NiANSA 06~08 June 2025
NiANSA (Nuance in English) is a grassroots experimental festival and atmospheric sonic gathering taking place over three days in the the midst of the wild limestone embrace and moss-crowned grottoes of the Rakov Škocjan valley, at the alpine-Mediterranean crossroads of upper Slovenia, between Italy, Austria and the Balkans. Only a 35-minute drive from the city of Ljubljana (SI), 50 minutes drive from Trieste (IT), and 1 hour and 30 minutes drive from Rijeka (HR).
Provided with a camping and accommodation infrastructure, and treating its surroundings as an active part of its sonic encounters, the festival takes at heart the responsibility of giving life to a transient, ephemeral community powered by the mutual exchange between audiences, artists and the intimate environment experimented by humans and non-humans alike.
In the embrace of the stunning karst landscape and the ever-flowing Rak River, this year’s gathering will host over 45 non-overlapping performances across three stages constructed to blend and enmesh with the natural surrounding space, NiANSA offers a range of audio-visual and happenings including concerts, performances, listening sessions, site-specific installations, workshops and sound walks collaborating with different local and international labels and collectives at the fringes of different types of exploratory aural imaginations. Including the curation of different sections by Mappa (SK), PAIKKA (HU), Artetetra (IT), -OUS (CH) and well-established local initiatives such as SonicaxShape+, Radio Študent, RX:TX, ISOLABS, Cona, Level Up and Sonotopija in conjuring a lineup of acts ranging from Dialect to Julek Ploski and IOKOI, from Roméo Poirier to Ulla and Babau, from Lamina to Loto Retina and QOA.
Growing and developing at a natural and sustainable human speed, the festival thrives on personal connections between artistic collectives, guaranteeing care and attention for seamlessly interwoven series of acts usually playing more high-end festivals and locations while avoiding the massive overlap and consequential choice deriving from bulimic and FOMO-inducing lineup programs.
Based on the ethos necessary to keep these communities alive and healthy, since 2023, NiANSA has hosted and collaborated with artists such as Andrew Pekler, Monopoly Child Star Searchers, Ka Baird, MSHR, Mary Lattimore, Jan Jelinek, Slowfoam and Širom, to name but a few, thus trying to map its own vision of the developing boundaries of an evolving musical ecosystem made of left-field electronic explorations, ensemble approaches to improvisation, shapeshifting club ambiences and unorthodox manipulations of sonic matter through the potentialities of field recordings and recorded-media.
This June, the NiANSA portal re-opens for a short while.
A time capsule of magical miniaturisms, body tensors, fluctuating visions,
sensory souvenirs, extended natures and pressurised air illusions.
A multilayer interzone smuggling temporary artifacts and
holographic mirages in space-time decompression.
A clandestine slow-grown paradox.
Quietly ambitious, stubbornly small.
Cross the threshold 𓁿 lightly.
~words by Luigi Monteanni (Artetetra, Babau)
NiANSA (Nuance in English) is a grassroots experimental festival and atmospheric sonic gathering taking place over three days in the the midst of the wild limestone embrace and moss-crowned grottoes of the Rakov Škocjan valley, at the alpine-Mediterranean crossroads of upper Slovenia, between Italy, Austria and the Balkans. Only a 35-minute drive from the city of Ljubljana (SI), 50 minutes drive from Trieste (IT), and 1 hour and 30 minutes drive from Rijeka (HR).
Provided with a camping and accommodation infrastructure, and treating its surroundings as an active part of its sonic encounters, the festival takes at heart the responsibility of giving life to a transient, ephemeral community powered by the mutual exchange between audiences, artists and the intimate environment experimented by humans and non-humans alike.
In the embrace of the stunning karst landscape and the ever-flowing Rak River, this year’s gathering will host over 45 non-overlapping performances across three stages constructed to blend and enmesh with the natural surrounding space, NiANSA offers a range of audio-visual and happenings including concerts, performances, listening sessions, site-specific installations, workshops and sound walks collaborating with different local and international labels and collectives at the fringes of different types of exploratory aural imaginations. Including the curation of different sections by Mappa (SK), PAIKKA (HU), Artetetra (IT), -OUS (CH) and well-established local initiatives such as SonicaxShape+, Radio Študent, RX:TX, ISOLABS, Cona, Level Up and Sonotopija in conjuring a lineup of acts ranging from Dialect to Julek Ploski and IOKOI, from Roméo Poirier to Ulla and Babau, from Lamina to Loto Retina and QOA.
Growing and developing at a natural and sustainable human speed, the festival thrives on personal connections between artistic collectives, guaranteeing care and attention for seamlessly interwoven series of acts usually playing more high-end festivals and locations while avoiding the massive overlap and consequential choice deriving from bulimic and FOMO-inducing lineup programs.
Based on the ethos necessary to keep these communities alive and healthy, since 2023, NiANSA has hosted and collaborated with artists such as Andrew Pekler, Monopoly Child Star Searchers, Ka Baird, MSHR, Mary Lattimore, Jan Jelinek, Slowfoam and Širom, to name but a few, thus trying to map its own vision of the developing boundaries of an evolving musical ecosystem made of left-field electronic explorations, ensemble approaches to improvisation, shapeshifting club ambiences and unorthodox manipulations of sonic matter through the potentialities of field recordings and recorded-media.
This June, the NiANSA portal re-opens for a short while.
A time capsule of magical miniaturisms, body tensors, fluctuating visions,
sensory souvenirs, extended natures and pressurised air illusions.
A multilayer interzone smuggling temporary artifacts and
holographic mirages in space-time decompression.
A clandestine slow-grown paradox.
Quietly ambitious, stubbornly small.
Cross the threshold 𓁿 lightly.
~words by Luigi Monteanni (Artetetra, Babau)
https://niansa.zone/lineup
https://niansa.zone/shop