the circus in Friuli Venezia Giulia

Contemporary circus arrived in Friuli eleven years ago with Brocante, a festival born with a faint voice, forged in precise and inexorable artisan work, prepared by artists and aimed at artists. Its unconventional choices gave rise to a sort of movement that slowly populated the now uninhabited valleys of western Friuli; thousands of people rediscovered forgotten lands while simultaneously maturing their own sensitivity towards an unusual way of understanding live entertainment, a performance capable of inhabiting and transforming space. While in Italy street artists' festivals were born, desired and designed to bring artists to the most populated places in urban centers, in Friuli a sort of awareness of rediscovery was maturing. Rediscovering the ancient sense of Friulian hospitality within the dynamics of artistic exchange means wanting to recognize the social function of Beauty. In the remote lands of an Italy rarely visited by those who know and produce culture, a strong bond was being forged between creativity and the territory; the public began to understand that reaching almost uninhabited valleys to discover visionary circus creations may require the physical sacrifice of a short mountain hike, but most of the time the sacrifice is repaid with beauty. 

Although discontinuous in terms of artistic approach, location and project dimension, this is the cultural legacy of Terminal, a name that encompasses the infinite possibilities given by the mix, by places of passage, by the opportunities to rediscover places habitually frequented but never truly seen. Not just circus, an idea of ​​art that shows spectators the possibility of looking at reality and urban space with different eyes. Three days dedicated to the potential of the encounter: between the city and the artists, between artists from different universes yet similarly oriented by their artistic research, an exchange between the performers and an audience invited to get involved in the performance. This is the direction in which Friuli is heading with respect to contemporary circus, Terminal 17 is the stage of a journey that attempts to continue the slow artisan work that has shaped the artistic conscience of the local public and in these two years has brought the Circo all’inCirca to the Terminal of Udine. Musical research, visual art, theater and circus mix in one of the squares less frequented by the commercial routes of the city center.  Alongside the selected companies, there is also a small group of young, newly graduated circus artists who, having arrived in the city a week before the festival, have sought contact with the center through their disciplines. Not just an artistic residency, a project to say that the artistic community of Udine has faith in the vital contact of the artist with the world around him, believes that it is possible to give the city a new way to look at itself. Sharing spaces, dialogue and human growth thus become the fundamental starting point for producing culture, civic conscience and awareness. This is how Terminal seeks to give a home and a name to a specific lifestyle and creation style. After the three days of the festival there is no stop, the project continues with other creative appointments for young, newly graduated artists, who will be able to meet during the upcoming summer and next autumn to be accompanied in the production of their own result. Terminal also continues by bringing back to Buttrio the Magda Clan tent, which in June will meet the actors of “Non dalla guerra” in Friuli, giving the Friulians the opportunity to explore themes that art today cannot help but confront, fragile themes such as those of the border and refugee.

Borders, journeys, mixtures of perspectives and artistic visions, an AudioBus also departs from Terminal 17. This is perhaps the experience that best represents the collective of artists who are in charge of the artistic direction of the festival. Circus, radio, theatre, literature, history and the city merge within the space of an urban bus. Thirty spectators equipped with wireless headphones savor the taste of a journey through the environments of the city. From Terminal 0, "the hospital where everyone is born and begins their journey in this world", to the last definitive Terminal to which we are all headed. Does everything really end in the cemetery? Two tennis players are playing on a grass field, right in the middle of the city, right where no one would have ever believed it would be possible to play. While the AudioBus travels through the streets of the city, a living performance inhabits the city spaces, another way of looking out the windows, outside of oneself, gets on the bus; the spectator is transported to a different planet, built exactly inside everyday life. 

Not just circus. Friuli is a land of passage and contamination, meeting different cultures here is easy and at Terminal17 very different forms of thought and action pass and mix. The festival is not only Circo all’inCirca, it is also a collective of visual artists, Zero Idee, and it goes even beyond the intertwining of circus arts and visual arts: from this year it has opened up to collaboration with the most vivid local cultural realities. Contemporary circus is the container of a wider artistic movement, recognizable both by the public and, above all, by the international guests who come to the city. In the square there is a prepared public, it is not attracted by the freak show phenomenon that has arrived at the most frequented crossroads, it has come to look for the square that it does not normally frequent and wants to see where artistic research will go this time. 

Collaboration between local artistic realities, but not only: Terminal is working to open the Friuli territory to a more structured European collaboration, because the doors of Central Europe and the East are just a few terminals away. For the next edition, the partnership with Cirqueon (Czech Republic) and with the Valencian Circus Association is already active; in the meantime, Circo all’inCirca has already met with some professional schools, one of all Codarts, to understand how to establish a collaborative relationship and in this way give the possibility to newly graduated professionals to use the city to discover themselves, giving urban spaces other universes of meaning.