The Magnetic Terrace 2017. Enter the Party Zone

It's probably happened to you. You go out partying to escape from reality and, without really knowing how or why, you find yourself helplessly caught up in the momentum of the night. A party is much more than a gathering to celebrate something or have fun. Desires surface at parties, the desires of a society that briefly reveals its shortcomings in both the emotional and political arenas. The party is that longed-for moment of freedom, a place to lose yourself and perhaps never find your way back.

This year's Magnetic Terrace kicks off with a utopian simulation of a festive evening by Beaches. PARTY is an immersion in dance and sound art where the audience is the sole subject and protagonist.

On Saturday nights we will offer a film cycle that dissects the party in its various eras and forms, as diverse and unexpected as its denizens. Sometimes the party experience, supposedly a form of escape and liberation, can end up becoming a trap from which revellers cannot break free. This happens in Jan Němec's political satire A Report on the Party and the Guests, a film that was "banned forever" by communist Czech authorities, in which a group of bourgeois citizens are subdued by strangers while enjoying a country picnic. The same idea underpins the suicidal gathering in The Big Feast by Marco Ferreri, the love triangle in Millennium Mambo, the dead end where Uli Edel's Christiane F. finds herself trapped, and the wild fling of four bikini-clad teens that spins out of control in Spring Breakers by Harmony Korine. Debauchery and discipline collide at endless after-parties in the modern-day Warsaw portrayed by Michal Marczak in All These Sleepless Nights, on the competition nights at Harlem ball houses captured in Jenny Livingston's Paris Is Burning, and in the Cardiff club scene of the 1990s depicted in Justin Kerrigan's Human Traffic. We'll also offer the premiere in Spain of Híbridos, a special live cinema session where Vincent Moon, together with Priscilla Telmon, will personally initiate us into the shamanic rituals of Brazil and other world cultures that he has been exploring for the past several years.

This year's Sunday concerts are characterised by diversity and the fusion of styles. Join us for a taste of sublime ambient music with ethnic influences by Suso Saiz and Inducing the Pleasure Dreams; the dub- and jazz-infected electronic music of cutting-edge German legend Burnt Friedman; the exotic, avant-garde techno sounds of Japanese artist Kyoka (signed with the Raster-Noton label); the hypnotic rhythms inspired by African tribal music of Tolouse Low Trax (an active member of Kreidler); the amazing, mind-blowing combination of rhythms and styles mixed on three turntables by prestigious Dutch DJ Marcelle van Hoof (who records with the legendary Faust label Klangbad); and Niet!, John Gómez, Manu Louis and Jose Rico with the exclusive presentation of his latest album, Dubvolution 2.

Thanks to a diverse programme of events, this year the Magnetic Terrace is poised to be the most eclectic, appealing summer party in town.