On Thursday 14th June, Michelangelo Pistoletto is back in Geneva for a day dedicated to the Third Paradise. Protagonists of the occasion will be the students from the Ecolint Foundation, Campus des Nations, who will physically carry the artist’s message to the Palace of Nations, into the Rebirth, the monumental work of art representing the symbol of the Third Paradise realized with 193 stones, each coming from a different UN member state. Besides the artist, the event will see the participation of the coordinator of the Rebirth ambassadors Francesco Saverio Teruzzi, who’s been present at all the workshops held in the Swiss school (please click here and here for all the info on the previous initiatives), and of Savina Tarsitano, who will organize the students in their performances, plural because the day will be characterized by three distinct moments.

The morning’s activities will start at 8.10 with the presentation of the project Kids’ Guernica by professor Takuya Keneda – head of the Art and Education department of Otsuma Women University in Tokyo and international coordinator of Kids’ Guernica – and the exhibition of the relative Third Paradise canvasses coming from all over the world: Japan (Nikko, Tokyo, Nagasaki, Fukushima), Italy (Biella, Lamezia Terme, Cuneo), Palestine, Indonesia, United States (Florida), Cambodia, Martinique, Cuba and Belgium.

At 9.00, the young participants will start painting, with the Kids’ Guernica and Third Paradise workshops (till 12.00): three groups of 27 students each will rotate to carry out three simultaneous workshops on the canvasses. Specifically, they will work on a brand new canvas about the UN’s 17 Goals of Sustainable Development from Agenda 2030 and will contribute to two canvasses focusing on the importance of a harmonic relationship between nature and technology: the one started in Nikko and the one started in Biella, which has already been worked on in Italy, Japan and Cuba. In the course of these activities, the students will be assisted by the Third Paradise ambassadors present and by representatives of the Kids’ Guernica international committee coming from Japan and India.

The second part will be about The Ecolint’s Walking Sphere, a personalized version of Pistoletto’s work The Sphere realized with recycled local newspapers and magazines, which in the course of the morning will be signed by all the students of the Campus des Nations. After lunch, Michelangelo Pistoletto will lead them along the streets of Geneva ideologically, but also physically, “delivering” them to the Palace of Nations, where they will then keep pushing and rolling the sphere through the offices to the Ariana Park and into the Rebirth central circle.
The third and final part of the day will feature Pistoletto’s speech to the participants and the performance The Third Paradise, which the students will realize collectively reconfiguring the symbol, to represent the ethical, educational and social commitment each of us is invited to assume in respect of our planet.

“On 14th June – explains Saverio Teruzzi – we will accomplish something never done before, which only art can create. The relationship between Ecolint and the Third Paradise can’t be considered fortuitous, even if it started by chance! When Rebirth was unveiled, the students from Campus des Nation physically represented the 193 stones, one for each nationality. Among them, was the daughter of Simona Mazzitelli Leenders, whom I had the opportunity to meet again on the occasion of Pistoletto’s presence at the World Day Against Child Labour. “Fate” wanted that the guests from Cittadellarte had to anticipate their journey back since the Mont Blanc tunnel would be closing ahead of time due to a strike. Since I was flying back to Rome instead, I had a few extra hours spare, so Simona, as representative of the Campus des Nations parents-teachers association, invited me to visit the structure. Savina Tarsitano had already opened a dialogue about a possible participation by Cittadellarte in the Campus, but that visit defined our 1 + 1 = 3 and the first two events turned into the three workshops I’ve run, always finding welcome contributions in Geneva. I hope them to be a prelude to a long collaboration with the Ecolint Foundation”.
1 + 1 = 3, for a responsible transformation of society.