Dear Architect,

We do not know what you feel / think.


Yet, there are certain "objective" facts: we are in the midst of a crisis, economical and otherwise. We, humans, flirt with a sense of "ending," if not with the Apocalypse itself, all the time... just days ago we read all kinds of "scientific" appraisals of the very possible "end of the world" (billions of years from now, of course) based on certain properties of the so- called "God's particle" (funny that even the most ambitious scientific endeavors keep invoking such totally unscientific "concepts" as God).


But there does seem to be a certain turmoil in our world, now, as far as we can tell.


We strongly feel it.


Equally, we feel we need badly a renewal, some kind of rebirth, if this claim doesn't sound somehow unacceptably childish.


Strangely, maybe, exactly when the Christian church is confronted with obvious problems, we feel that maybe it is still SPIRIT itself and nothing else that might even get us out of the economic crisis we are in.


The duality VITA ACTIVA / VITA CONTEMPLATIVA is well known.


What is not contemplated enough, perhaps, is the fact that Capitalism doesn't care too much about contemplation, unless we understand by contemplation its terrible distortion into entertainment.


Contemplation is not entertainment.


It has nothing to do with it, it is actually work, but a different kind of work.


Entertainment is a frivolous activity that creates only money, at the most. It is based on the Pleasure Principle, which it serves through the most shallow and uncreative, actually, means.


Entertainment, as a goal and as an activity, devalues human life.


Contemplation, in its real sense, intensifies life, it enriches it, it completes it!


And VITA CONTEMPLATIVA is very sadly ignored by us, today, in our unending rush to produce more and more, in order to consume more and more.


Capitalism and Contemplation seem to be antithetical, despite the religion of "free time" which Capitalism trumpets and never really achieves.


We could easily say:


I think, therefore I do not exist.


In today's life to think, in a serious, deep way, is to expose yourself to ridicule... if you contemplate, you do not produce, and Capitalism ostracizes you to the unmanly status of "non-existent."


Indeed, the more one thinks, the less relevant one seems to be, in today's life.


So, in an attempt to restore some kind of balance, we invite you to serve, as intensely as possible, the life of the SPIRIT (without neglecting matter though) and thus CONTEMPLATION. But we ask you to do this as actively as possible, that is, as creatively as possible, and without neglecting matter.


We believe that spirit without matter is as unsatisfying as matter without spirit.


And what a better way to try to do this, than to imagine, as architects, a symbolic HOUSE FOR PICO DELLA MIRANDOLA, whose 550th birthday is today...?!?


We learned about this accidentally, just now, and immediately the text herein attached came into being.


We urge you to seriously consider this invitation.


This is not an invitation to escape reality, but quite the opposite:


AN INVITATION TO APPROACH ITS VERY CORE, ITS ESSENCE!


Thus, to try to imagine A HOUSE FOR PICO DELLA MIRANDOLA is to try to imagine a house that can give us hope, if we are to use a word many might not believe in any longer.


Yes, hope, since to add to the prose of today's life the great imaginative horizon of true knowledge, one that does not ignore spirit and poetry, is to give our life a roundness that now it doesn't have.


This roundness, both horizontal and vertical, Pico della Mirandola anticipated and described in brilliant ways.


He described what we might call The Sphere of Knowledge, which is not a complete sphere, but it does have "spherical qualities," that is, it is neither a square, nor a circle, nor a cube... but with at least a three dimensional roundness, so to speak...


If he wrote The Manifesto of the Renaissance, maybe we should have the impulse to write or draw or model our own "renaissance manifesto"... and while we don't quite believe in "manifestos," as they only rarely live up to their own expectations, we might not be quite able to do without them... even the most lucid and restrained spirits couldn't afford to totally give them up.


So we ask you to imagine nothing else but, through the pretext of "A HOUSE FOR PICO DELLA MIRANDOLA":



THE MANIFESTO OF OUR OWN RENAISSANCE



which we feel is very much needed!



Thank you,


ICARCH Gallery

                 A HOUSE FOR PICO DELLA MIRANDOLA




He was born exactly 550 years ago, on February 24th, 1463.

Here it was a man who died at 31, but who at 23 wrote the well known “Oration on the Dignity of Man”.

Wouldn’t it be nice to write a similar “oration” again…? Or even to draw it, or to model it…?!?

But who believes these days, after all, in “the dignity of man”…?!?

We live in The Age of Gossip.

For us Kim Kardashian’s cat is more important than “the dignity of man.”

But since maybe we don’t perceive such a great progress in the long road that took us from this complex oration to Kardashian’s cat, we feel we could be inspired again by someone like Pico della Mirandola.

If he was good enough to inspire even James Joyce, through his young protagonist, Stephen Dedalus, why not us…?

We mentioned James Joyce just to show there that is no intrinsic or unavoidable discrepancy between Mirandola and modernity.

But we confess: the dream of totality (through multiplicity in unity) of the Neo-Platonists doesn’t leave us indifferent.

While the Renaissance might have had something to do with the dilution and gradual disappearance of what we call “the sacred,” if not God Himself in human life, we cannot deny its greatness.

There was something sublime, after all, in the energy, the scope, the radiance of the Renaissance vis-à-vis life, that can only be inspiring!

If at 23 Pico della Mirandola defended 900 theses on “religion, philosophy, natural philosophy and magic against all corners” in his “Manifesto of the Renaissance” (as Wikipedia tells us), maybe we should attempt to read it and reflect on it.

It might give us a renewed zest for life, if not for creativity as well.

We feel we need such encouragements.

We actually feel we need them badly.

So let’s imagine A HOUSE FOR PICO DELLA MIRANDOLA.

For today.

For that “Pico della Mirandola” that might exist in all of us, somewhere hidden... or not so hidden… or, on the other side, almost dead.

Let’s dream again…!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What would the alternative be…??????????

The deadline is November 17th, the day when Mirandola died. As always, we accept ANY work, ANY size and ANY format that responds to the theme. There is no registration fee. To register, please write to us by September 1st, to receive a registration number that would allow you to anonymously identify your work.

Let’s try to make this event a joyous celebration of life and creativity, at a time when we might not have so many similar occasions.

Thank you,

ICARCH Gallery