The Rencontres d'Averroès sur la Méditerranée resist the Covid thanks to podcasts

"The Rencontres d'Averroès is a year of preparation with themes, guests, round tables with the participation of the public. I did not want to put this in the basket because the theater of the Criée (in Marseille) was closed, "Thierry Fabre, designer of this event around the Mediterranean, created in 1994, told AFP.

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, theaters and cultural venues have been closed in France since October 30.

"It's great to bring together 5.000 people in three days, but maybe we'll have even more listeners for these podcasts," he hopes.

"We offer our audience a long sound journey with all the guests initially planned, researchers, architects, artists, writers" from countries around the Mediterranean, explains Mr. Fabre.

On the program, interviews, readings and sound recordings in Algiers, Istanbul, Beirut, Alexandria (Egypt), and in the Italian cities of Venice or Palermo among others.

"The common thread of the 2020 program," Cités adrift ", remains the same, but these are not recorded round tables, it is a real sound creation produced by a great director, Clément Lemariey and the artistic director Ariel Kenig ", insists Mr. Fabre.

"It is a poetic and sensitive stroll through the cities of the Mediterranean where a certain number of questions are asked", he says.

"Who should build the city between architects and politicians? What form for the Mediterranean between city-state and octopus city? What imagination for sites marked by history like Jerusalem or Rome? What political future after the destruction of Aleppo (Syria ), the Cairo uprising or the explosion at the port of Beirut? ", question the five episodes.

"It took two months to produce these programs. It was a sewing job with initially more than 11 hours of rushes to end in five episodes of twenty to thirty minutes each," explains Mr. Fabre.

These podcasts are online on the "datingaverroes.com"as well as on the main open-access listening platforms.