LIFE 2026

Milan, April 30th >May 21st 2026
Fabbrica del Vapore, Milan

a project by ZONA K

LIFE 2026

30/04 > 21/05 2026
Fabbrica del Vapore
Milano

a project by
ZONA K

Milan, April 30th >May 21st 2026
Fabbrica del Vapore, Milan

Thanks!

LIFE is over for now.

Yes, the numbers were there.

over 5,000 attendees
11 performances
21 repeat performances
8 talks
3 documentary films
1 dj set
1 workshop
5 round tables
6 exhibitions

But it’s not the numbers that we take away with us.

What remains is something else. It is the way in which the artists used every language to tell us something about the present.
It is the feeling of having been part of something that matters, together.

Thank you to everyone who came. Thank you for your attention. For your sensitivity. For choosing to be there.

Thank you to the artists for their unique, necessary and courageous visions.

Thank you to all the invaluable crew members, and to everyone who worked passionately alongside us to create this special second edition of LIFE.

The festival does not end here.
Over the coming weeks, you will find exclusive new content on Substack exploring all the souls that inhabited this edition.

Locked in our echo-chambers, bombarded by a relentless stream of news that leaves no space or time for reflection, we move inside a reality that fights with itself. The information stumbles, social network amplify, in-depth analysis becomes a domain of the few, the truth hides itself in winding paths and the comparison with the other becomes increasingly heated.

Victims of disinformation and fake news, we find relief in those who can reassure us that we are on the right side. Emotions become more influent than facts in the determination of our positions and our interactions. Our cognitive system tends to select and accept only the information that fit with our view of the world, conserving energy according to an economic mechanism of self-preservation. Experts refer to this as Confirmation Bias.

In the contrast between us and them, even the entire concept of democratization debate disappears, transformed into an arena of almost tribally-like conflict. How can we coexist with those who think in a diametrically opposed views? How can we live alongside those who embody beliefs that are irreconcilable with ours?

In this rather unsettling scenario, LIFE offers its perspective on the contemporary reality through original, ambiguous, irreverent and uncomfortable narratives. The stage becomes a laboratory to explore these fractures that cross society, politics, our most intimate relationships, our bodies and our desires. Art, when directly compared with information, undermines convictions and reappropriates the codes of entertainment, which are often at the mercy of the worst media performances.
Polarisation ceases to be an abstract concept and becomes a living, visceral, emotional experience. Theatre can do what the algorithm cannot: create a space of shared presence, where dialogue is not mediated by a screen but takes place here and now, in the real encounter between people.

A festival that moves itself between reality and imagination, facts and fiction, giving art the power to be a critical device and the possibility of being a space for resistance, participation and questioning.