AUTUMN 2026 - RITRATTI TRASVERSALI

With the 2026 autumn season, INNER_SPACES renews its commitment to exploring the most innovative languages of electronic music and audiovisual arts, confirming its status as one of Italy’s leading festivals dedicated to interdisciplinary research and experimentation. From September 14 to December 20, the San Fedele Auditorium and the Church of San Fedele in Milan will host nine events brought together under the title “Transversal Portraits”—a journey featuring several unpublished works in residence and premieres that fosters a dialogue between artists, aesthetics, and creative practices united by a constant drive for exploration. The portrait is a genre spanning the entire history of art and literature, seeking to capture the essential traits of a person in just a few strokes. It is a bold challenge poised between economy of means and the necessity of evoking, in a single flash, the uniqueness of a personal brand.

The “Transversal Portraits” of this new season present the artists in this light of singularity—as a distinctive trait that becomes a recognizable stylistic signature—while crossing and blending different genres, eras, traditions, and generations. Some of the protagonists emerge from long, established histories, others from more recent scenes, and still others from traditions that maintain a centuries-old continuity. Some work with duration and memory, others with sonic tension; some focus on the oral transmission of an ancient practice, others on the relationship between image and sound, or the real-time transformation of electronic material. Every artist brings a precise way of understanding the act of listening, and their convergence produces a constellation of transversal approaches.

Arvo Pärt stands as a paradigmatic figure for the entire cycle. His portrait on November 30 outlines much of his musical journey, from the turning point of his tintinnabuli style in 1976 to his most recent production. Yet, the Estonian composer’s itinerary is also theological and spiritual; his oeuvre is a vast, ongoing exploration of the dimensions of Christian faith.

Alongside Arvo Pärt, the season juxtaposes figures who have defined vastly different ways of thinking about sound and listening. Steve Reich turned pulsation and gradual processes into one of the fundamental grammars of contemporary music, while Ivan Fedele developed a style of composition where structural rigor and timbral imagination remain in constant balance. While Pärt seeks maximum concentration through minimal means, Ben Frost pushes sound toward the opposite threshold: his works transform electronic matter, noise, and physical intensity into an immersive experience that has redefined the relationship between experimental music and bodily perception. A different kind of tension runs through the work of Aho Ssan, balancing electroacoustic composition and digital cultures, while Tim Exile makes real-time transformation the core of his practice, challenging the boundaries between composition, improvisation, and performance.

Other artists focus instead on the more elusive qualities of sound.  A similar sensitivity to continuity and imperceptible transformation can be found in the research of Stefan Betke, known as Pole, who turned technological error and signal fragility into a true poetic signature, as well as in the ambient architectures of Loscil, which evoke spaces, memories, and natural phenomena through highly precise sonic writing. Robert Lippok also belongs to this focus on sonic form and spatial perception, combining compositional rigor, timbral sensitivity, and a constant interest in the physical and architectural qualities of sound.

Among the most original voices of the current generation, Beatrice Dillon investigates new forms of rhythmic and timbral organization, eluding the conventions of both electronic music and academic writing. Mor Elian, rooted in club culture but active far beyond its borders, develops a language combining microscopic detail, spatiality, and a focus on sonic texture. Carmen Villain, whose path intertwines ambient, field recordings, and a rarefied melodic sensitivity, builds soundscapes where the atmospheric dimension becomes an intimate, layered narrative. Hélène Vogelsinger, through the use of the modular synthesizer as a performance tool, gives life to slowly expanding textures where the electronic gesture retains a handcrafted, meditative quality, transforming space into an ever-evolving sonic organism.

Another central axis of the season is transmission. Wasifuddin Dagar represents one of the most authoritative living voices of the dhrupad tradition—a musical practice spanning centuries that preserves the intact relationship between discipline, orality, and contemplation. This memory resurfaces in entirely different forms in the work of Colapesce, Alfio Antico, and Mario Conte, where materials from folk traditions and ancient repertoires are reimagined as living, contemporary substance. On November 9, this will culminate in a live instrumental performance of electronics and percussion, realized in co-production with the Linecheck festival.

Completing this constellation are artists who have built instantly recognizable universes: Andy Stott, with his radical redefinition of electronic music’s expressive possibilities through slowed-down rhythms and dense timbral layers; Collectif G, who navigates the historical twentieth-century repertoire, highlighting its visionary power; Luigi Tozzi, who explores the depths of acoustic space as a true compositional dimension and brings his purely ambient work Deep Blue to the live stage.