Gianluca Gozzi - TOdays Festival

Starting from the beginning, the first festival where you took on the role of artistic director was Spaziale Festival, held in exactly the same place where TOdays takes place today, namely the area next to Spazio211 and Parco Sempione, in Barriera di Milano, Turin. Had you always wanted to reach that professional goal, or is it a role you found yourself taking on gradually during your time at Spazio211?

I'd say it's something I learned along the way. The first time I set foot in Spazio, back in the '90s, it was a neighbourhood community centre on the outskirts of town where people played cards. But there was a little room downstairs where people talked about music, with an old poster on the wall from a Motorpsycho concert in Germany. I said to myself: "Wouldn't it be amazing if one day these artists actually came to play around here", which is exactly what happened a few years later. We tried to build an identity we liked, with the music we liked, and to find each other among people who identified with a different way of living than the one others imagined for us. So that's how I learned this trade. I didn't even know what it meant to organise a concert. It's a job we basically invented for ourselves, trying to see opportunities instead of limits, and to dream while actually making something happen. It occurs to me now, talking to you, that this is also a bit the mood of this year's edition of the festival: where others see geographical or musical-genre borders, we try instead to imagine horizons, something that goes beyond the everyday.

Could be, yes. Among other things, this edition's line-up is made up mostly of international artists, coming from all over the world, so it's truly borderless for us, neither geographically nor musically, as I said. TOdays was born with the idea of bringing music from the margins, music from the outskirts, into the city centre. And the theme of the periphery has always been central to how the festival was built, ever since the days of the Spaziale series.

Actually there isn't just one. At the root of it there's a line of thinking that says: "Instead of perpetuating ourselves, even the things that worked, even the positive ones, let's try new paths." We don't want to replicate ourselves, so in a sense that's the real claim, and you can read it in the name itself: staying in the present. Rather than chasing something that's already happened, or conversely getting too far ahead of something that's yet to come, we try to take a dynamic, honest snapshot of the moment, starting from the idea that to choose our future we have to act on our present; to see horizons to move towards, while staying anchored to the present.

That word you used, vision, is the key word, the fundamental one. Even before sharing anything at all, you need to have a vision. The letter you're referring to dates back to 2010, a particular moment when I'd become aware that I couldn't keep doing the same thing, in the same way, for the rest of my life. A bit like a son coming of age, so to speak, and going his own way. I called out a difficult relationship, not just with the institutions but with the country, Italy, in general. I used a word that still holds true today: the inability of institutions - which after all represent us - to see things as they actually are in the moment. And that's where the idea of the festival comes back in.

Institutions manage to recognise things either when it's already too late and they're dead and abandoned, or sometimes too soon, overrating them. TOdays came about in completely different conditions from 2010. Its origin actually came as a mandate from the institution itself, at a historical moment when a previous experience had run its course (the Traffic Festival, ed.), both internally and in terms of its model and format as a free festival. In renewing itself, the administration picked me out and gave me complete trust, rather than imposing a project from above, with the intention of giving a place that, as you said, is struggling (one that many would rather escape) the chance to express its creativity. That can only happen in a place that is fertile - chaotic, sure, but full of ferment. So the idea was to gather up the artistic and creative energy of that area. In some way, back in 2015 the administration had the ability and the wisdom to let something emerge, even accepting the risk of making mistakes along the way, which are part of the growth process. In that sense, I consider TOdays an enlightened project, because among other things it has weathered several different administrations with very different political views. Just imagine what it means to go to a city councillor and say: "Okay, I want to book John Carpenter, or Mac DeMarco." Obviously, they just look at me and say: "Who are they? You're speaking a language I don't understand."

So the idea of building an identity worked, one in which the audience isn't just a spectator but identifies with an idea - that of the festival itself, an event that isn't just a string of concerts one after another, but something that leaves a mark on people's minds, where you might go home changed, having discovered new artists and different music, not necessarily reassuring music. Things that stir up a creative tension, expressed through the people who live in that neighbourhood, through those physical places, which become sounding boards. All of that is the identity we call a festival.

This is the fifth edition, and the number five is a decisive one - it's the fingers of one hand, so in a way it's a turning point, closing some things off and, perhaps, opening others. At the moment when you usually take stock, we tried to make a difference, that is, to build a project different from the others, in the name of identity. Neither better nor worse, simply different from other offerings. As you said, we're living through a moment when a certain kind of Italian music dominates festivals and radio, so much so that there are proposals to raise by law the required percentage of Italian music played on air. Whether we liked it or not, we did what we've always said we do, which is tear down borders (in this case geographical ones) and not sort music by region of origin or by genre, but simply into good music and bad music. Building a festival takes a full year of work, and often the idea you start with ends up different from the one you arrive at in the end, so a festival ends up generating itself along the way too, especially if you decide to make a festival that wants to have a place in Europe (and therefore not have only Italian artists). This year there was no upfront decision along the lines of "let's not book Italians", but in some way we ended up building a festival that reflects our attention to certain kinds of artists. In our idea, the festival isn't something ordinary but something extra-ordinary, meaning it offers the chance to hear music different from your everyday listening, so rather than build an event around the summer tours of Italian bands who sell out arenas in winter, we tried to take risks. We'll see whether the results give us credit for it or not. From that point of view, we've had complete free rein from the commissioning body (the institution) - whether out of trust or not, I couldn't say...

I believe so, and I hope so - so far the response has been encouraging. Obviously, speaking of what's called a boutique festival, we can't aim for the numbers and the profile of the big happenings, and that's not even what we want anyway. What we want is an audience that chooses, starting from the timing itself - the last weekend of August, notoriously a holiday period - to come and see something they don't already know.

In my opinion, the identity of a place doesn't just mean showcasing the local up-and-coming artist. That's useless in itself. The identity of a place lies in capturing the creative energy that defines that area, not just geographically (which would be self-referential), but placed within Europe, so that the music becomes a human message, even before a political one.

That's a complex issue (laughs, ed.). Actually, it's a bit of both. Italy isn't a festival country, and here we call things festivals that really aren't. To realise that, you just need to travel a few kilometres from here, to countries with long festival traditions, like Northern Europe, but also countries closer to us, like Spain. In Italy there isn't that kind of attention, first of all because audiences simply aren't used to the idea of a festival - they'd rather go see a single artist's show (Italian or otherwise). Often, in that sense, supply just follows demand, so culturally that kind of attention isn't there. And yet there are also around 15,000 Italians who every year go abroad to see real festivals. That means it's very hard to put on a festival in Italy, because European artists are used to models that work throughout the rest of Europe but not in Italy. I'm talking in terms of financial approaches, logistical management, organisational precision... But that's not the whole story. We're the country where SIAE coined the term "Concertino", which doesn't mean anything. In that context it's hard to build credible festivals able to balance cultural ambition with commercial viability. On top of that, there's the whole issue of bureaucracy. Especially in recent years, Italy has become a country where it's extremely complicated to organise anything that actually fits with the current bureaucratic reality, governed by laws that still date back to when venues were called "balere" [dance halls].

That's exactly it. And it ties back to what we said earlier, institutions unable to see things as they are in the moment, which is why so many events, so many venues, so many clubs collapse and die before they can even produce a result. There are laws governing this sector that end up as limits rather than horizons.

I think it simply comes down to calling something by the wrong name. A concert series is not a festival, it's based on entirely different concepts. With a series, I choose, over a more or less extended period, to go see the shows of one artist or another. A festival, on the other hand, is an immersive experience, where over several consecutive days I live through that experience. And it's not just about music - the difference is that while at a concert series I go to see a show as such, at a festival you should go for the festival itself. The artist shouldn't outshine the festival. That's what allows you to discover new artists and new sensations. Organising a concert series in Italy is still complicated, but from a logistical point of view it's less difficult than having to fit all the artists' availability into a single weekend. You end up working around an artist's so-called day-off too - when they're travelling from Spain to Eastern Europe, they might have that one day free, so it's easier for a series spread across a whole month to say "okay, let's slot them in on that day". I'm not saying either format is better or worse, they're simply two very different things.

If we're talking about festivals, there aren't that many in Italy I'd actually call by that name, but Siren is definitely one of them. Summer, as we know, is the time of year when some beautiful places open up to gathering-type events that resemble a tourist phenomenon, and which sometimes end up looking more like a village fair or holiday-resort entertainment. There's confusion there too: very good artists get booked and then placed in absurd contexts. Investment driven by tourist appeal doesn't primarily bring out quality. It's tied more to entertainment than to cultural events. In Italy, it's still hard to put those two words together (entertainment and culture), because people think culture must be something a bit boring or heavy, while entertainment is something with no substance of its own - which isn't the case in other countries, where quality always rhymes with enjoyment: I enjoy myself listening to good music, and I can talk about lots of different things and genres in the process. In doing so, I'm also making culture. Right now, Italy is a country where putting entertainment and culture together, just like underground and mainstream, or business and culture, still feels alien and hard to even conceive of.

(long sigh, ed.) No!

I'm convinced there isn't even the intention to do so. In Italy there are other examples - Ypsigrock comes to mind (also in the summer period), which is recognised abroad too and has a distinctive format that works, thanks to very welcoming locations. That other model though, like Primavera or Sziget, can't work here, especially not if built solely around international artists. There are festivals in Italy with that kind of big-happening format, like Sziget, but to hit big numbers they often need a major Italian name to draw the crowds in. We're living through a period in which the famous hashtag "Italians first" (in politics, in culture, in society) is running rampant.

There are two answers I could give you. One is the romantic one: you start from a narrative, a vision, meaning "what do I want to do", not just a lineup on a stage but an idea behind it (assuming one follows music closely enough to be able to translate what they hear into a narrative). Obviously, if all I did in my life was book shows based purely on my personal taste, I probably wouldn't have lasted more than a few months... so I have to try to anticipate the audience's taste, not by chasing a fad or a trend, but by somehow getting there before everyone else. I think of a few artists from past editions, Perfume Genius, Timber Timbre, or even Mac DeMarco himself, names unknown to most people but who ended up among the most memorable moments, with plenty of people who didn't know them falling in love with them on the spot. That's the skill, and also a bit of the magic, of managing to create a trend, and instead of just doing what we like, doing something that generates a creative tension, out of which the festival's concept is then born. That's the romantic answer; then there's the real one, which is that often, precisely for the reason I mentioned before (Italy doesn't have such a well-established festival tradition), you often end up settling for whoever's available at that moment and whoever you can afford to pay. The truth lies somewhere in between: the ability to put together a festival that mediates between what you'd like to do and what you're actually able to do, while still holding on to the vision.

Well, look, it's not that different, except here it's also very delicate; every piece you move shifts many others, so it's a balance that has to be renewed at every moment. In the end, almost by magic, the picture comes together, and that's the real test, understanding whether your initial vision has been realized and is properly conveyed through that edition's guests. I'll add that the goal shouldn't necessarily be to do something people like, that's a false problem. I always like to say that I've won if someone goes home not saying "wow, it was just like I expected", but rather "wow, it was nothing like I expected". I'm not interested in people simply fawning over something they already know.

If that hadn't been the case, I would never have put on a festival in a struggling outlying neighborhood. One of the main stages is in a park where the predominant daily activity is drug dealing and drug use; and yet, for those three days, that patch of green lights up with something else entirely. In that sense, the political message of a festival is to suggest, to the administration and to the people who actually live in those areas, different ways of thinking about those places.

That I can't tell you. I believe Turin has always been a city with great potential, and that it's often unable to translate that potential into something that can go further. It's a bit like boxing. You can become the best in the weight class you're competing in, but you rarely manage to make the jump to the next category, from middleweight to heavyweight, so to speak. I think Turin, like Italy in general, is a bit too self-referential: it shows creative energy with great potential, which however remains unexpressed, and often dies before it even has the chance to become real.

Certainly TOdays and Club To Club, but also other smaller events, represent important moments, an asset not just for people from Turin (50% of TOdays' audience isn't from Turin, according to ticketone sales data), but as I said before, we're a bit too focused on ourselves to really see things as they are and help them grow. Again, it's a general Italian problem, but I notice it more in Turin, maybe because it's the city where I live and where I've always worked.

(Questions prepared with the contribution of Claudio Lancia)