The Biennale is making an effort for the different disciplines to reach each other. Together with the system of colleges, we have a new program involving the different sectors and the artistic directors. The ministry just signed a new document for the creation of a new pool for contemporary art.
To inform you, the new headquarters of the historic archive will be inaugurated—a place for research and experimentation. Young people come to Venice, also for the production center. We believe that these projects, as they come, will help these young scholars grow. To believe in this growth, we also have to be brave.
Alberto Barbera, with the different sections, confirms that being brave helps you cultivate hope, because this is the heart of the question. This is what the critical spirit, the poetry helps us to find in our expressive contemporary world.
This brave approach to art can respond to our thirst for culture. It can help build a shelter for those who had their homes destroyed by war. And it can provide the truth to those who have only been lied to. Cinema can bring knowledge to people. We have art that can give back conscience to all of us—all of us who are like ostriches hiding our heads in the sand of indifference.
Working with the Biennale, sitting and watching the others making their best efforts for the realization of this Biennale, I heard some rehearsals and thought of the verses of a song, Patria, from 1991. I was surprised by the fact that in 1991 the poet was proposing a clear verse: 'Aren't you troubled by those bodies on earth without any heat?' This was written in 1991. He didn't know that in our cell phones and information networks, those bodies would become something we are used to, something we have become indifferent to, something we can neglect.
I know that in Alberto Barbera's work, we will have a forging of knowledge, a forging of culture, the basis for an active citizenship in our thinking community with the sky of freedom above us. Freedom to allow us to keep our feet—I'm quoting Rafael Fierro—to keep our feet on clouds. Thank you, Alberto. Thank you all.
Thank you, President. The floor to Alberto Barbera.
