What past, present, future for the world if the only alternative to peace were peace? On 14 and 15 September 2023, a special edition of The Flag of the World, 1+1=3 was held at the Centre des Arts of the ECOLINT Foundation in Switzerland. The work stemmed from the meeting of two artists, Angelo Savarese and Michelangelo Pistoletto, and from their desire to create a shared event to give the public the opportunity to recognise their own national identity together with that of others, as part of a broad and unitary, territorial and cultural context, where everyone has a fundamental role to play in maintaining a balance. The performance The Flag of the World, 1+1=3 takes on cultural, social and symbolic meanings that can be strongly associated with the current historical moment and with the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations 2030 Agenda. Also, it is the casual representation of possible combinations, of other realities, of the new distribution of ethnic presence in the world, remaining always and in any case an emblem of differences, of inclusion, of life.

The Flag of the World, 1+1=3 at the Centre des Arts of the Ecole Internationale de Genève was transformed yet again, becoming a workshop curated by Francesco Saverio Teruzzi, from Cittadellarte, and Isabelle Mueller, director of the Centre, who, with artist Angelo Savarese, invited the students to make their own personal flags, made of their sign, their creativity and their imagination. The result was 171 40 x 40 canvases produced in two days and placed in place of and together with Savarese’s originals to talk about art, the Third Paradise and the idea of preventive peace.
“Art, culture, commitment, inclusion, sharing,” said coordinator of the Third Paradise ambassadors Saverio Teruzzi, “are the only weapons we can tolerate. ECOLINT is a school that makes its multiculturalism its raison d’être and with which Cittadellarte has been collaborating for several years; it was therefore natural to bring ‘The Flag of the World’ and its concepts into its spaces, where diversity, being different, as in Pistoletto’s Formula of Creation, are not an obstacle, but the very reason for life”.

Savarese remarked: “This is the first time we are proposing ‘The Flag of the World’ outside Italy. I am thrilled that this first ‘foreign’ workshop was aimed at younger generations: the experience with the children was wonderful. We had already organised one in San Mauro Torinese with ambassador Alessandra Basso and, on that occasion too, it turned out to be a success with over a thousand young participants. We want to continue to make the students feel a sense of belonging to their own nationality, so that they can appreciate and deal with differences. This is how we lay the foundation for a better future”. The artist, who actively participated in the initiative by supporting the students in painting the canvases while allowing them creative freedom, concluded by dedicating a double thought: “Our project is meaningful because of all that the Third Paradiserepresents. However, much of the credit for the success of the experience in Geneva must go to Saverio Teruzzi,” he concluded, “who had an incredible power of attraction with the children and was an inspiration to everyone”.