Underneath the austere steel beams of Parco Dora, an oscillating throng of bodies move to the pulsing rhythm. It’s yet another humid heat wave here in Europe, but that won’t stop the party.
This is Kappa FuturFestival, Italy’s largest electronic music festival, which this year saw a record 120,000 attendees who came from near and far (from over 150 countries in total) to take in the festival’s singular scene.
“We attribute [the Festival's] significant growth to several core pillars,” shares Gigi Mazzoleni, one of the festival founders and its artistic director. “We consistently strive to bring together the most sought-after international artists and exciting emerging talents across the full spectrum of electronic music. Secondly, the unique and captivating setting of Parco Dora provides an unparalleled backdrop, blending Turin's rich industrial heritage with a vibrant, modern energy.”
Indeed, the festival’s setting — an industrial park which used to house the factories for the likes of Michelin and Fiat Steel — lends the whole affair a thrilling sense of both history and futurity. The space was once the pulsing hub of 20th-century industry. Now, a literal rusted and repurposed husk, the park has become the home to this wild festival of techno, the mind-bending, forward-facing genre that’s pushing the world and millions of dancers around the world into a state of perpetual motion.
On the bill are some of electronic music’s most notable names playing (Peggy Gou, Diplo and Dom Dolla) alongside more underground favorites and key drivers of the sound (Octa Octa, Floating Points and DJ Hell, to name a few). “[Part of] the festival's mission is to try to educate young people through historic figures who have [shaped] the history of house, techno and disco music, who [may not be on] social media and therefore are not on everyone's lips,” says Mazzoleni, echoing a similar sentiment that Festival performer Carl Cox shared with PAPER in a interview done before the big weekend.
“The young people going out today [are] going out with no real culture. They're hearing this music by these DJs, and that's all they know,” Cox tells PAPER. “They don't need to, because they're having a great time right now … If they're out for two hours, and they've got what they need on Instagram and Tiktok, that's it,” he said with a smirk before adding. “But club culture has always been a feeling. It’s been heartfelt. It has always been a way of life and [its] own society.”
At the festival, one could sense Mazzoleni’s goal to educate alongside the contours of the society that Cox refers to. It’s a society where time and space are not governed by the typical rules of the wider world, but by the pace and tenor of club culture. Days at Kappa FuturFestival are spent careening between its seven stages. And every night, the joyous affair sputters well past the Festival’s end at one of the many afterparties held in local clubs.
A select crew — which includes journalists covering the Festival and those who signed up for an immersive Festival experience — has the unique opportunity of taking in the Festival as part of a curated tour of Turin. Dubbed the “Art & Techno” experience, this trip features visits to unique art sites like the architectural dreamscape of Casa Molino or a joyous jaunt through a Turin chocolate factory.
“Art & Techno was born from the need to bring the city to life beyond the festival,” says Mazzoleni. “Turin has always been a city full of artists, museums, and galleries. We initially wanted to share this experience with friends who came from outside Italy for the festival, but then we realized it could be something we could offer to all the international audiences.”
The experience is indeed a crash course in Turin and a perfect pairing for the Festival’s musical whirlwind. Turin, a complex and beautiful city of industry, art and (of course being in Italy) food, becomes more than the mere host location for this tiring, joyful festival experience. It becomes the experience itself. And as I dance aside Parco Dora’s landscape of retired factory infrastructure I feel the weight and resonance of that history: motion, cars, technology, art and, of course, techno, all melding towards an ineffable feeling.
It’s sweaty and it’s wild, but I’m so happy to be in Turin.
Photography: Antonio Corallo, Riccardo Reepik
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