Surrealist circus artist, tautological actor, Japanese wannabe.
Carlo was born in Cuneo, Italy, on August 27, 1995. He grew up in a family of photographers and illustrators, but unexpectedly, he was drawn to science—especially physics and astronomy. Also passionate about sports, he mainly practiced athletics and Kung Fu. He studied chemistry in high school before beginning a true educational path in circus arts.
He first encountered circus at the age of 10, pushed by his mother to try something different. He hated it and begged her to let him quit after the first day. But his mother, drawing on her experience with his two older brothers, made him continue. On the second day, the class focused on juggling—Carlo tried Chinese plates, and it was love at first sight!
So it was with Chinese plates that Carlo began his journey at the Fuma che 'Nduma circus school, directed by Giuseppe Porcu. He later moved on to balls, then added clubs, and eventually rings.
In 2014, after eight years of practice, he began combining the three traditional props in his juggling. At this small recreational school, he met Francesco Sgrò, an artistic figure who played an extremely important role in his circus journey. Carlo would be lost without Francesco. :'(
By combining balls, clubs, and rings, he entered the first year at the FLIC circus school in Turin, where he trained for two years with three friends from Fuma che 'Nduma. He discovered that he absolutely did not like dancing. At FLIC, he was fascinated by Léon Volet, with whom he spent the best moments of his two years in Turin, even dedicating a song to him on the ukulele. This marked the beginning of an important artistic and friendly collaboration for Carlo, which would later develop into a duo.
In 2017, without really understanding it—since he did not speak French at all—he was directly admitted into the second year at the National Centre for Circus Arts (CNAC). It was Léon who translated the results for him a few days later. In his free time, he began producing electronic music. Within his class, he met Noémi Devaux, with whom he started a video project using circus within video editing.
With Léon Volet and Ramiro Erburu, he also launched the project “EDO cirque,” where EDO stands for Esthétique De l’Ours (Aesthetics of the Bear).
On March 24, 2019, he wrote this biography for the press kit of Les Échappées 2019.
In circus, Carlo is interested in abstraction, surrealism, and decontextualization. He advocates for an autonomous circus, one that does not need to rely on other art forms to exist—even if he sometimes does. He works on a method of writing based on circus and on the instinct of the creator/performer, exploring how to cultivate one’s own artistic instinct.
The path is still long—and above all, he has no fixed goal: only desires, methods, and rules.