On November 1–2, Black! Factory — an avant-garde music festival by the team behind the Closer club — will take place at the Oleksandr Dovzhenko National Film Studio. This year’s program features performances by more than 20 artists, including seven international guests. The overall concept continues to revolve around a cyberpunk aesthetic first explored last year. Ahead of the festival, DTF Magazine spoke with the organizers about the dancefloor concepts and their distinctive features
The main dancefloor is a space station (pavilion 1)
Describing the idea behind the ‘main’ dancefloor in a comment to DTF Magazine, the team explains: ‘Last year, we focused more on experimentation — working with form and starting with a circle. This time, we’re moving further, trying to bring the space closer to the image of a space station: more complex, multi-layered, and highly detailed’.
The central element of the main stage is a structure called the ‘core’. It connects a spiral of LED screens positioned at the center of the venue with the dancefloor itself. According to the organizers, the ‘core’ allows them to ‘work with light as actively as possible’ and to ‘apply large-scale light arrays to the space, drawing people into the performance’. ‘This enhances the feeling of being on a ‘station’ and creates a highly dynamic space’, the Black! Factory team adds.
The suspended installation is approximately 10 meters long. Inside, there is also a black sphere with reflective elements, which ‘creates the effect of a light tube’.
Another distinctive feature of this year’s dancefloor is a fully equipped stage for live performances. This allowed the organizers to expand the music program and complement it with full-scale shows.
The second dancefloor is the Blck Box
The Blck Box dancefloor will be transformed into a ‘media gallery’: LED screens — referred to by the organizers as digital paintings — will line the walls, while the back wall will be turned into a single, seamless square screen.
‘We’re creating a minimalist yet powerful lighting design, enhanced by visuals that are crafted and mixed in real time by video artists, — the Black! Factory team explains. — Each artist has their own visual style, so the two days of the festival will look completely different. Essentially, it’s a space where music, visuals, and architecture function as a single art object’.
On the challenges during preparation
The main challenge the organizers faced during the venue setup was power outages caused by massive russian attacks on energy infrastructure.
‘At the start, you always want to do as much as possible, but the situation calls for optimization. It’s important not to lose the core idea and to preserve the visual identity. This year, the volume of visual content has increased significantly — we’re preparing unique materials for each artist, which requires extensive preparation, synchronization, and real-time management systems. Another point is that this year we rotated the stage by 90 degrees for the first time to create a new experience. This also required additional technical solutions’.
About the Black! Factory 2025 program
This year, the number of international artists at Black! Factory has nearly doubled. The festival will feature performances by Australian Jensen Interceptor, Austrian Kris Baha, Dutch producer Parrish Smith, and multidisciplinary artist Mila V, as well as Brooklyn-based singer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist Rare DM, French DJ Umwelt, and German .VRIL.
Among Ukrainian artists on the lineup are Alex Savage, Raavel, Serge Jazzmate, Kurs Valüt, Hungry Boys, Recid, Roman K, and others. You can find the full lineup here.
Read also: Techno, avant-garde, and cyberpunk: 21 elements of the Black! Factory festival
