The Post-Industrial Dance

On 14 September 2024, the AaltoSiilo hosted the Aaltosiilo Festival 2024: The Post-Industrial Dance. Conceived by Valentino Tignanelli, this landmark event marked yet another, and even more ambitious, significant milestone in the transformation of Alvar and Aino Marsio Aalto's concrete cathedral from abandoned industrial heritage relic to cutting-edge multimedia performance and exhibition space.

The festival's title embodied a philosophy of cultural renewal that sees the remnants of industrial civilisation not as obstacles to overcome, but as partners in creating new forms of artistic expression. A celebration of how post-industrial landscapes can be reimagined through the transformative power of art and architecture.

This edition of the festival extended far beyond Oulu's borders, with a live-streamed hybrid audiovisual performance connecting the AaltoSiilo with Villa Tammekann in Tartu (Estonia), featuring DJs Gatesleeper and VJ Tencu. This technological bridge between two European Cultural Capitals (Tartu being the 2024 one and Oulu the 2026) demonstrated how post-industrial spaces can serve as nodes in new networks of cultural exchange.

LNA and OIVO opened the festival with DJ sets that seemed to emerge organically from the building itself, and the Alvar Aalto Photography Landscapes Block offered a visual counterpoint to the sound, featuring work by renowned artist Elina Brotherus alongside a Meri-Toppila Photowalk exhibition by Photonorth. Live performances by UK-based DJ OSSIA and Estonian electronic duo Varjur animated the day leading up to the evening performances.

One of the day's most powerful moments came from Finnish actress Antonia Henn and artist Sisko Iljana. "Concrete Cathedral" was a multidisciplinary poetry and music event that collected the dreams of Meri-Toppila residents on pieces of paper, which Henn recited in a surreal, moving performance that evoked a sense of strangeness and charm.

The Concrete Cathedral flowed seamlessly into "Silo Dance", a truly breathtaking acrobatic choreography by Lisa Ilona Jantti and Pavlína Podzimková, performed on the building's unique architectural features.

Both performances transformed the Silo itself: towering over the neighbourhood, the building suddenly channelled the residents' innermost thoughts like an antenna, elevating them up to its roof overlooking the city of Oulu transitioning from dusk to evening.

Concluding the night, Triálogo's powerful live performance made the AaltoSiilo into an active participant in its own cultural reinvention. Anna Murtola, "the world's northernmost flamenco singer", and electronic musician Josu Mämmi engaged in a tripartite conversation with the building itself – a dialogue that spanned not just musical traditions but historical epochs. Murtola's flamenco – an art form born from cultural mixing and displacement – found perfect resonance in this space of transformation.

True to the AaltoSiilo project's commitment to accessibility and community engagement, the festival was entirely free to the public, with all performances live-streamed on a 14m² LED screen outside the Silo, and on Twitch.tv.

Two parallel events expanded the festival outside Finland:

  • Aalto Bridge in Tartu, Estonia. The former Capital of Culture 2024 organised an event at Villa Tammekann, designed by Alvar Aalto in 1932 as the residence of Professor August Tammekann and his family. Performances by Estonian electronic music and video artist Gatesleeper (Martin Rästa) and VJ Tencu (Andres Tenusaar) accompanied lectures by architectural historian Karin Hallas-Murula on the significance of Aalto's work, along with free introductory tours of Villa Tammekann and a relaxing garden party. The six-hour live cultural broadcast bridged the architectural styles and cultural contexts of two Aalto buildings in two cultural capitals.

  • The Instituto Iberoamericano de Finlandia in Madrid hosted a live-stream party inside the newly-opened exhibition "On Poetry, Mythology, and Allegory: Prints by Vargas and Varis". The event was introduced by Andres Rundu, Estonian Ambassador in Spain, and Adam Lowe, the director of Factum Arte and founder of Factum Foundation.

The enthusiastic reception of The Post-Industrial Dance – made possible through collaboration with the Finnish Estonian Institute, Turku University Foundation, Tartu 2024, Oulu 2026, Ö Studio, Factum Foundation, Aaltosiilo Ry, and pARTir – demonstrated the hunger for cultural programming that engages seriously with questions of heritage, sustainability, and community.