The stage concept for the ‘Rethinking Power’ edition
By Leonor Afonso
‘Re-thinking Power’ can be understood as the power of rethinking. For this stage concept, our personal challenge was to rethink Geneva. One of the first things people see when they arrive to Geneva is the Jet d’Eau, contrasting with the mountains that surround the city. This iconic image was the motto for our stage design. We wanted to depict the skyline of the city in an innovative and unexpected way people haven’t seen before
In the spirit of our main theme this year, “Re-thinking Power”, we caught ourselves thinking “what better way to re-think power than to rethink the power of materials have when they are reused and repurposed?”. In this edition, our stage design was created using materials once considered garbage or materials created to different purposes. The mountains of our scene are a good example. The wood was mostly collected from old bed frames and the fabric used was, originally, intended to protect trees from the ice during the winter months. All mountains are different, as the material gathered had different sizes, shapes, thicknesses and colors.
Our goal is not only to raise awareness to the amount of raw, repurposable materials sent to the trash every day, but also to demonstrate the opportunities those materials can create. We are committed to the idea of reducing the negative impact we have on our planet, particularly with single-use items. At the same time, the idea of using materials for a purpose different than their original one is, by itself, a powerful way to rethink. Not only we are recycling, as we are rethinking the way materials can be used, creating a sustainable cycle. Sustainability is an idea we want to keep spreading
Gathering the materials was also something we took a moment to rethink. For this edition, we decided to invite the community to contribute in co-creation and re-creation of our main stage. We sent a call for action a few weeks ago to invite the community to help us collect the wood and be part of the TEDxGeneva movement.
This journey, and that of the materials we used, will not end here… At the end of our TEDxGeneva 2019 event, we will be donating all the wood we collected to an eco-village in the Léman region. They will re-use it in their projects and everyday activities, giving these materials a new opportunity to be reused in a third life.