Elevate 2025: "Trust Issues"
In its 21st edition, the numerous visitors from near and far who make the pilgrimage to the festival in the heart of Graz can once again look forward to a diverse, interdisciplinary programme that focuses on music, art and discourse.
Concerts, DJ sets, performances and installations by up-and-coming talents, international music greats and local artists promise a varied programme of music and art over a total of five days.
The discourse programme of the Elevate Festival will address the widespread trust crises of our time over three days under the motto “Trust Issues”.
The topic will be explored in the form of workshops, international lectures and discussion panels by renowned speakers from the fields of business, journalism, technology and civil society initiatives, as well as opening up new perspectives.
Elevate Music
At Elevate, music is an independent expression of creative processes, which is combined with artistic elements on specific occasions, and artistic installations are also presented as a separate hemisphere.
One of the first highlights from the music programme is the performance of the two UK legacy acts The Bug feat Flowdan. Behind The Bug is the British musician and producer Kevin Martin. As “The Bug”, he has had a decisive influence on the UK sound landscape since the early 2000s. Known for his powerful and dark sound, he moves between the genres of dub, dancehall, grime and industrial. His colleague Flowdan also occupies a special position within UK bass culture. Marc Veira is a British MC and grime artist. He is regarded as one of the key figures in the grime scene and played a decisive role in establishing the genre, particularly as part of the legendary crew Roll Deep. His style is characterised by dark, hard rhymes and an aggressive delivery that fits perfectly with the heavy, bass-heavy beats that characterise The Bug's productions. In 2024, Flowdan wins the Grammy as the first British MC together with Skrillex and Fred Again and their track “Rumble”.
And we can also look forward to the first acts in the club music sector, including a set by Tash LC. Tash LC is a London-based DJ, NTS radio presenter, resident at Worldwide FM and club organiser. Her musical spectrum is orientated towards global club sounds. It is her unique ability to fuse genres and styles from different parts of the world that has seen Tash LC quickly make a name for herself. In her sets, she effortlessly mixes Afrobeat, Kuduro, Gqom, dancehall and other influences from the diaspora with UK bass, grime and house.
u.r.trax is considered one of the trendiest producers and DJs Paris has produced in recent years. From trippy techno to cold, no-frills electro to euphoric trance, u.r.trax's sets are energetic and kinky. Her releases on Hector Oaks‘ KAOS, Nina Kraviz’ Trip or Ellen Alien's BPitch are proof of the young producer's stylistic confidence.
The Dare is the solo project of New York artist Harrison Patrick Smith, who most recently appeared as a producer for Charlie XCX. The Dare grew up in Brooklyn's DIY scene and has quickly made a name for himself internationally with a convincing mix of indie rock, dance punk and electronic music. His sound is strongly characterised by the vibe of the New York underground and inspired by the post-punk and electroclash of the 2000s.
But band formats beyond the club are also already among the first confirmed names on the festival programme: London band Fat Dog have risen to become one of the most exciting emerging bands on the British scene in just four years with their incomparable live shows. In their energetic, genre-busting numbers, they fuse elements of punk, jazz, electronic music and dub. Their performances are chaotic, exuberant and intense.
Gnoomes, based in Slovenia, are similarly intense, albeit a lot more trippy. The band has been moving through different psychedelic music styles for ten years. From shoegaze to cosmic, from krautrock to, more recently, techno, their strength unfolds in harmoniously meandering and sometimes epochal tracks that cast a spell over us.
Eli Keszler is regarded as one of the most exciting percussionists in the world. With his solo project, the American musician, composer and visual artist operates at the interface of contemporary classical music, avant-garde jazz and experimental electronics. Complex, polyrhythmic patterns and unusually delicate sound textures form the backbone of his pieces.
In addition to his critically acclaimed solo releases, he has also collaborated with renowned artists such as Oneohtrix Point Never, Laurel Halo and Jim O'Rourke. Pope Sangreta aka “Chin Tsao” is regarded as both a hip visual artist and an up-and-coming music act. Originally from Taiwan and based in Vienna for several years, Tsao lives temporarily in Amsterdam. As ‘Pope Sangreta’, Tsao uses frenzied performances to address precarious conditions and the blatant racism that Tsao is regularly confronted with. Like an exorcism, Tsao combines abysmal, occult sounds with radical vocals that penetrate to the core, ranging from harsh rap to opera singing and growling.
As every year, advanced experimentation is also given a stage: First and foremost with the exclusive programme focus of the Acousmonium, a legendary, multi-channel loudspeaker system developed by the Parisian institution Ina GRM as part of the EU project Re-Imagine Europe: New Perspectives for Action. Over the course of two days, international and local musicians will present their specially developed pieces in the Minoritensaal in Graz, a new venue for Elevate.
Another EU cooperation will also play a role in the upcoming festival edition: Through the Creative Europe project TIMES, jointly curated stages and co-commissions will take place at the 2025 edition of Elevate. The partners involved in the upcoming edition are the Unsound, Nuits sonores and Semibreve festivals.
Elevate Discourse 2025: Trust Issues
Under the motto “Trust Issues”, the Elevate Festival's discourse programme will address the widespread crises of trust of our time.
Trust is dwindling at all levels - towards institutions, the media, science, politics, but also in personal interactions between individuals. How did it get to the point where we hardly trust each other or ourselves anymore?
This year's edition of the festival will attempt to fathom the causes of this mistrust, shed light on ‘black boxes’, unravel the complex interplay between trust and action and explore trust-building measures - from our own neighbourhood to global future prospects despite or precisely because of the many crises.
In its 21st year, the festival will once again offer a wide range of formats, including discussion panels, lectures and interactive workshops, in order to shed light on these urgent issues from different perspectives, to break them down and reflect on them constructively.
The three themed days will cover spheres of international calibre ranging from journalism and geopolitics to psychology, from activism to artistic practice, digital topics, net politics and climate protection.
The speakers already confirmed include:
Writer, cultural journalist and ZEIT-feature writer Jens Balzer takes a critical look at pop culture and social issues. In his current book “After Woke”, he takes a critical but differentiated look at the reactions of the progressive left to 7 October, which has landed him at number one on the non-fiction bestseller list of DIE ZEIT, ZDF and Deutschlandfunk Kultur, on the shortlist for the Tractatus Prize for philosophical essay writing and on the SPIEGEL bestseller list.
Barbara Prainsack is a professor at the Institute of Political Science at the University of Vienna and an internationally recognised expert on health, science and technology policy. She heads the research platform "Governance of Digital Practices" and is active in various advisory bodies, including as Chair of the European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies. Her book “Wofür wir arbeiten” was published in 2023 and “Arbeit - Care - Grundeinkommen” in 2024 (with M. Appel, Mandelbaum).
Tom Khaled Würdemann will also be there. The Middle East scholar at the graduate programme “Ambivalent Enmity” at the College for Jewish Studies and the University of Heidelberg researches the Palestinian national movement and has been active in education against racism, anti-Semitism and extremism for several years.
Former ORF journalist and Media Journalist of the Year 2023 Nadja Hahn is now at the International Institute for Applied System Analysis. She will discuss the crises of trust in journalism with journalist and editor Georg Renner, who is known for his analyses of Austria's political landscape.
The architect and professor of design theory at the University of Fine Arts Hamburg (HFBK) Friedrich von Borries works at the socio-political interfaces of urban development, architecture, design and art.
The artist, designer and researcher Birgit Bachler specialises in interactive, audiovisual art, critical media design as well as hardware and software art. As head of the Information Design programme at FH Joanneum Graz, she will be working with her students on a workshop on the topic of "Designing for Trust...Serendipity". Lajla Fetic, an expert in technology governance and digital policy with a focus on the social impact of artificial intelligence, will also be a guest at the festival. Among other things, she has been involved in projects for the Bertelsmann Foundation that promote the common good in the digital society and is committed to the transparent and responsible use of technology.
Last but not least, the now traditional network policy evening around epicenter.works will also be a guest at Elevate again next year.
