Nell’ambito del programma di residenze artistiche Atelier Panormos – La Bottega (Kultur Ensemble Palermo), con il sostegno del Goethe-Institut e dell’Institut français Palermo / As part of the Atelier Panormos – La Bottega (Kultur Ensemble Palermo) artistic residency program, with the support of the Goethe-Institut and the Institut français Palermo

incontro con / meeting with
Sébastien Thiéry, politologo, coordinatore di/ political scientist, coordinator of Perou (Pôle d’exploration des ressources urbaines)
Elsa Ricq-Amour, terapeuta / therapist
Chiara Parisi, direttrice del / director of Centre Pompidou-Metz

Off the Mediterranean Sea today, rescuers are at work. The lives of men, women and children will be saved because of their accurate actions, their expert intervention techniques and the treatments provided by their crew. These actions of rescue, care, benevolence, and friendship have the value of a greater heritage: they hold together present and future humankind. Perou  is committed to having them included in the lists of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity and to have acknowledged the need for the urgent construction of ten extraordinary rescue ships that can protect them. Perou is already working in cooperation with naval architect Marc Van Peteghem, designer Marc Ferrand and some fifty research groups and schools in Europe and South America on the design of the first ship in this European fleet: the Avenir (Future in French), a 67-meter-long and 22.50-meter-wide catamaran.
The Avenir is a revolutionary tool of sea rescue, the first ship specifically designed for mass rescue. It is a shelter on the high seas, a building fully equipped to welcome and treat survivors. It is a public square in the Mediterranean, a collective living area where fraternity is established. It is a workshop for the pursuit of desirable futures, a place out of which to build the ships and the future that will endure.
The Avenir is a work active on the sea front as well as in the space of representations: it glorifies the actions of those who save our humanity and enables their amplification. It advances as a “really made”, striving to make the imperative of the action verb “to work” resonate in the noun “work”.