Filtranisme Movement

Le filtranisme (filterism) is an artistic and philosophical neo-existentialist movement that originates in the mid-’80s in Paris. The first manifesto was published at the Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris on 23 July 1987. Filtranisme’s key figures are Joseph Pace, the poet Pablo Maria Landi, doctor Jean-Marc Mayenga.

The word filter comes from the Latin filtrum and the French filtre. As was for the existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, the filtranisme also is artistically expressed through the work by Joseph Pace.

For Joseph Pace, “the notion of filter it is characterizes by a social contruction of reality, through an historical, social and mental filtering process.” Noting that: “To breathe, think, act, we must all receive sooner or later “something” from the outside. It is a need that we cannot fail to satisfy by ourselves. To live we must filter the air, water, food, as well as relationships, economics, politics or love. And most of the time people are unaware of this process.”

Explaining:“The fact of filtering food, air, music, art, or politics, economy or love, makes us all “unaware filters” of in every moment of our life. What all human beings have in common is the fundamental doctrine that the ‘filterist’ attitude, the existential attitude to filter, precedes the essence.”

For Joseph Pace, the “Third Millennium” must create a New Era for art and people. Not as sufferance, or decline, or failure, but in a ecologic challenge, to put the human being back at the primacy of life through beauty, intelligence, hope, and dynamism.”

Exlpaining: “By the beauty, the aim of filtrerism is to return man at the center of the Universe, in harmony with people, nature and world. Filtranisme opens new paths towards a future better self-knowledge, for an ecology of the mind.”

Noting that: “Not always contemporary digital, visual technologies and social media offer us new opportunities from our real needs. We need to wake up ourselves as to what is really important to us.” Starting in the 90s, Filtraniste thought takes an increasingly sociological turn, stressing the importance of the relation between art, the individual and society, and favouring an applied sociology of art and of self-actualization.

(Video by Bruno Zarzaca)

Filtranisme believes in the bright light of a new enlightenment and in our ability to make this world. Against a sense of disorientation and confusion, Filtranisme emphasizes the pragmatic, practical application of ideas by acting on them to actually test them in human experiences.