Videocittà 2026

The 9th edition of Videocittà ran from 10 to 12 July: the Festival of Vision and Digital Culture, one of the most important Italian events dedicated to the meeting of contemporary culture, music, innovation and new technologies, once again held in the striking setting of the Gazometro, in Rome's Ostiense district. This year's edition once again impresses for the quality and breadth of its programme, with water as its guiding element and unifying theme. A cross-generational event able to bring together, in the same spaces, institutional guests and electronic music devotees, company managers and new-technology enthusiasts alike, born from an idea by Francesco Rutelli. Talks, in-depth discussions, exhibitions, installations, internationally renowned dj sets, experimental music, video art, augmented reality and digital education followed one another at a relentless pace, over three days of total immersion in the largest urban industrial archaeology site in Europe, redeveloped to the point of becoming super-Instagrammable. We could talk for hours about everything that happened, but here we'll focus on the aspects most closely tied to the musical side of the line-up.

The big name of this edition was undoubtedly Apparat, one of the most influential composers, producers and performers on the contemporary electronic scene, capable of developing a unique, instantly recognisable sonic language. The Berlin-based artist headlined a hugely popular dj set on Saturday night and provided the soundtrack for the main immersive video-sound installation, the striking “In Limpha”, a work exploring the relationship between nature, transformation and consciousness, set to a reworking of an Apparat track, “Black Water”.
But numerous other leading names lent lustre to the line-up, starting with producers Mace and Populous, who were likewise highly attentive to the visual dimension of their respective shows. Sara Persico presented the electro-ambient project “Sphaira” alongside Mika Oki, the pair having already won the Videocittà Awards 2025 in the “Best AV Performance” category. Francesca Heart (an Italian musician nominated for a Grammy Award) enchanted the crowd by playing a large seashell, processing the sound through software, while Amanda Lana delivered a body-based performance.

Nziria brought to the stage tracks from her new work “Syysma”, in which she envisions a future sound for the Mediterranean, one in which neomelodico music breaks free of geographical boundaries, blending tradition and experimentation. Voices From The Lake (Donato Dozzy and Neel) offered their hypnotic compositional style, in which rhythm and texture evolve organically, shaping soundscapes suspended between ambient and techno. Equally hypnotic narrative environments were created by Liminal State, who presented “Freefall”, an improvised audiovisual performance in which sound, music, lighting and generative visuals develop in real time. A series of shows in which sound manifested itself as a fluid, unstable element, combining avant-garde electronics, radical vocal work and layered textures, conjuring landscapes in constant transformation. Immersive, perceptual experiences that drew the audience into a dimension of deep listening that was at the same time liberating, perpetually suspended between tension and immersion, rhythm and visual matter, for a perceptual journey capable of dissolving any boundary between listening and seeing.

(Photo by Claudio Lancia)

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