Urbanautica

GIOVANNI CECCHINATO. ROAD TO ALEMAGNA

by Cristina Comparato

Humanity allows itself to be known primarily through its traces: those that it disseminates in families with photographs, videos, letters; those it leaves in rivers and woods, those that nature re-embraces, transforms, hides, or destroys over time.

© Giovanni Cecchinato from the series "SS51 - Alemagna"

The road is viable to reach a place. Its reason for existence lies in acting as a connection from point A to point B. We usually evaluate its quality based on how comfortable the ride is and more often on how fast. On the other hand, when we find ourselves retracing a path without any specific purpose, the road takes on a whole additional value and becomes a journey. It's not just a functional space but rather a significant one. Time begins to flow differently; our gaze becomes more attentive, and our ears also come into play. Hearing is the most involved sense when we read the book "Alemagna." It is indeed taken by surprise precisely by the silence I felt in those landscapes where we would have imagined traffic noise or the wind that slams on the windows. Or, again, numerous construction sites exasperating the course. And thus, Alemagna appears; it objectifies itself in this unusual silence and becomes the subject. It is an operation of subtraction, and the most evident absence, after that of the noise, is that of the usual imaginary that accompanies the Alemagna, or the endless queues of holidaymakers, the bored perspective from the passenger seat, of the desire to arrive soon to the goal: haste is absent.

© The book "Alemagna" by Giovanni Cecchinato, published by Penisola Edizioni, 2021

© Giovanni Cecchinato from the series "SS51 - Alemagna"

Just by reflecting on the shooting approach of Giovanni Cecchinato, I understand how he chose a precise mindset, contemplative, rather quiet. Longing on the right vertical light, measured distances, and colors modes, using equipment that necessarily moves away from fast consumer photography. These are moments of rest and intimacy, in which the road slowly manifests itself and releases its stories.

© Giovanni Cecchinato from the series "SS51 - Alemagna"

Furthermore, the temporal suspension, given by always coherent lights and tones, is undoubtedly catching. An operation that serves an aesthetic function and further contributes to the idea of subtraction, here eliminating the inevitable passing of the hours we live during the journey. Expanding the instant and movement and placing us in a situation of strange fruition, where every moment - where every event - is contemporary with the previous and the next. Thus the Vajont dam becomes peer with the Eni village, which sees its birth and abandonment contemporaneously with its new regenerative appearance well told in the conversation with Gianluca D'Incà Levis (founder of Dolomiti Contemporanee). Today, the old summer resort for the prominent Italian electricity company employees now hosts hundreds of artists in residence. The Alemagna as a whole is revealed through the millennial ruins of an old Romanesque road and the recent expansions and deviations (bridges, tunnels, roundabouts, bypasses). Instead of being placed in a before and after, the territories appear on the same level.

© The book "Alemagna" by Giovanni Cecchinato, published by Penisola Edizioni, 2021 (showing the Villaggio Eni - settlement)

© Giovanni Cecchinato from the series "SS51 - Alemagna"

Memory and history undergo the same process, so what usually, as the past, is considered archived, no longer alive, re-emerges with the same force as present and future actions. While trying to get closer to a hypothetical divine feeling, we often find ourselves describing eternity as a happening in which all things are together. When all moments simply are, and our lives are exhausted in an imperceptible movement. A sensation similar to the one experienced by the geologist who explores the world and its vicissitudes as events measured in eras whose duration remains unexperienced for us. We found traces of this reasoning in the text and illustrated contribution by Emiliano Oddone, a geologist expert of the Dolomiti area. It is not easy to imagine that where today the Dolomite peaks are thrown there was once a tropical sea. And these peaks are million-year-old deposits of fossil shells. The drawings and graphics contained in the book help us understand all this. That what we call existence is only a part of a single enormous movement, of whose extension we can perceive very little but with which we are in a continuous reciprocity relationship.

© The book "Alemagna", published by Penisola Edizioni, 2021 (geological maps by Emiliano Oddone)

And here we come to the reason for the last absence, which is only an apparent absence, namely that of man. In a story of places and identities, we expect to find above all inhabitants, perhaps portrayed in their homes, in their practical and sentimental affairs. In contrast, here we find significant deserted works, trucks, and cars that seem to have stopped in a long and lasting rest. And where they are in motion, in that identical space repeated for four frames, the static and inalterability of the place prevails. But only an apparent absence, precisely, because humanity allows itself to be known primarily through its traces: those that it disseminates in families with photographs, videos, letters; those it leaves in rivers and woods, those that nature re-embraces, transforms, hides, or destroys over time.

Then man no longer becomes a single existence, no longer an absolute creator - a petty divinity - but frees the distance from the world to finally become part of it. At this point, retracing the Alemagna takes on an entirely new meaning: it invites us to re-dimension the human, stripping it from isolation, putting it back on a shared and genuinely connected path, in which crossing becomes a conscious action, in a direction that not only of humanity but of the whole world.

LINKS

Giovanni Cecchinato (website)
Penisola Edizioni

share this page