15 years on, ROBOT Festival is still in transit

“We have always been in the midst of making sense of our existence, struggling with nature, with ideology, and with each other. What is the present if not a TRANSITION?”

Fairly philosophical stuff for a festival, some might argue; there are not many that build their curation and billing from a manifesto. But for a decade and a half the Bologna institution has, through talks, education sessions and performances, sought to engage its visitors in deeper thinking about the art they’re here to celebrate – and its reflections of the wider world.

Transition may be one theme in 15 since ROBOT’s inception, but is one that particularly seems to open pathways of understanding the festival’s aims. “Our festival itself is in transition,” says Elisa Trento – Shape’s president and curator for ROBOT Learn and Kids, as well as for the funding calls. “We are a festival spread across various parts of the city that change and integrate year after year. Therefore, transition is also understood as a journey through the city of Bologna in its various spaces, beyond predefined boundaries.”

Bologna is known as La Dotta (The Learned), La Grassa (The Fat) and La Rossa (The Red). Pass through its UNESCO World Heritage Site porticos and you will duck and dive through groups of students spilling out from ancient classrooms, pass lines of hungry tourists queuing patiently for tagliatelle al ragù, tortellini in brodo and lasagne verde, or sit shoulder-to-shoulder with punk and bohemian types enjoying vermilion-coloured aperitivi.

A little further out to the north of the city at DumBO, a “temporary urban regeneration space”, workshops and talks examine topics of Green, Gender, Digital, all of which fall under the umbrella theme of Transition. On one day, a five hour workshop is held to offer upskilling for women and gender diverse visitors. On another, a discussion is held on how live events can continue to innovate and expand while reducing their impact. A national organisation representing young people with disabilities are also invited to record their festival experiences on a podcast.

Opening up these kinds of questions and opportunities to young or interested minds hopes to create “an experience increasingly shared in terms of inclusion and accessibility, where a sense of communion is perceived in a world in continuous evolution,” Trento says. It is a space where things might be learnt or perceived.

But back amid the bustle of the old town is where ROBOT’s biggest strength can be found. In venues such as the Chiesa S. Barbaziano and Oratorio di San Filippo Neri, it is possible, in moments, to feel this idea of transition playing out in front of you. The former was built on the site of a fifth century church and renovated in the 17th century before becoming a storehouse. And now here it is, transformed into a cultural stage as Grammy-nominated producer Marta Salogni plays with tape players alongside sonic artist Francesco Fonassi’s digital murmurations in another exchange between the past and the present.

Oratorio di San Filippo Neri has had a similar transformation and has the scars to prove it. On Saturday evening, Drew McDowall presents A Thread, Silvered and Trembling, a purging hour of instrumental music. Lights begin to shimmer and merge above his alter-like stage, resembling the refraction above a flickering candle. It feels natural to look up, where modern rings of wood that shape the baroque building’s domed roof are exposed through the brick ceiling. They were eventually added forty years after the building’s near destruction in World War Two, but now history and restoration layer on top of each other like the gig flyers and posters outside.

Perhaps all this sounds a little fanciful, like on another day it might just seem like a pretty, old church. But back down on the stage, McDowall’s swirls of sound are having a deeply odd effect. At the risk of blasphemy, the dark orchestral tension of “A Dream of a Cartographic Membrane Dissolves” has dilated into something shaking and ominous, the faces of the Madonna, baby and angels in the Francesco Monti painting behind him contorting as the visual swirls turn a blood red.

“For us, the audiovisual element is what identifies us most,” one of the festival’s co-founders told Best Fit back in 2016. And yet, this year at least, light shows are not as full-on as you might expect. In a world of increasingly immersive, Instagram story-friendly art exhibitions, its more subtle use is actually more effective. When, following McDowall, Lyra Pramuk walks on stage, gone are the sinister red flickers and in their place an angelic, champagne hue.

Pramuk’s Saturday evening performance is spellbinding, and feels like the centrepiece of this year’s ROBOT festival. Having studied Voice Performance at New York’s Eastman School of Music before immersing herself in the left-field electronic scene of Berlin, where she is now based, Lyra’s vocals swell and reverberate in different frequencies, splintering off like cells communicating with one another. There is no singular voice to Pramuk, but as a trans artist this decision is more than stylistic.

“Everyone struggles with the fascism of vocal gender in our society,” she explains. “Young men make their voices lower than what is natural or authentic for them (sometimes to the degree that it is comic) – many women speak in cartoonish and high-pitched voices that give the impression that they are sweet and not dangerous. Vocal gender is performative. That's very clear to trans people – we psychologically relate to our voices differently even if the physical voices are ‘capable’ of performing the opposite gender. I can no longer authentically speak in a lower, more male register, even though my voice is technically capable of it, it just doesn't feel authentic and sounds and feels weird, I think also to other people if I did it.

"As a trans person you are an outsider to all of those typical gendered vocal performances. We do them to feel like ourselves and perform it harder or softer depending on the social context, as all humans do. As a vocalist, I always wanted to use my whole voice as an instrument and play with the whole range of possibilities, like a synthesiser. I sang a lot of contemporary classical vocal repertoire that pushed the limits of what was normal with the voice for many years in university. Then you add in computer processing, digital effects chains. As an outsider to this whole hetero gendered performance, finding my way into it, as a student of classical and contemporary music, as a musician, as a human, for me the voice is about limitless possibilities of expression. And so I try to use my voice, and produce my voice, in as many ways as possible, to show how much a voice – and thereby a human being – is actually capable of.”

As felt in songs such as “Tendril”, the sweep of range and registers of Pramuk’s performance seems to echo the long journey of identity, while at the same time a digital touch deliberately does away with that line of thinking. We are human, though. Having first begun to sing in a church choir, not yet sure of her own self, is there something especially sensitive about performing in this religious building?

“Even when I was forced to practise Christianity and attend many different churches,” she tells me, “I resonated with the experience of coming together in community, showing gratitude, singing together, communing together, eating together. I liked the idea of collective worship on some level, especially when music was involved. I didn't like the very clearly corrupt and controversial and often dehumanising aspects of organised religion I experienced as a young person. Now that I have largely redefined my pluralistic spiritual identity for myself on my own terms, I am deeply in touch with my own beliefs and practices and I do not feel discomfort to be in religious spaces, but I can say that is thanks to really trying to understand and define and own my spiritual practice on my own terms.”

Of course, you can engage with this sort of thing as much or as little as you want. patience. Some shows here require more rumination and, to be frank, patience. Waluigi's Purgatory is an interactive thought experiment about an AI gone rogue from the London duo dmstfctn that features a live score from Evita Manji, and though conceptually interesting, is fairly gruelling. Sometimes it is simply nice enough to sit in a 14th century building, close your eyes and bask in the music. Kali Malone’s performance on the opening evening in the chilling Basilica S. Maria dei Servi is the weekend’s best example of this. Her droney, minimalist but emotive style is received with powdery warmth and perfect resonance through the gothic building’s mighty 1960s organ.

In fact, ROBOT is ultimately a festival of two parts. By the late evening, the only concept of transition on people’s minds is the seamless blending of techno tracks. Back at DumBO party goers rave to big names like Richie Hawtin and Max Cooper, or new kids on the block TOCCORORO, Evissimax and aya. It’s mostly at the harder end of techno, but those looking for a groove can find it with Marie Davidson’s Talking Heads-esque take on the genre, KOKOKO!’s punchy off-beats or Modeselektor’s characteristically playful set, as Gernot Bronsert squirts water on the crowd to Moderat’s “A New Error”. Cooper’s new 3D audio-visual show is, thankfully, a crowning moment of visual maximalism.

The nightlife feels a bit detached from the day’s events, but isn’t it always? The clubbers are certainly not lost in thought, but they are vital to ROBOT’s success. “The box office is fundamental,” explains the festival’s artistic director, Marco Ligurgo. “For this reason, the presence of headliners is necessary. The daytime part is financed thanks to the nighttime events, which must work. We are not in Berlin, the Netherlands, the UK, etc., so we try to perform a small miracle. In Italy, festivals are predominantly pop.”

Though you wouldn’t guess it here at ROBOT, the underground electronic scene in Bologna has diminished significantly since tourism has overtaken the pull of students in over the last two or three decades. The emergence of small, independent spaces is positive, Ligurgo says, but they often exist independently and provincially “with little exchange.”

But Bologna seems to have a history of reinventing itself, and if the past 15 years have shown anything, it can continue to lean on ROBOT for that. “Our objective will always be to find other venues to enter, other unconventional locations where we can bring the festival and expand these possibilities to an increasingly urban circuit. This is a path not yet consolidated but built step by step.”