Water (Without you I’m not): The 3rd Bienal de Valencia: A Luigi Settembrini Project
Luigi Settembrini
The 3rd Valencia Biennial in 2005 we are currently presenting is dedicated to Water. We should bear in mind that back in 2000 the UN announced two fundamental goals to address the issue of water on the planet, now considered one of the most pressing problems for a large number of persons who still have no access to potable water, as well as reducing the number of people undernourished due to lack of water.
Through the work of leading artists and the reflections of intellectuals, academics and students, the Valencia Biennial in 2005 will underline the huge importance of information and the importance of individual consciousness and our awareness of one of the most complex problems our planet is facing.
The Biennial hopes to heighten awareness of water as the source of all life. It will do so through the impact of art and all the other contemporary creative languages, and hopefully it will help us reach conclusions on the transcendental question.
The Valencia Biennial in 2005 addresses the theme of Water using many complementary recourses: installation, performance, sculpture, painting, photography, promoting life, energy, information, interest, curiosity, fun. Yet all this on its own would not be enough if the Biennial we not able to transmit, using the crucial vehicle of the media, something as basic as the fact that building a well in Africa costs 2000 euros and vastly improves the lives of the average of about 300 persons who inhabit a village. And this is coupled with the intellectual and political mission of a huge laboratory dedicated to the culture of our times.
Water is a universal and ecumenical question. Given the overarching reach of the issue and its many facets, we have conceived a hithero unprecedented multilateral project.
Water is the essential source of all life (l’arche according to Thales of Miletus).
Water is the primordial metaphor of existence, of its eternal flow, its ungraspability, the continuous never-changing flux seen in and among people, in mutating relationships between objects, sensations and the ideas of the society of the past, present and future.
Looked at as a means of communication, Water has the potential to bring together or divide humankind, peoples and cultures. It is at once a source of harmony and a cause for conflict. Similarly to other forms of communication, Water ebbs and flows, meanders and gushes in torrents, floods, changes form, speed and mass. Like communication, Water bombards all five senses–sight, touch, taste, smell and hearing.
Water has carved the landscape and is at the base of all cultures, configuring the personality of its inhabitants and its hopes for a better future.
The third Valencia Biennial opens on 24th September and continues until the end of November 2005.
