I tell about it, among friends who are really convinced and aware that we need to get out of sustainability-blà, blà, blà and do something important and epochal not to save the planet but for the future of our children and our grandchildren; I tell then that for almost twenty years there has been a movement / thought called Terzo Paradiso and which is headed by one of the great masters of contemporary art: Michelangelo Pistoletto.
I tell it around with great strength and determination because I had the task of spreading to the world that I frequent this Paradise: I was recently appointed one of the many ambassadors of the movement / thought and therefore I have to talk about it to everyone I meet, to all those who they deserve to know.
So I tell it to Anna Lacci and her group of Earth Gardeners who started from Sardinia to embark on a path that leads to important developments for a new and true future (we delete the word sustainable because it has been indefinitely abused). Anna does not know this Third Paradise: she knows Pistoletto and her poor art of him. But she stops there.
It’s not something to be ashamed of. I didn’t know anything about it myself when I happened, a few years ago, to be invited to a truly unique meeting. Michelangelo Pistoletto was in Kuusamo, the town in northeastern Finland, one of the gates of Arctic Lapland, and would talk about his movement / thought in which art is at the center of a network where social responsibility is the keystone for a global change.
For 35 years Kuusamo has been the reference point of my long Finnish stays in which I dedicate myself to painting and observing Nature. And so Eija Tarkiainen, a splendid Finnish lady who lives between Turin and her Nordic land, put me in contact with the “man from Biella”, the artist of the strong confrontation with hypocrisy in the name of commitment. Pistoletto is the founder of Cittadellarte in Biella, a reality that is written and read as a single word: it is a Citadel of Art, where people work, study, research, talk and design the future.
The premise was long but necessary. Now I start talking about the Third Paradise, which is not religious tout court, and much less Catholic. It is the enchanted garden of Persian artists and poets of centuries and centuries ago. It is the place to start. It is “Third” because we have overcome two paradises: in the first we were well connected to Nature and in the second where we felt compelled to move forward with the worst possible technologies. to annihilate Nature and put ourselves at the center as Anthropocenics. While devastating it as never before. In the Third Paradise, Pistoletto asks the whole world,(and this, mind you, is not an act of pride) to drastically change course: with the best technologies and the best inventions that are no longer invasive, homo sapiens must return to take back its place next to Nature. While keeping seriously humble.
The Third Paradise has a symbol: oOo. If we interrupt the infinity symbol and place a larger circle in the center, we obtain a single line that forms three consecutive circles: “The lateral circles – I am quoting Pistoletto – correspond to all existing elements, to all contrasts, to all oppositions. The central circle is the one in which they combine, creating something new: 1 + 1 = 3 that is, you and I make a “we.” Together therefore for the future.
Michelangelo Pistoletto’s thought is all in a 90-page book: “Terzo Paradiso”, in fact, the first edition published eleven years ago by Marsilio. I read it and highlighted hundreds of lines across all pages.I recommend it to all those who have been fighting for a better possible world for years. To all friends of militant, serious environmentalism who have never heard of it. Why? In the introduction Pistoletto writes verbatim: “I hope to stimulate the debate on the issues of the environment, human survival on Earth, politics, economics, education and spirituality, involving all the people who want to give their contribution so that the Terzo Paradiso overcome the symbolic value and become reality “. And, finally finding a point of connection between similar worlds tjat share the same feelings, but do not speak to each other since they are closed by fences. Pistoletto’s art has made a statement and calls for a rally.
Margin Note
Michelangelo Pistoletto suffered from Covid, fought for a month and won it. I’m happy. To all who will read this I ask you to join me to greet him with affection. As he deserves.
Crediti
Autore: Fabrizio Carbone, 1942, archeologo in Egitto a 22 anni, giornalista professionista dal 1970, pittore da sempre, più di 20 documentari naturalistici all’attivo, scrittore, vive tra Roma e Kuusamo, Finlandia del nordest. E’ cavaliere della Rosa Bianca di Finlandia e da pochi mesi Ambasciatore del Terzo Paradiso di Michelangelo Pistoletto.
Credits
Author: Fabrizio Carbone, born in 1942, when he was 22 he worked as an archaeologist in Egypt, has been a professional journalist since 1970 and a painter since ever; he is the author of more than 20 naturalistic documentaries; he is a writer and lives between Rome and Kuusamo, northeastern Finland. He is a knight of the White Rose of Finland and has been for a few months an Ambassador of the Third Paradise of Michelangelo Pistoletto.
Translation by Maria Antonietta Sessa
