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 It is located at the Alpine-Mediterranean crossroads of upper Slovenia between Italy, Austria and the Balkans. The site, which includes a campsite and accommodation infrastructure, is only a 35-minute drive away from the city of Ljubljana (SI), 50 minutes drive from Trieste (IT), and 1 hour and 30 minutes drive from Rijeka (HR).
Treating the 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 with 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 50 non-overlapping performances across three stages constructed to blend and enmesh with the natural surroundings. NiANSA offers a range of events and happenings including audiovisual concerts and performances, listening sessions, site-specific installations, workshops and sound walks in collaboration with various local and international labels and collectives at the fringes of different types of exploratory aural imaginations. In 2025, NiANSA is collaborating with foreign collectives and labels such as Mappa (SK), PAIKKA (HU), Artetetra (IT) and -OUS (CH) as well as well-established local initiatives such as SonicaxShape+, Radio Študent, RX:TX, ISOLABS, Cona, Level Up and Sonotopija. Conjuring a line up of acts such as Dialect, Julek Plosk, IOKOI, Roméo Poirier, Ulla, Babau, Lamina, Loto Retina, QOA and more.
Growing and developing at a natural and sustainable pace, the festival thrives on personal connections between artistic collectives, guaranteeing care and attention for each act in an attempt to avoid the overlapping, FOMO-inducing lineups. 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 a few.
The NiANSA team is mapping its own vision of an evolving musical ecosystem consisting 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 miniatures, 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 It is located at the Alpine-Mediterranean crossroads of upper Slovenia between Italy, Austria and the Balkans. The site, which includes a campsite and accommodation infrastructure, is only a 35-minute drive away from the city of Ljubljana (SI), 50 minutes drive from Trieste (IT), and 1 hour and 30 minutes drive from Rijeka (HR).
Treating the 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 with 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 50 non-overlapping performances across three stages constructed to blend and enmesh with the natural surroundings. NiANSA offers a range of events and happenings including audiovisual concerts and performances, listening sessions, site-specific installations, workshops and sound walks in collaboration with various local and international labels and collectives at the fringes of different types of exploratory aural imaginations. In 2025, NiANSA is collaborating with foreign collectives and labels such as Mappa (SK), PAIKKA (HU), Artetetra (IT) and -OUS (CH) as well as well-established local initiatives such as SonicaxShape+, Radio Študent, RX:TX, ISOLABS, Cona, Level Up and Sonotopija. Conjuring a line up of acts such as Dialect, Julek Plosk, IOKOI, Roméo Poirier, Ulla, Babau, Lamina, Loto Retina, QOA and more.
Growing and developing at a natural and sustainable pace, the festival thrives on personal connections between artistic collectives, guaranteeing care and attention for each act in an attempt to avoid the overlapping, FOMO-inducing lineups. 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 a few.
The NiANSA team is mapping its own vision of an evolving musical ecosystem consisting 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 miniatures, 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)
NiANSA2k24 PHOTO CREDITS: ASIJANA JURCA AVCI & URŠA RAHNE
https://niansa.zone/lineup
https://niansa.zone/shop
NIANSA2k25 VISUALS CREDITS:
Graphic Design and Visual Identity by Urša Rahne
3D Art by Pixel Bambi