Second Renaissance - the origin - born in the belly of Florence

My story with the origin of the name Second Renaissance

I started to use the term Second Renaissance when I performed “Prophecy” in the belly of Florence in 2022, an exploration journey to be the bridge between our ancestors and the unborn future. This has been the journey.

Prophecy by Sylvie Barbier, Photograph by Yuli Aquino. Florence 2022.

In July 2019 as I was pregnant with my first child I performed at an exhibition called “Is there a future” alongside art installations of conversations of women who went on birth strike because they deemed that the future was not secure enough to bring children into. As I covered myself with soil on my belly and skin, I wanted to honor the life force growing in me and that life was worth living and giving, yet naive of the immensity of the darkness ahead. Fast forward 5 months to when I participated in the first Life Itself Contemplative Activism gathering and heard first-hand the prophecy of Rupert Read of what the climate crisis would bring in terms of system collapse, which implied famine and wars.

Is there a future, performance by Sylvie Barbier, London 2019

Letting this sink in as I held my newborn child, was the entrance into a mourning for my son and for the world I knew. I had an image of a country going to war to fight for resources and sending young boys to die and seeing that often the poorest are the first to pay the price. I had given birth and it felt then so irresponsible to have done so, the message from the woman of birth-strike resonating through me.

This led me into a dark night of the soul, a depression and paralysis to create or act. As my healing and inner growth journey continues I looked into our ancestors and therefore their history to find guidance. Because if history does not exactly repeat itself, it does often rhyme. So, I started by opening my mind and looking at the past. I wanted to both be realistic and find seeds of hope at the same time because my mother gifted me the Chinese name “Wild Rose of Hope”. Finding hope and sharing it was part of my role.

In this quest I started to see a lot of similarities between what we were going through and the first renaissance. Although we remember this era as a flourishing time, it was also a very turbulent time, preceded by a very dark period and followed by a counter-reaction from the then establishment. Like the season after a beautiful abundant summer, I sensed (?) “winter is coming” - a Dark Renaissance.

Now, the wise ones are often a bridge between the past and the future, to ensure that the next generation does not throw the baby out with the bathwater, while also helping heal the wounds of the past so that we don’t transmit the trauma into the future. These are important foundations for establishing trust to achieve intergenerational transformation. Now that I am an ancestor, the deep questions I sit with are:

• What seeds do we wish to preserve in our greenhouse during the winter?

• How to build sustainable greenhouses to preserve and transmit ancient wisdom to the future generations?

• What do the next generations need to face the challenges of the world?

As I continued on this journey, I was at times overwhelmed with the sense of powerlessness to protect my child from suffering and the challenges of the world. From that, an insight came, which is that my role as a mother was not to preserve my child from suffering: suffering is a part of life as the Buddha teaches in the four noble truths.

If I did not want him to suffer I would not have given him life, so what is beyond suffering? What does suffering teach us? My role as a mother is not to try to protect my son from life itself but to give him the tools to navigate, touch, and grow as a human being and I can only do that if I do it firstly myself.

Thetis and Eve, performance by Sylvie Barbier with Ateyan Barbier Pollock. Photography by Vladyslav Chabanenko, Paris 2022.

To then go further into this quest I opened my heart to female archetypes and mythologies, so that their stories, suffering and bravery could guide me in this crisis. It had always helped me to connect with the many others before me who had navigated through existence and its challenges, and to use their journeys as a compass for the vast ocean of life. That Thetis and Marie both had to mourn for their sons. That for so many generations raising and bearing a son meant that you grieve them as you raise them because they will likely have to go to war and die. That woman had often been punished for wanting to acquire knowledge and power like Eve and Lilith. That we grew up with the stories of distrust of other women and competing over one another like the story Judgement of Paris. That we learn to believe that we had to be saved and that we can only be awakened from sleep through the love of a man like Psyche. That the grief of a mother separated from its child can put the world to a stop like Demetre. That women can be warriors like Athena and Joan of Arc. That a woman's mystical power still flows from Dionysus Maenad to us.That nature has made us so we can give birth and for that Diana watches over us.

Our female body can birth life. There is something to revere in this seemingly banal mystery of giving life. We are the vessel and the nurturer of life.

Ashes to ashes, by Sylvie Barbier. Photograph by Max Pugh, Dordogne 2024.

So, I am pregnant with a Renaissance, to give birth again after having given birth a first time to my son. I am still choosing to give birth to life. Even with the darkness ahead, I am not naive to what is to come and yet I choose life, I choose to give life and to transmit the power of being a woman. To live fully is to find something worth giving your life to. I will give my life to life itself, I will give my body and soul  to connect to all of it and to trust the wisdom of my ancestors. I will bridge the generation by being the priestess of the dying past and the mother of the unborn futures. 

By connecting to all the women who came before me, I become a powerful ancestor myself, so may the flow of the life force continue though. 

My children make me a better human being.

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Join us online on 16th Oct for the launch of our magazine

Come join us on the 16th of October for the online launch of the first edition of the Second Renaissance Art magazine on the theme of Impermanence.