We are tremendously happy to welcome you to the 4th edition of the Peculiar Families Festival in Split. This edition is a special one as we are hosting the Annual General Meeting of Circostrada, the European Network for contemporary circus and outdoor arts, within the festival. We are honoured by the trust of the network coordination team and its members and we are excited about the challenge of doing it here, on the margins of the circus sector.

This year’s festival edition is organized in the sisterhood and unity of three organizations that have practised alchemy for more than five years together in a working environment that has usually been precarious. Hence, the crisis is nothing new here. It’s a state of the world we have lived in for decades. To adapt, contemporary circus organizations ROOM 100 from Split, Cirkusfera from Belgrade, and Cirkorama from Zagreb share values of bottom-up, peer-to-peer, and interdependent approach to creation, production, and presentation resulting in a specific blend of resilience, improvisation and reliability. Even before the pandemic, working in countries lacking institutional and public support for arts and culture, mutual support and constant interaction of regional actors was a tool for the long-term development of shared infrastructure, fresh generations, artistic criteria, and operating on low resources.

In this edition of the festival, we made an effort to present you a panoramic overview of local and regional contemporary circus production, and beyond that, the community, environment and circumstances in which the contemporary circus arts are created and performed in this region. With 19 performances from 8 countries, and 44 artists, we have put together a programme that offers a proper insight into the Croatian and regional landscape of circus arts with a strong flavour of humour and spice of melodrama. The festival is mostly happening in the tent of the CirkoBalkana gang in Zenta bay. This is the first time ever that Split’s audience can enjoy contemporary circus performances in a tent. The tent, the Youth Centre and the outdoor performances are all located outside of the tourist centre.

By programming away from the epicentre, together with guided walks and critical reflections, we are highlighting the phenomenon of overtouristifaction in which Split and the region are submerged. The impact of the tourist industry on the everyday life of local people inspired us to set a critical ground for reflection on our own practices as a large family of European circus arts. Aside from a great appreciation for all of the collective and individual efforts to make this artistic field visible and innovative, new trends in production emerge that are often far from being sustainable and inclusive, for example, enormous set-ups with an excessive ecological footprint and occasional lack of joyful simplicity in times that need it as we do live in different (financial, technical, and social) realities. This all recreates imbalance, i.e. periphery-centre relations or unrooting the circus from its local and immediate audiences. But instead of insisting on balance, let’s embrace diversity and mutuality. Let’s dance with uncertainty and enjoy being in this together!

—  Antonia Kuzmanić