Sublime Mare Nostrum
It has been our common heritage for centuries and yet when the boat unloads us from one shore to the other, we always fall into the exotic. The penetrating thrill of constantly being a stranger in our own sea. Beyond the tormented history that separates us, the clear waters of the Mediterranean unite us like a jewel, placed at the center of our miserable nations. A promise of paradise, its azure palette assails us and fills our hearts with joy and serenity.
Mare nostrum, because its horizon imposes on us the daring to go always further to imagine another world, glide to meet palettes of colors, aromas, spices, unknown scents, let the liqueurs of olive oil in our novice and hungry throats.
The visor hand shields our eyes from the blazing light as we wait for a new horizon where carefree children play war.
From one bank to the other, the populations invent a necessarily dissonant theater, an idea of the other breaking with themselves and yet: Mare nostrum.
For centuries, sprawling megalopolises have been springing from the sands. These ambitious civilizations rise above the sea to conquer the world. A few decades later, these self-proclaimed conglomerates collapsed. The sea swallows their paltry armadas. A vast marine cemetery, its saline waters silently destroy those who had the boldness to defy its eternity.
Mare nostrum was, is and always will be the original place of conflict. Its illusory transparency masks the opacity of the territories of misunderstanding where the thought systems, governments and merchants of the world challenge each other. Beyond these areas of confrontation, Mare nostrum always reserves for the impetuous traveler, the artist, the creator, the implicit, the unseen, opening up to singular asperities and new perspectives.