DESPITE SOCIAL DISTANCING RULES, THIS YEAR THE GLOBAL PRIDE COULD GATHER PEOPLE WORLDWIDE WITH TEACHINGS TO CARRY ON – DISCOVER ALSO ANGELO CRUCIANI’S PAPER HEART IN MILAN
Text by Fiammetta Cesana
As the lockdown totally disrupted our lives by this mid-March, we thought that ancestral concepts like gatherings and community would be turning increasingly meaningless. Basic social gestures like shacking hands, hugging or kissing have been banned from our cultural body jargon. Suddenly, unexpectedly, and quite traumatic, for sure. Then staring thinking about yearly recurrences around the world where physical connection is inevitable and crucial for the effectiveness of the events themselves, first of all the urban totalizing engagement into rainbow parades to express gender and sexual pride, seem a memory of the past. Well, the greatest new is that it has been far from being so, and within the turmoil of 2020 the global conscience like never before is acting to fight against discrimination and raise awareness on the human-rights-fundamental principle of accepting diversities.
The death of George Floyd with the rising of protest globally in the name of the Black Lives Matter movement have brought the beginning-of-summer appointment with Pride to embrace an important rhetorical evolution. The core of 2020’s international speech of self and collective pride indeed, also celebrating the 50th anniversary of Stonewall riots in New York, is calling for tolerance and protection towards any minorities, from lgbtq’s to religious and ethnic belongings. And to do so, in a post-Coronavirus era in which marching down the streets is inconvenient for personal and others’ safety, the worldwide community hasn’t give up on the power of its annual reunion but has taken advantages from the biggest today’s resource to connect all of us, the internet. From America, Europe, to Africa, Asia till Oceania, the livestream event Global Pride 2020, has been broadcasted using digital platforms on Saturday June 27, staring at 1 a.m. ET for a 26-hours time period. Hosted by Todrick Hall, with the slogan “Exist. Persist. Resist”, the global online gathering, in which everyone can participate, wherever they are in the world, have seen the intervention of international leading figures, from political leaders, including the the in pectore presidential Democratic candidate Joe Biden, the Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau, the Norwegian prime minister Erna Solberg, the Indian Prince Manvendra Singh Gohil, Carlos Alvarado Quesada, president of Costa Rica (where just in May the legalization fo homosexual marriage was declared), and celebrity-studded pletora like the artists Laverne Cox, whose filmography’s list is getting longer year by year, the American pop singers Kesha and Rita Ora, the 80s band The Village People and the 2000s beloved Pussycat Dolls, the activist musical group Pussy Riots, the Grease musical’s star Olivia Newton, the Italian world-famous singer and songwriter Tiziano Ferro, and many others.
After exhibitions and concerts delivered directly to our home through digital media, thanks to this planetary virtual event we could promote freedom by defeating the emotional and physical detach caused by pandemic outbreak. By staying together actively and sensitizing people’s opinions, we all did something to counteract the risk of marginalization and growing ignorance and ended up enriching the contemporary value of being part of a community.
Alongside the formative and entertaining of Global Pride’s online discourse, we also witness tangible artistic creations to favor citizens’ connection. In Milan, the young talent Angelo Cruciani covered up the square facing Duomo Cathedral with a huge white heart made of smaller – recycled and recyclable – paper hearts. The installation invites bystanders to write down their thoughts and wishes, making the heart a mutual beating record of our future hopes. “Like blank pages of a story to be rewritten all together, this heart represents hope for a world ready for fair rules conceived on the brotherhood binding every human being” – Cruciani said
In a world filled of tragic news, today we want to share pride and positivity towards a global community which is demonstrating power and prompt behaviors against world’s worst diseases: ignorance and environmental catastrophes. People are combatting. Undoubtedly that many are still the mistakes committed everyday, from violence to hypocrite actions, but something is moving into planet’s heart and mind. The Internet, always in the dock due to, among the others, the severe crime of building fake news and distorted life and aesthetic models, now that the distances seem longer than ever, is increasingly placing itself at the service of a smart and united world society. So what we are hoping for now, in the long way to go, is to not lose focus and keep working together for a real and lasting possibility of shared well-being. Exist, Persist, Resist.
