Kontrast is a festival of free art, as is contemporary circus. Circus and music serve to ignite a kind of imaginary movement formed by the audience, artists and free travellers who oppose art generated and controlled by algorithms, controlled by companies controlled by algorithms, controlled by cameras controlled by algorithms, controlled by satellites controlled by algorithms, for spectators controlled by algorithms...

When walking down the street, reading the news in the media, looking out the window of the train we are travelling on, or even inside the wagon, many of us feel the sensation of seeing a world turned upside down. War is an instrument of peace, verbal arrogance has replaced dialogue, reasoning has been replaced by primal emotions. Silent children, but also adults, are absorbed in their captivating little screens while armies destroy cities and lives. People fleeing bombs are considered a dangerous threat. The panorama of things turned upside down is endless. Virtual relationships directly replace real ones. Reality is dematerialised, the world “flies upside down”, perhaps as it always has.

The circus could be described as the art of turning things upside down. Walking with your hands instead of your feet, flying, creating other worlds, developing your psychophysical potential to the maximum and taking it beyond the usual limits. So it seems to us that a circus festival can be a kind of antidote, a tool for reversal. Something that might serve to counteract the cruel drift of society through physical and artistic resistance to imposed limits, to kontrast art as an instrument for demagoguery, to kontrast the boredom and loneliness that deepens the technological landscape, to kontrast that system which, unfortunately, has self-destruction as its existential driving force.

Of course... we are all part of the system, but come and kontrast a little with us.

El nom del festival és Kontrast. Contrasti és el nom que els circenses italians han estat utilitzant durant generacions per referir-se als artistes que no pertanyen a la dinastia, és a dir, aquells que no provenen de famílies de circ tradicional. Això som nosaltres! Contrastos, sense dogmes a respectar: 100% pur circ.