"La Devinière" is a place. Located in Farciennes , in Charleroi area (Belgium). "La Devinière" is first of all a space, built more than two centuries ago, dreamed more than twenty years ago; a farm with its cowsheds, its outbuildings. It's a closed space by its from - all buildings are around a central farmyard - but no fence, no door is shutting it. It's a freedom space as desired by our ancestors, a place where freedom is greater inside than outisde.
But a place is just a place.
"La Devinière" is an idea : the idea that each man and each woman, whatever are their particularities, have the most deep-seated right to move in a space-time which allow them to live ; a space-time which is not reduced to the place but includes all dimensions which will allow the individual to move, physically or mentally. This idea, depply humanist, was shared by those who defend institutional psychotherapy theories, and specially by M. Hock, creator and manager of "La Devinière" : to give to the most serious pathologies a space where they have a right, where they may break out, a space where a pathology may help another one in order to converge on life.
But an idea is just an idea.
The place was existing before the idea, the idea was existing before the place.
"La Devinière", it's also men and women. First of all, those who are living there, day and night, together, with the difficult and sensitive things which can occur with community life. They have been considered as irreparable, incurable, and also unusable, rejected from institutes and hospitals. Nevertheless, they were just asking for a refuge, a place where they could rest a little… Than, men and women who are living there a part of there days and nights, and who are daily fighting for that place not beeing just a place, for that idea not to be just an idea.
And then - but how did one not think about it before - everything is starting. Because a man who's in a convenient space-time cannot avoid to express himself : he talks, shouts, cries, gets angry and becomes irritable… And than, he creates, breaks up, and creates again…
Because everyone has the right to want… "
Atlantis is a place where people creates : Look at some paintings : Paintings