Organizer Information
NOIS//E 2026 – Practices of Presence in the Post-Generative Age is an interdisciplinary festival and symposium organized by the NOIS//E Association, building on the experience of NOIS//E 2025 – Nature Art Sound, an international festival held in Calabria that brought together more than 50 artists from 19 countries through experimental music, video art, immersive installations, talks, and site-specific interventions. The 2025 edition ran across ancient convents, historic buildings, and coastal locations in Calabria, from the former Jesuit convent in Vibo Valentia to Palazzo Santa Chiara in Tropea and the Belvedere del Faro di Capo Vaticano, staging concerts of electroacoustic and experimental electronic music alongside classical and traditional folk performance designed to interact with landscape. The 2026 edition moves to Milan, with artistic direction by Alessia Damiani and Paola Lopreiato and technical direction by Riccardo Andrenelli and Andrea Mancuso. Limited independent public information is available on the NOIS//E Association beyond its own festival materials and network listings.
Title & Description
NOIS//E 2026 — Practices of Presence in the Post-Generative Age
NOIS//E 2026 is a cultural and curatorial project proposed for an iconic, historic venue in Milan in November 2026, continuing the trajectory of NOIS//E 2025's Calabria edition. The project focuses on artistic practices that restore value to presence, physicality, listening, materiality, and situated experience within a cultural context increasingly shaped by automation, synthetic production, and the immaterial circulation of content. Rather than rejecting technology outright, the project aims to reposition it critically within embodied, spatial, and relational artistic experiences. The programme is conceived as a flexible, interdisciplinary platform developed over one or more days, potentially including live performances, audiovisual screenings, listening rooms, installations, immersive or VR experiences, artist talks, and public discussions, with a modular format adaptable to the hosting venue and low-impact, reversible technical solutions. The main venues are Fondazione Sozzani and the historic Villa Litta, treated as active participants in the artistic experience rather than neutral containers. The project addresses a broad audience, including those interested in contemporary music and art, students, young artists, cultural professionals, and local communities.
Theme
Practices of Presence in the Post-Generative Age — reflecting on presence, body, listening, gesture, matter, space, memory, environment, and the critical use of technology in the post-generative age.
Categories
- Sound/Music
- Video/Film
- Installation
- Performance
- Interdisciplinary Arts
- Multimedia
- New Media
- Research
- Technology
- Curatorial
Eligibility
- Open to artists, composers, performers, filmmakers, dancers, visual artists, researchers, and interdisciplinary practitioners
- Open to all ages
- Open to all nationalities
Program Benefits & Awards
- Selected works are presented in the official NOIS//E 2026 programme in Milan
- Among the strongest works presented at the festival, some artists may be selected as candidates for a future artistic residency in Calabria, scheduled for May 2027 (candidacy only, not a guaranteed placement)
Application Fee
None
How to Apply?
Online Application
Key Dates
- Application Deadline: 5 September 2026
- Notification of Results: 1 October 2026
- Festival Dates: November 13–15, 2026
- Future Calabria Residency (for select artists): May 2027
Location
Milan, Italy
Additional Details
- Travel, accommodation, artwork transport, and personal expenses are the responsibility of participants
- For physical works, installations, or complex setups, the artist is responsible for transport and, where required, must be present for installation
- The project builds directly on NOIS//E 2025, which was held in Calabria and involved dialogue between contemporary artistic practices and convents, palaces, rural landscapes, and other sites of strong territorial identity