SUMus
Basic information
Project Title
Full project title
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Project Description
SUMus = We are (Latin). The community wants to replace individualism with the collective, "to have" with "to be". Each individual will become aware of his uniqueness and potential, free to express his talents to achieve personal fulfilment and offer them to the world in a collective perspective, all together we will become aware of the nature-human-universe link by promoting consciousness enlightened by knowledge for a sustainable, respectful, socially equitable and economically viable future.
Project Region
EU Programme or fund
Description of the project
Summary
A.Meeting Venetians, he documentary-The spirit is by definition something that does not have a body, it is thanks to the body and the mind that we can perceive it. In art, architecture, literature, the spirit’s repository is the body of work. Spirituality is a thin thread that periodically peeps out and rears its head throughout history. It is a contradictory matter that lies between the abstraction of the incomprehensible and the empathy of feelings. It can be intrusive or remain light, gazing through a camera and inquiring as a wanderer, a researcher in the experience of conscious reality. Spirit and body permeate the individual and collective experience of space and life. Dreams and projects, concrete ideas and ideals uplifted by the citizens build a documentary.
Two parallel paths initiated so they can support and argument each-other. The social and the analytic, if one is opened to surprises, a fertile ground to plant seeds the other is a scientific research bringing unequivocal answers.
B.Scientific approach, Artificial Intelligence-Both map and compass, Mileva is the AI at the heart of the Think and Do Tank SUMus dedicated to Venice and its regeneration.
If A & B coexist, and A is underlined by B, if A can re-center society’s gravitational point towards a commun ideal and B towards a reality, no matter how hard it might be, we have the socle of a social project, a community with a local direction inside a global vision, C.
C.Building a community and a long term project, SUMus-Venice and its lagoon prefigure tomorrow’s world where everyone lives in harmony with oneself, others, nature, and animals. Venice could reconnect with its precept to be a "beacon of light" as it has always been, open up avenues of solutions. Because of its innovation, science and resilience, Venice and its ecosystem possess enormous possibilities for attracting the interest of many, to create new economic activities.
Key objectives for sustainability
SUMus considers tomorrow’s society will be organised more and more around places of human dimensions, villages like cels within a global connection. The frame of a metropolitan area build on poly-centric structures of 15 minutes proximity neighbourhoods.
SUMus is both a “Think tank” and a “Do tank” : “There are two ways to make a difference: one is to do things, the other is to analyse them. But for me, the best analysis is to do things.” Iannis XENAKIS
SUMus wished to challenge the Venetians offering them a platform to start writing a possible future in which they can become actors of their own destiny.
The documentary and Mileva’s artificial intelligence results are the first seeds of a new perspective that we want to see emerge, for Venetians of course, but also beyond, an inspiration for the rest of the world. Taking advantage of Venice’s international notoriety to communicate widely and accelerate the change, a shift that will allow future generations to live in harmony with nature and all humans. With its countless assets, its international notoriety, its singularity, its beauty, its lagoon, its culture, its crafts, its vegetable gardens, and more.
Everyone is impatiently awaiting a 'recovery' that seems to envisage no renewal but only a return to the past. In Venice, no one has built real alternatives to an economy that has always been aimed towards one direction (first it was the industrial monoculture of Porto Marghera, then the tourist monoculture). Beyond philosophy and good intentions, what concrete contribution can be made to the construction of a real and viable alternative for Venice on an economic and therefore social level? The endeavour of the research work is precisely this, and the outcome, is not in the foreseeable future; the effort focuses on the participatory method and the data emerging from the analysis with artificial intelligence.
Key objectives for aesthetics and quality
Venice is the representation of a project in evolution, becoming, as the documentary, the beginning of a participative process with a certain direction but not a precise goal to be reached. The method is most important. We learned that aesthetics cant be detached from ethics, so our method has its roots in kalokagathìa (kalòs kai agathòs, meaning beautiful and good), the ideal of man's physical and moral perfection in classical Greece, from which we deduce that if beauty is not also good, it is not beautiful, and vice versa.
The lagoon is the centre of a vast space. Its borders are far beyond its shores, expanding backwards, to the mountains where the rivers and the sand come from, and in front, towards the Adriatic sea. This comprehension of Venice could attract many inhabitants by creating new economic and ecological opportunities, ensuring quality food autonomy, revitalising its historic artisanal net, regenerating its lagoon, repositioning its education and transmission tradition. Its architectural beauty, its cultural treasures, its artisanal traditions of excellence, its atypical universities, the lagoon products, its car-free way of life, as well as all the immediate challenges to meet (rising water levels linked to change climate, depopulation, mass tourism, economic diversification, etc.) make Venice both a universal place and a highly symbolic city.
Key objectives for inclusion
The process construction will no longer be top down but reversed. Sumus is for everyone, so it will be a bottom up process. Its projects are represented in the shape of a sun and its rays, having at the center the inner development of each and every one of us and all together, with organisations ready to welcome and help this shift, like the Human Safety Net and the World Human Forum. Each ray is a major theme with practical applications, with workshops & collaborations between different actors from Venice and the rest of the world, where blue & white collars, entrepreneurs, artisans, scientists, artists work together.
“Venezia, il faro del mondo” & the portraits, have been made within this vision during nine month under Marco Tassini’s talented eye. The film is an opportunity for the inhabitants to look at themselves in the mirror. The singularity of the reflection is that there is a coincidence of the observing subject and the object of observation, the observer enters the frame to the point of avoiding the distance between figure and background. We look at ourselves and the world around us in the same frame, together (however, we are not always ready and willing to see, we look away or think of something else). This vision is an introspective tool, it is clear that the Venetian is not only "native" but also the one who chooses Venice, because the city welcomes newcomers as its sons and daughters: Ahmed, Jane, Michel, Isabella, Moulaye, Adelchi, Nabila, Sylvia… We are particularly attached to the portraits ready for the future SUMus workshops in order to initiate communities and collaborations to carry further projects.
The documentary and the short videos have been made with minimal financial backing, mixing experienced, committed professionals with volunteers invested in the future of their city. Together they went through this large panel of Venetians women and men of all ages and backgrounds to appeal to a wide audience.
Results in relation to category
In order to initiate a citizen dynamic and to give voice to a large sample of Venetians to express their dreams and their ambitions, “Venezia, il faro del mondo” has been produced in collaboration with Mas Tassini Studio. SUMus will meet the Venetians by showing the portrait-videos and the documentary in campi, in art galleries & even among citizens… in a spirit of conviviality and sharing, in hope that a Venetian Sumus will emerge with involved and motivated participants ready to become actors of a better world.
The Artificial Intelligence results will be used as a permanent tool to orientate and verify the practical actions and thus expand projects and the SUMus community.
As soon as health measures allow it, “Workshops of the future” will be organised in Venice, on the mainland and in the rest of the archipelago with the Venetian animators* formed to stimulate a new participatory and creative state of mind. These citizens' meetings will welcome everyone so no voice will be unheard. The film will open the debate and identify the priority themes and projects of the SUMus “sun” ecosystems . Young students from CA 'Foscari and the International University of Venice will be closely associated. At the end of this process, a SUMus community of volunteers, and partners ready to get involved, will be identified and a crowdfunding campaign will be launched to finance the process.
How Citizens benefit
Rethinking Venice for decades, and perhaps centuries to come, around a common vision, must first allow the archipelago to become a wonderful and authentic living environment and Venice must attract new inhabitants. Economic activities will be diversified and have a positive environmental and societal impact. The innovation will be open for all companies wishing to help in order to create a sustainable future; it will be mainly organic inspired by the fauna and flora of the lagoon and the sea; education will be redesigned so that everyone can find their talents and freely express them. Art will be at the service of self-esteem and quality of life.
Crafts will be revitalised in order to provide a conscious response to mass overconsumption. The enlightened participatory democracy will be privileged and co-construction will be the rule. Abundance will result from creativity and regenerated biodiversity. Finally, respect of Nature, fauna and flora, will become norme, a living hymn celebrating singularity, beauty, freedom, peace, abundance and joy. Constat updates will occur and all the projects will benefit of SUMus‘ crowdfunding.
*Young people will be trained to manage public meetings and sharpen their listening skills. This preparation will be an achievement in itself, because they will be selected and organised into assorted groups, to be legitimate and accustomed into working with someone who might think differently. The educational action will be oriented towards dialogue and listening, aimed at refining the ability to grasp the positive elements and to enhance them in an overall synthesis that allows each one to feel, not only a participant, but also a protagonist in the construction of a collective path.
Innovative character
The heart (the Think tank), is a community platform carrying an avant-garde vision, new values and methods. SUMus will provide knowledge, skills, digital tools and AI to help decision-making and project management. For this purpose, a monitoring and predictive platform has been designed by MILEVA and carried out in order to analyse and anticipate the prospective evolutions of the city and its geo-environment.
Venice, an emblematic symbol of Humanist Renaissance harmoniously linked to the Living World is in desperate need of regeneration. The SUMus initiative aims to mobilise many inhabitants and lovers of the Serenissima all around the world so as to seize the opportunity to reinvent the city in all its dimensions, economic, social, cultural, societal, environmental … Its aspiration is to become the concrete example of city of the future that respects nature and living beings, thus inspiring the rest of the world.
At a time when humanity is facing major challenges, SUMus intends to co-construct and promote the much-needed new behaviours that will allow everyone to live in harmony with oneself, with others and more broadly with the planet, nature and animals.
This new paradigm, deeply respectful of life, will gradually induce technological, financial, educational, media, artistic sectors… It will enable each individual to become aware of his singularity, his potential and talents and thus find his rightful place in society. Besides, a caring and responsible ecosystem will allow legal entities and communities to work on the general well-being.
The rays (the Do tank) represent ecosystems carrying concrete projects bringing together different actors around the same objective working in symbiosis and in good understanding.
SUMus will organise citizen initiatives to involve residents and especially young people. Partnerships with local communities and institutions sharing the same values and the vision of a reinvented future in harmony with the living.
