robin faymonville

Silence is rare. A diminishing resource.
Our modern societies are built on speed and noise. Beyond already loud environments, there is a collective pressure to speak, to express ourselves on social media, to listen to music — individually through earbuds, or collectively, as public spaces become increasingly filled with amplified sound.

In this era of over-communication, in a world saturated with images and noise, there is an urgent need to reflect on silence and emptiness. Silence is not passive. It is an active form of communication — a deliberate refusal to participate in constant discourse.

Silence lies at the heart of every religion, as a way of connecting with the sacred. While silence itself is not inherently religious, making space for it is a practice that can bring us closer to what is invisible, intangible, and shared.

I do not want to sell anything.
I am not offering an exotic performance.
I simply want to listen to the world — carefully, patiently, and collectively.

Silent walking has become a trend on TikTok. But, as with many personal-development movements, structural problems are reframed as individual responsibilities. People are exhausted and overwhelmed — too much scrolling, too many distractions, too much of everything. Everyone feels it: our ecology of attention is fragile. And now, people are paying for digital detox, trying to fix privately what is produced collectively.

In the past, religions also played a role in regulating our minds. Peace and calm were the rewards of prayer.

I call for a secular form of prayer.
A prayer without God.

But I do not want to present this too directly. Above all, this must remain a collective practice — an emerging community.

This is why I create protest signs: to keep the gesture political without attaching it to a specific political demand. That ambiguity is essential. It must say something without being reduced to a single claim.

There are risks. It may be misread as equating all causes, as if every struggle were the same. Another danger is irony. This is not an ironic action.

The point is not to perform silence.
It is to truly gather, as demonstrations do — but around one simple and powerful foundation: silence.