Rebirth Forum: the future restarts from a Reintegrated Apple

A symbol of the “epochal transition that the world is experiencing” and “how to deal with it”. With these words, the artist Michelangelo Pistoletto sums up the concept underpinning his La Mela Reintegrata, the work that inspired the 2nd Rebirth Forum, a veritable symposium on responsible and sustainable innovation.

From 17 to 19 March, the event brought together at Milan’s Leonardo da Vinci National Science and Technology Museum over a hundred entities committed to responsible and sustainable innovation practices in various areas, from agriculture to health, from technology to economics, from manufacturing to politics, from architecture to fashion.

The declared objective of the 2nd Rebirth Forum is to launch a 1-year workshop capable of triggering social transformation processes that will have deep effects on the Milan area. Not just a symposium then but a structured campaign to set up a social workshop in which the city of Milan is protagonist and artists are called upon to recognize their responsible role in human society.

The Forum closes on 21 March with the permanent installation of La Mela Reintegrata in Piazza Duca D’Aosta in Milan. Scheduled for 2.30 pm, the inauguration will be attended by the artist Michelangelo Pistoletto, the mayor of Milan Giuliano Pisapia, the culture councilor Filippo Del Corno and the public works councilor Maria Carmela Rozza.

“The Mela Reintegrata is a work that involves all of us and our future,” explains Michelangelo Pistoletto. “Human history is in its third stage. The first was natural paradise, when we were inside the apple. When the apple was bitten, we emerged from nature and entered the second stage, artificial paradise, which is now devouring the apple, ie. destroying the whole of nature. We must now, all of us, work towards the third stage, in which the artificial world is stitched together with the natural world.”

There is another “Mela Reintegrata” in Milan, one that’s called Woollen – The Reinstated Apple, specially created by Michelangelo Pistoletto in 2007 for Fondazione Zegna and which everyday greets employees and visitors at the entrance to Zegna’s Milan headquarters.