Windwalkers - A Trip to Provence

On April 26, 1336, the poet Petrarch climbed Mont Ventoux - the Giant of Provence. Allegedly, it was the first time someone climbed a mountain, as Petrarch himself put it, merely “to see what so great an elevation had to offer”. The hike marks the threshold of the medieval and the modern era and is considered an emblematic moment in the Early Renaissance. Jacob Burckhardt called Petrarch “one of the earliest fully modern humans”. His climb is fraught with tension, between his Christian faith and love for pagan antiquity, the promise of public life versus solitary contemplation. In his wake a set of ideas flourished around what humanity entails. With a distance of some 689 years, we will reenact the ascent. Our journey will take us to the landscapes, towns, and ancient ruins of Southern France, to places where
Neanderthals settled, monks prayed, Simone Weil worked and the cyclists of the Tour de France suffer. With Augustine’s Confessions, Simone Weil’s Factory Journal and Alain Damasio’s La horde du contrevent in our pockets we will reflect on the past, the present and the future of being human.