THE HOUSE OF PEACE

It is difficult not to think of peace, when watching the beautiful London Olympics. Indeed, the grace of the myriad of great competitors, congratulating each other, after acerb fights, embracing and kissing each other, in complete harmony, can only inspire us.

What do we learn from these great athletes…?

To begin with, TO FIGHT.

To give everything for a cause. Everything. To make all sacrifices in order to win.

But to continue, we also learn to be fair, to compete within the limits of justice. And gracefully as well.

Watching the Russian Alya Mustafina refusing to step on the gold section of the podium before congratulating first her very adversaries, the British Beth Tweddle and the Chinese He Kexin, we can only think:

Yes, it IS possible to live in peace on this earth.

Yes, it IS possible to live gracefully.

And yet, not placidly.

Not without a most intense fight.

But a fight NOT with the fists and the swords and the rifles of this world, but with our bodies and minds and souls.

To fight as intensely as one is capable of.

Yet, in the end TO SMILE and TO CONGRATULATE and TO EMBRACE the very adversary one just fought against so very hard!

This is the beauty of life.

And we believe this beauty originates and ends in this togetherness under a common sky.

Let’s imagine THE HOUSE OF PEACE.

Each four years a different one, to be built in the very city the Olympics of that year take place.

So let’s imagine now A HOUSE OF PEACE to be built in Rio de Janeiro, which will host the next Olympics, in 2016.

If we can build A HOUSE OF PEACE each four years, in each of the cities of the world where the Olympics take place, in a century we would have 25 houses of peace, celebrating, just like the Olympics themselves, the beautiful spirit of cooperation in competition, of multiplicity in unity, the inspiring London Olympics illustrated so very well.

Let’s build the first HOUSE OF PACE in Rio de Janeiro!

Let’s dream that LIVING IN PEACE on this earth IS possible!

Let’s celebrate our togetherness, under the dome of a sky which awaits for nothing else, from us.

Let’s fight, to death, but let’s embrace each other afterwards, let’s congratulate our adversaries and let’s smile!

This is a call for entries that starts now, but it will end on August 12^th, 2014, exactly one year after the closing day of the London Olympics. In order to have a common denominator besides the theme of this call for entries, we would like to invite you to submit works that would “fit” into a cube approximately 10m x 10m x 10m. We would like to imagine this cube as being while, almost like a White Kaaba. But we invite you to make interventions within / on this white cube as imaginative and varied as possible, even to destroy it, if you feel it is appropriate. We gave you these dimensions only approximately, as a possible framework. The essential requirement is that you try to express PEACE as poetically, as ardently and as inspiringly as possible. How you do this, it is up to you. Equally so is the choice of a real place within Rio de Janeiro where you would like to place your House of Peace. We are very much interested in building the best proposal, which will be chosen by a team of professionals and responsible officials in Rio, where we would like to send a portfolio with all the works received. Again, this is a work we would like to see being built, as a beginning of a Peace Campaign, so to speak, through the means of our own profession.

Considering the amplitude of the task ahead, we would also like to receive comments, suggestions, and ideas that could make this event meaningful and proactive.

Thank you,

ICARCH Gallery