Sergio Ricciardone, the founder and director of the internationally lauded Turin competition C2C, died yesterday (March 11), the competition has introduced. No explanation for dying was given. In a press release, the competition supplied condolences to his household, including, “Sergio’s imaginative and prescient will proceed to mild our path, his presence will information us in troublesome instances.” Ricciardone was 53 years outdated.
Within the early 2000s, Ricciardone labored with Roberto Spallacci and Giorgio Valletta to conceptualize a multi-venue competition that celebrated Turin’s golf equipment and ahead digital music scene. Based as Membership to Membership in 2002, the competition finally shifted its foremost location to Turin’s Lingotto Fiere, a historic website as soon as heralded as a logo of Italian futurism. By means of the competition—which takes place the identical week as Turin’s Artissima up to date artwork honest—Ricciardone aspired to bridge music and artwork throughout the town, notably in an period when digital genres have been probing questions of the physique and id within the deconstructed techno period. Membership to Membership specialised in placing visible units, backing repeat headliners like Caribou’s Dan Snaith and Nicolás Jaar with showcases for the likes of Elysia Crampton and competition home act Arca, who premiered her live-vocal transformation on the 2016 version.
Ricciardone curated the competition’s viewers as rigorously as his lineups, balancing hedonist and epicurean contingents by revealing sure marquee artists solely after tickets had bought out. He was formidable, guided by a utopian imaginative and prescient for artwork, generally to the purpose of folly. After clipping the competition’s identify to C2C, he spoke lately of abolishing the title altogether and changing it with a logo, the ambiguous winged determine that turned its brand.
In subsequent years, Ricciardone and creative director Guido Savini shook off C2C’s status for heady digital sounds and branded itself as an avant-pop competition, as documented in its assortment of authentic essays by authors together with Kode9 and Simon Reynolds. Final yr’s ever-eclectic invoice featured Hessle Audio, A. G. Cook dinner, and billy woods; the inaugural New York version is about to happen in Could, with Oneohtrix Level By no means, Nala Sinephro, Evilgiane, and Two Shell among the many performers.
