PA.S.S
Can there be a heritage without memory? And can this heritage truly belong to all mankind when it is closed off, confined, and restrained without being shared and enjoyed by all women and men, without any difference and particularly without any geographic distinction? Too often this heritage, which we claim to belong to the entire humanity, reminds us how far we still have to go to become truly humane.
How many milestones we still have to reach on this tormented and suffering journey towards everyone’s rights. Not only our own rights, as sometimes we forget others’ rights.
And more specifically, can this heritage be the subject of attention by those new technologies favored to make the discovery and revelation more fascinating? Those technological instruments possess in their essence precisely the sense of openness to all. From this extraordinarily peripheral center that is Sicily, “omphalos strabico”, and from our academic post we have given our small contribution to reflect on heritages that cannot have borders and on peoples who must be able to share their heritage. We did it by starting, as pioneers, this summer school, focusing our attention on Sicilian heritage as a case study. From this hypothesis, an idea has become a project on memory and its transmission, thus tracing new pathways on how our heritage can be experienced.
ABAPA Thanks to these new media, we can see the work of art with other eyes, from a new viewpoint leading us to a unique wonderful experience: a sort of heritage open-source.
And how could we do it if not by following this fundamental principle that art belongs to everyone. It is the heritage that we want to leave to our children, having shared it with others and enjoying the richness of the widest possible cultural exchange. Therefore, this path of learning and knowledge was developed with the collaboration of friends from the other side of our common sea. They gave us a wonderful dream of friendship.
This fruitful collaboration with the University of Amman in Jordan and the University of Algier 2 was born under the auspices of Study in Sicily, a project sponsored by the Sicilian Region and by the national agency Indire. Thanks to this project, Algerian and Jordanian colleagues, together with their students above all, exchanged experiences with the students of Palermo in a path of new awareness. Culture exists if there is a community to represent it. It is precisely on this ultimate sense of community that our journey could resume.
Prof. Umberto De Paola
Academic Dean
A cademy of Fine Arts - Palermo