This is in this context that the programme of this new edition of MEN festival has been conceived. And probably with a “malicious” aim which would be to emphasise the human presence as a “wonderful need” in such a “technological context”.

Most of the pieces in the programme have a certain relationship with the new media: real-time electronics, sensors, video tracking… And each time it seems that our look, even fascinated by the extensions that those tools provide, cannot avoid focusing on the deep presence of human gestures. For this edition we have prepared a wide range of projects, from solo (Małgorzata Walentynowicz or Gośka Isphording ) to the orchestra and choir of the NFM. In collaboration with the Wro Art Center, the exhibition of the 21st WRO 2025 Qualia Media Art Biennale will be shown in the NFM gallery space, and a concert-performative installation will take place as part of this partnership. 
We will present our special cycle Akusma Forum, dedicated to electroacoustic music and new discoveries of international scene: this year with programmes from Greece, Poland, France, and Canada. As a sign of the importance of human presence, we will invite two projects with dance (Greece and Switzerland) including video projection and interactive lights. Two major European ensembles will be our guests: Black Page Orchestra from Vienna and Vortex from Geneva. Even though they are coming with very different programmes, among them two new premieres commissioned by the festival, those ensembles share an expertise in integrating the most advanced technologies with an awareness of their fragile and ephemeral existence. Once more, the human factor is probably what builds up the energy on the stage: human presences, augmented or not, playing in those complex networks of sound and visuals, trying to find a poetic path, meaningful and deep, as an opposition to the constant flow of data which overwhelms us.

Maybe one project of this edition would summarise or symbolise the general theme: “Des Éclats” by French performer Hervé Birolini; in this project the artist built an ensemble of 16 Tesla coils (visible electric discharge generators), by means of which an external electric field enters in dialogue with neural networks. During the performance, we see electric arcs, shaping a constant energetic flow around the performer, his body, his gestures… one can ask himself or herself if this tension would exist without the human presence?

Pierre Jodlowski
Artistic Director of Musica Electronica Nova