Other relationships in the world are possible – Liberation

In a world where daily news crushes us, it is our duty to imagine and lead a complete change of paradigm for future generations by giving the floor to the territories that we have long underestimated, while they are essential in the current and future planetary evolution. For several months, Bourges and its territory have embarked on this challenge and this extraordinary adventure.

Bourges European capital of culture 2028it is to give voice to invisible territories. This is valuing invisible biodiversity on the planetary level. The soil is the environment that we have most mistreated by urban artificialization and agricultural practices, while it contains one of the most important invisible biodiversity on the planet. We just discover the functioning of the microorganisms that populate it, made of permanent communications, cooperation and symbiosis, playing a major role in storage of water and carbon.

It is also valuing invisible biodiversity in each of us. The latest discoveries of the intestinal microbiota and its role show that each living being is a environment teeming with lifehousing ten times more microorganisms than cells constituting our body. The coevolution of these invisibles with our body allows us by symbiotic relationships to be able to live in good health. Do not provide them with favorable conditions explains the health problems of humanity, especially when we discover that our body is the place of other microbiota (skin, pulmonary, urogenitals and ENT) just as important.

It is finally to value and relate human invisible territories that they are from Bourges, rural areas or from root peoples. Our western vision of the world, separating the human being from nature is totally outdated and at the origin of an impact on unprecedented nature in the history of the earth, called anthropocene. Other relationships in the world are possible, as the indigenous peoples, which represent 5 % of humanity has been crying for decades but retain almost 80 % of planetary biodiversity. They were the first to establish the legal rights of rivers, soil, forests as a living entity within States.

Building on these observations, associated with artist Sandrine Salzard, we want to return the system and offer visitors to the Bourges Museum, human inhabitants, to live complementary experiences highlighting other relationships in the world and to nature. This paradigm shift, taking into account all these invisible territories leads us to imagine a new era, That of the “symbiocene”, neologism invented by the Australian Glenn Albrechtand officially ends the anthropocene.

The Symbiocene project is not a return to a past world but an evolution towards a new world, where humans and non-humans cooperate, live in symbiosis and take care of each other. What if we build a viable and desirable planetary territory for future generations? Through these experiences, Bourges becomes a territory of the future, prototype of the symbiocene, where everyone, by their symbiotic actions, becomes an actor and hero of change. Everything is to be imagined, to design, to test, explore, try. Because there will be no plan B, nor on earth, nor on March. Failure is therefore not an end, but is part of the scientific approach in this paradigm change. A motto inspires us in this extraordinary adventure: “They tried to bury us. They didn’t know we were seeds. ”