Stepping out of our comfort zone? We don't like to do it, we fear it, we cling to the zone set by therapeutic newspeak. Is there a right one? Is there only one, a common one? Maybe there are more, maybe they are mutually exclusive?

The programme of the 6th New Europe International Festival is a space for the exploration of discomfort. Where are the boundaries drawn? Which points are hotspots? How far can one go? In the name of what? In the name of whom? Because after all, someone is suppressing these actions, someone is applauding them, someone is afraid - belonging is entangled with (dis)comfort. Being 'on someone's side' requires both support and obedience - but can one act outside the logic of loyalty, which often leads to following others uncritically? How do you break out of this?

Mismatch, provocation, voice and history, and even one's own body. The invited creative people propose new communities, operating according to a different logic - expanding definitions and transcending frameworks that constrain movement, constrain thought. Their performances happen somewhere at the intersection of artistic gesture, activist engagement and their own biography. They are always politically oriented, though not necessarily directly - they crystallise in ostentatious being out, refusal to conform to the social contract, displays of non-normativity. They provoke other bodies to react. Something breaks.

Light hardcore? Why not.

We are contrasting the ephemerality and festivisation of cultural life with an ongoing festival. This year, exceptionally, we will invite you already in June, together with the Ephemera Festival, to the Festival's anouncing event - a trance experience with the Asian Dope Boys collective from Shanghai.

We are keen for the shows not to be a short-lived event, but to become a regular practice of meeting important creators of European and world theatre.

We invite you to experience, discover and juxtapose diverse perspectives together, to debate and discuss.

This edition of the International Festival New Europe. Light Hardcore is the last one curated by the team: Olga Drygas, Piotr Gruszczyński, Karolina Ochab

Programme:
- 14 June Physis Asian Dope Boys (China)
- 19-21 September NarcoSexuals Dries Verhoeven (Netherlands)
- 15-16 October Soliloquio Tiziano Cruz (Argentina)
- 17-18 October Wayqeycuna Tiziano Cruz
- 14-15 November Friction Sophia Rodriguez (Belgium/Venezuela)
- 5-6 December Get Off Katy Baird (UK)