts to move up to extreme, rough dance music performances during the second part of the evening, with LCY, Niziria b2b and Stefania Vos, and many others». But ROBOT15 will also be marked by emotional moments, such as the come-back of Fennesz and Communion by Lyra Pramuk, who will present new tracks based on her previous work, but also some inspired by the manifesto she conceived for the festival.
TRANSITION: SK’s site-specific installation project for DumBO
One of the main novelties of this edition is the site-specific installation project by SK – aka Stefania Kalogeropoulos -, co-founder with Alberto Saggia of the artistic collective Anonima/Luci. The light work will transform the aesthetics of the central track of DumBo, the main venue of the festival, in sync with the musical composition created by Heith which will then repeat in a loop for thirty minutes. Starting from the ROBOT15 manifesto, the performance delves into research on space and its perception, using light and sound to present alternative and highly personal interpretations to create a hybrid place between materiality and immateriality.
«This year we commissioned a special setup which is not just an art installation, but an integral part of the festival lineup’s, which will create an immersive artistic experience through music, lasers and smoke machines. On Friday and Saturday night we will open the venue half an hour early just for this installation. The same performance will be repeated during the stage changes to fill the empty spaces», says ROBOT’s Director.
Not just music: ROBOT & Kids and ROBOT & Learn
The investigation into the new frontiers of digital music and the promotion of contemporary values are at the core fo the section dedicated to discussion and learning, which has been a pillar of ROBOT programming since the early days. ROBOT & Kids is a free training module for children and young people, aimed at developing the approach and knowledge of digital technologies in an artistic key through play. ROBOT & Learn, also completely free, consists of various initiatives designed for specific targets such as Gender Digital & Tech Upskilling, a workshop offering a transformative training experience designed for women and non-binary people active in the music industry.
«Children play with software and hardware to produce electronic music and understand the mechanics of digitalization in a playful way. On the other hand, the talks and panels of the ROBOT & Learn program touch on sensitive issues related to the digital realm. The world of the night tends to anticipate society. This year the staff participated in a LIS (Italian Sign Language) course to ensure that during the event they can communicate with people with hearing disabilities. We also collaborate with ANFAS to create ad-hoc training courses».
How the international electronic music and digital arts scene is changing
In over twenty years of experience, between Shape association and ROBOT festival, Ligurgo has seen the world of clubbing and electronic music change and reveal new facets. «Back in the days there were only few electronic music festivals. The so-called second wave festivals, like us, C2C, Spring Attitude, Dancity etc. were all inspired by the Dissonanze festival, the pioneer of the Italian electronic scene. Over the years many other festivals have been born; those of the third generation have brought the concept of festival into the immersive experiential sphere of naturalistic venues in the form of campsites».
«Electronic music has also changed – continues Ligurgo -. If before it was mostly niche now it can also be mainstream; many artists who have played here are now established names, Jon Hopkins, Moderat, Apparat, Karibu, Caterina Barbieri, just to name a few. This contamination is also due to the choices made by festivals like Primavera Sound, which once used to be rock festivals, and then decided to include electronic music artists in their lineup becoming hybrids. The world of the night has changed, alongside festivals that are so to speak artisanal, like ours, still organized and managed by enthusiasts, there are many large festivals managed by multinational corporations or directly by online ticket companies». Today the real challenge is to specialize, to find one’s own voice in the confused noise of an increasingly broad, but standardized, offering. ROBOT has chosen the path of research, giving free rein to the creative flair of emerging talents and experimental artists; all this without losing sight of the social and cultural role which events of this kind play for the community. A long-range vision which has allowed it to reach the milestone of fifteen years of presence in the Italian music agenda. And its community hopes that there will be many more to come. Pramuk closes her manifesto wishing for a more prosperous future in which all living creatures can live in harmony, the result of one great transition, painful but full of optimism. And what about music? Bertol Brecht’s words comes to her rescue: «In the dark times / Will there also be singing? / Yes, there will also be singing. / About the dark times».
ROBOT
ROBOT festival is an international event dedicated to digital art and electronic music based in Bologna. The fifteenth edition will take place 10-13 October 2024 in several venues scattered throughout the city. The lineup includes Lyra Pramuk, Marta Salogni & Francesco Fonassi, Max Cooper, Nziria b2b Stefania Vos and LCY, among others. The live and DJ sets will be accompanied by a program of panels and workshops which will delve into the theme TRANSITION—Gender, Digital, Green.
Agnese Torres
