The 2024 edition
Non-places or buildings filled with the most diverse humanity? It depends on the point of view you look at them from: Terminals can be symbolic spaces; for the traveler they often represent the last contact with their homeland and the first taste of their destination. There are those who experience them with the ill-concealed boredom of the “frequent flyer” and there is the enthusiasm of those who fly for the first time. Probably the difference between these two types of travelers is not so much in the habit of traveling as in the habit of observing and entering into relationships with other travelers. It is this latter attitude that we wish for you to best experience the proposals that the festival offers throughout the ten days of the event. At the terminal built in the Moretti Park in Udine this year fifty artists from all over the world will land, more than fifty between workshops, meetings, multimedia experiences and contemporary circus shows. However, the most relevant aspect for the entire program will be the opportunities for meeting that Terminal24 intends to offer its spectators, artists and people who experience the Moretti park throughout the year. The belief behind the festival is that live entertainment has the power to transform the places and people it meets, generating dialogue and inclusion. Not just live entertainment, therefore: the event is deliberately full of workshops and proposals aimed at experiencing the city of Udine and, above all, sharing cultural experiences that can regenerate the spectator and the city.
Moretti Park Terminal
UdineAfter all, our city is a small terminus, in the extreme North East of Italy, small Udine hosts a contemporary circus festival of international caliber. Although topographically close to the city, the park is perceived by many as marginal compared to the center. The circus, despite the development of recent years, still remains an artistic phenomenon on the borders of the more traditional performing arts. The festival therefore has a certain affinity with marginal places, where an open attitude is crucial so that the border does not turn into a wall, where the encounter with the unexpected can generate new resources of meaning. The collectives of Circo all’inCirca and Puntozero, coming from very different artistic regions, both on a journey towards the development of contemporary art in Friuli Venezia Giulia, met precisely in this way, on a symbolic airport bench located near the gate “festival degli artisti di strada del FVG” in 2014. The meeting led to the construction of Terminal and today, after ten years of transformation and growth, this cultural proposal is configured as an important event for the city of Udine.
In 2024
We have organized the shows according to three macro areas: family shows, artistic research shows and great acrobatics. In this way each spectator can build his own festival also adding the workshops and meetings that he finds most interesting. Speaking of meetings: we are very proud to be able to host the round table of the project "Solo But Not Alone" that on June 17 will see 30 national and international circus operators involved in Udine. It will be an opportunity for exchange and growth for the festival and for the city of Udine.
The ideas behind the artistic project
Terminal is a precise vision of the world of contemporary art and live entertainment. A perspective with which Associazione Circo all’inCirca has redesigned the cultural proposal once dedicated to street art. The foresight of the municipal administration of Udine has wanted to support and expand a proposal that since its gestation phases had the objective of engaging a transversal audience; therefore a cultural proposal that through live art believes it is possible to enhance the city and the relationship that the public has with it. After a few years of work, the festival has become a point of reference in Italy for contemporary circus and live entertainment, it has structured itself and has taken up a multi-year and European project challenge, which allows it a prospective vision capable of programming in Udine the best companies existing on the world scene and therefore making Friuli Venezia Giulia a center of excellence in this sector. The pillars that give structure and credibility to the entire project are the synergy with local cultural operators and in particular regional, national and European networks, the relationship between the spectator and the public space, contemporary circus as a platform for the meeting and valorization of other disciplines of live entertainment, the support for artistic productions under 30, the meeting between very young circus students and newly graduated professionals, an artistic direction shared between different skills and sensibilities capable of expressing professionalism and prestige, finally the ability to incubate hybrid artistic proposals, therefore to perform the function of container for artistic research. It is thanks to this last ability that in 2018 the "Audiobus" project was born within the festival.