TECHNO exhibition launches in Italy’s MUSEION modern art museum

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An exhibition dedicated to techno has launched at Italy’s MUSEION modern art museum.

Serving as the first chapter in MUSEION’s long-term TECHNO HUMANITIES program, the TECHNO exhibition, which launched last week and will run until March 2022, is an international collective exhibition that occupies the entire Museion building.

Focusing on the experience of techno explored through three key themes: Freedom, Compression, and Exhaustion, the exhibition examines the “contemporary human condition and social order” through the lens of techno, with the help of a group of artists, musicians, producers and theorists. The artists contributing to the the Bart van der Heide-curated exhibition include Isabel Lewis, Matthew Herbert, Nkisi and Tishan Hsu.

“When it comes to subcultures, total immersion is fundamental,” van der Heide says. “There has never been a part-time punk movement. Yet in the case of the techno subculture, one can enter and exit it at any time. Mediated by new technologies, techno music has become the soundtrack of liberation and escape. The compressed sonic architecture of the local techno club has built meaningful bonds with its community, through collective and interconnected experiences of joy, exhaustion and calculated release. 

“In a way, the techno experience has managed to adapt perfectly to the demands of the freelance workers of a post-industrial era .”

Techno has been explored through many different mediums this past year. In May, two compilations exploring the development and history of Berlin techno were announced, and in July, a new documentary about the rise of techno premiered as part of the Manchester International Festival (MIF).

You can find out more about the exhibition via MUSEION’s website.

Read DJ Mag’s 2019 feature with Nkisi here, where we spoke to the London-based, Congolese-Belgian DJ, producer and activist about her album on Lee Gamble’s UIQ, her collective, NON Worldwide, and the influence of African cosmology on her work.

Earlier this year, a free exhibition exploring South London’s Black music scene opened at the Horniman Museum. The exhibition will run until the 24th October 2021.