Sergio Ricciardone, the founder and director of the internationally lauded Turin festival C2C, died yesterday (March 11), the festival has announced. No cause of death was given. In a statement, the festival offered condolences to his family, adding, “Sergio's vision will continue to light our path, his presence will guide us in difficult times.” Ricciardone was 53 years old.

In the early 2000s, Ricciardone worked with Roberto Spallacci and Giorgio Valletta to conceptualize a multi-venue festival that celebrated Turin’s clubs and forward electronic music scene. Founded as Club to Club in 2002, the festival eventually shifted its main location to Turin’s Lingotto Fiere, a historic site once heralded as a symbol of Italian futurism. Through the festival—which takes place the same week as Turin’s Artissima contemporary art fair—Ricciardone aspired to bridge music and art across the city, particularly in an era when electronic genres were probing questions of the body and identity in the deconstructed techno era. Club to Club specialized in striking visual sets, backing repeat headliners like Caribou’s Dan Snaith and Nicolás Jaar with showcases for the likes of Elysia Crampton and festival house act Arca, who premiered her live-vocal transformation at the 2016 edition.

Ricciardone curated the festival’s audience as carefully as his lineups, balancing hedonist and epicurean contingents by revealing certain marquee artists only after tickets had sold out. He was ambitious, guided by a utopian vision for art, sometimes to the point of folly. After clipping the festival’s name to C2C, he spoke in recent years of abolishing the title altogether and replacing it with a symbol, the ambiguous winged figure that became its logo.

In subsequent years, Ricciardone and artistic director Guido Savini shook off C2C’s reputation for heady electronic sounds and branded itself as an avant-pop festival, as documented in its collection of original essays by authors including Kode9 and Simon Reynolds. Last year’s ever-eclectic bill featured Hessle Audio, Caroline Polachek, and billy woods; the inaugural New York edition is set to take place in May, with Oneohtrix Point Never, Nala Sinephro, Evilgiane, and Two Shell among the performers.