Magazine

The empa­thetic tra­veller: A con­ver­sation about what makes us feel alive

Luca Giannini is a creative cos­monaut. At home in Sicily, Rome and Bologna, his travel expe­ri­ences and a deep empathy for places manifest in meaningful yet silent works and pro­jects.

in February 2022

Bologna-born Luca Giannini is a modern Leo­nardo da Vinci. With the lightness and ease of a cos­monaut, he navi­gates across disci­plines and desti­na­tions and recon­ciles them har­mo­niously: art, design, archi­tecture, craft­smanship and pho­to­graphy. Myth and matter, sea and land, symbol and archetype, space and time. At home in Sicily, Rome and Bologna, but in a way whe­rever a place makes his soul vibrate, his travel expe­ri­ences and a deep empathy for places manifest in meaningful yet silent works and pro­jects.

His “Tac­cuini di viaggio” — truly inspiring travel journals — reveal a most subtle take on places: Hidden corners, unex­pected per­spec­tives, moods of light, patina and whispered secrets. A sen­sation, a déjà vu, a casual encounter and all the stories and mes­sages that arise out of stillness.

In Sicily, Luca wel­comes his guests in houses that — once aban­doned, dila­pi­dated ruins — hold a whole cosmos all within — and are tho­roughly imbued with the light and soul of the south: Resi­denza Hortus and Casa Sabir.

I met Luca in Rome for an interview on a spring-like day in January. The result was a long, inspiring chat about the nature of places, their tre­asures and reve­la­tions. About the South and the longing for the sense and spirit of the Grand Tour. About boun­daries and border crossers, islands and freedom, about the passion of tra­velling and very per­sonal intents. In short: A con­ver­sation about what makes us feel alive. Take your time.

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The essence of places, their his­to­rical, sym­bolic and emo­tional “charge”, play a central role in your art and pro­jects. Why do we feel so deeply con­nected to certain places?

Our soul does not vibrate in the same way in every place. Rather, we resonate most strongly with those places that hold up a mirror to us, in which we dis­cover intrinsic parts of our­selves. Places whose sublime energy allows us to sense the common thread, the larger context of our human exis­tence; which invite us to pause, con­tem­pla­tively listen and observe and which match our search for freedom and purpose. We become “empathic” with these places, ety­mo­lo­gi­cally we “suffer” with them, because their unique nature cor­re­sponds with our innate sen­si­bility.

Places that par­ti­cu­larly appeal to me are “border places”, where the dividing line between ele­ments or between peoples becomes apparent: Along borders, nature is known to produce the greatest bio­di­versity, cul­tures con­ta­minate and enrich each other and create new, more inte­resting forms of exis­tence.

I have an innate affinity with the Medi­ter­ranean. In this reservoir of myths and arche­types, all of which have some­thing to do with my own origins, I feel closest to myself. And on the islands, where, at the junction between the limi­tation of the land and the infinity of the sea, the deeper meaning of human history unfolds more easily to me.

The objec­tivity of a place is pure abs­traction, because we always create a sub­jective, very per­sonal per­ception through our senses and our mind. The story of a place is always revealed to us in a very indi­vidual way, just as every travel expe­rience is tho­roughly per­sonal. My way of tra­velling and nar­rating a place is born out of the desire to establish a rela­ti­onship, to share a common feeling. My approach to reality is poetic, through emo­tional images, from which a vision emerges.

Your creative path has con­crete geo­gra­phical refe­rences. Which are your coor­di­nates of inspi­ration? 

Basi­cally, I am a pho­to­syn­thetic person, light acti­vates my visions. My life so far has been a gradual approach to the South, which I asso­ciate with a certain dis­po­sition of the soul: the need for light, the accep­tance of chaos and the unpre­dic­table, the sen­sorial expe­rience of a world where nature is more rugged, intense, capable of extremes and rich in boun­daries and con­trasts. Here I dive into the complex history of the Medi­ter­ranean, where ancient memories and archaic know­ledge are rooted and where history, far beyond the dust of museums, finds its role in the daily life of the inha­bi­tants.

Bologna, my hometown, with its soft, pastel light and its noisy straight­for­wardness, has taught me a lyrical approach to things and a sense of hos­pi­tality. Rome, with its bustling chaos that anti­ci­pates the south, with the vastness of its horizons, its thousand iden­tities, lush baroque back­drops, peeling sur­faces and its time-worn stones, was the “midwife” of my growth as an artist inte­rested in matter, signs and symbols.

The Sicily of Modica, Syracuse and the Noto Valley, with its already Africa-like chalky light and colour-laden shadows, is a play­ground of opposing ele­ments, con­trasting yet com­ple­mentary energies, a per­meable bor­derland of Medi­ter­ranean cul­tures. It was here that I first heard the call of aban­doned places and the desire to breathe new life into them by opening them up to hos­pi­tality. This is where my project Anime a Sud was born more than 15 years ago.

Painting, sculpture, archi­tecture, design, pho­to­graphy and all their inter­sec­tions. Your works and pro­jects embrace a myriad of disci­plines and reveal manifold layers of meaning. And yet they always remain clear, simple and silent.

Our time has become exag­ge­rated with distinc­tions and spe­cia­li­sa­tions. In the past, by con­trast, the architect was also an engineer, thinker, craftsman, artist, tra­veller and astro­nomer. He was familiar with the move­ments of the stars, the pro­perties of matter, the rules of geo­metry, the canons of aes­thetics and the prin­ciples of phi­lo­sophy.

It’s true, I wander between disci­plines too, because essen­tially, as with travel, I am con­cerned with crossing borders, because it unlocks and amplifies the pos­si­bi­lities of dia­logue.

My approach to the archi­tecture of a place is all artistic, treating it like a sculpture, exploring it in its direc­tions, in its volumes, paying attention to the variation of light, striving for the balance of fullness and emp­tiness, exploring the delicate equi­li­brium between adding and sub­tracting that defines the per­fection of a space. As long as I have the feeling that an envi­ronment is not cla­rified or a work is not really finished, I feel a kind of imba­lance, an almost phy­sical dis­comfort, because my design approach is basi­cally phy­sio­lo­gical: in a well-arranged ambience or in front of a pro­perly-exe­cuted work, my body relaxes and I feel good. Matter also plays an important role in this.

My artistic works revolve around Medi­ter­ranean symbols (the amphorae), myths of origin (the Garden of Eden, the Ark, the cosmic egg, the stellar con­stel­la­tions), maps and routes of real or ima­ginary journeys (the maps of the new worlds) and forms related to the eco­lo­gical crisis of our Earth (whales, planets). They are matter-related works in which one can witness and trace the dif­ferent stra­ti­fi­ca­tions, the inde­cision, hesi­tation and the changes of direction. Ulti­m­ately, our lives are shaped in the same way and are indi­vidual and unique. I see no sense in copying, imi­tating and stan­dar­dising — no matter what disci­pline.

Mate­rials should be pre­sented according to their true nature and used close to their place of origin. The design should be about finding inde­pendent solu­tions that refer to the symbols and tra­di­tions of a place. The pro­jects I design are always highly craft-related, they aim to convey a sense of uni­queness and allow us to under­stand where they are rooted. These pro­jects see the cha­racter of a place, its inha­bi­tants and their talents, its stones, stories and colours as the key ele­ments.

In a similar way, I work with pho­to­graphy. I want to capture the mystery of a place, what is hidden and not obvious. I am inte­rested in shadows as much as in light, in the balance of masses and matter, in the ima­ginary signs that emerge from per­spec­tives.

You bring aban­doned places back to life. By doing so, the memory of these places is of great rele­vance.

Revi­ta­lising a place is about ethics and our planet. Not wasting new terrain, safe­guarding natural resources and making a ruin or aban­doned building acces­sible to the com­munity are eco­lo­gical and social issues I have always been con­cerned with. Bringing a place back to life also has a ritual meaning: it’s a tribute to the genius loci. The ancients received mes­sages and pre­mo­ni­tions from the world around them and assi­mi­lated them on a sym­bolic level as well. They knew that not all places on earth were the same, but that energies were con­cen­trated in certain places where nature gave rise to its par­ti­cu­la­rities, and it was in these places that they built temples and sanc­tuaries or marked the border lines of cities.

In his book “The Soul of Places”, the Ame­rican phi­lo­sopher and psy­cho­logist James Hillman, in con­ver­sation with Italian architect and author Carlo Truppi, states that places have a memory, and that res­toring a place also means healing an amnesia, making up for an erased memory:

“It is as if they had asked to be aban­doned, to suffer mar­gi­na­li­sation only to be fully re-dis­co­vered, thus reve­aling their deeper identity. Through this, they become real: Places one can say were born twice.”

Tuning in to a place is closely con­nected to time. I like to stay in one place for a long time to allow my ima­gi­nation to unfold. Heid­egger said: “Poe­ti­cally man dwells”. Dreams and visions are the catalyst for res­toring a place and infusing the function of dwelling with poetry.

Your “Tac­cuini di viaggio”, which you create for per­sonal pleasure and as com­mis­sioned work, portray the intimate cha­racter of places like Syracuse, Salina, Essauira and others. They capture everyday life and appar­ently insi­gni­ficant facets with an attentive eye. For me, leafing through and reading your “sketched nar­ra­tives” was as if I had been given a key to each place, as if I had wan­dered through it myself and made its mood become my own.

When I read travel lite­rature, I am always amazed by how much the con­nection to a place and the people living there depends on the time, the mindful obser­vation that one dedi­cates to it. It stands in clear con­trast to the fre­netic pace of our society, the abuse of visual com­mu­ni­cation, the bulimia of images, the super­ficial and ste­reo­ty­pical repre­sen­tation of places. Last minute, 24h business trips, short holidays, no time for travel pre­pa­ration. The speed of changing places pre­vents us from arriving with the necessary mood and mind-set, and very often we are so satu­rated with ready-made infor­mation that we miss the chance to really get in touch with our desti­nation.

Being in touch with a place means feeling and sensing it, depo­siting emo­tions in it and receiving vibra­tions from it. This requires a state of calm, a receptive attitude, an ega­li­tarian inter­action between us and the place. In this way, it will no longer be pas­sively con­sumed, but rather become an active source of sen­sa­tions and inspi­ration.

Modern society has dra­sti­cally shor­tened the time spent tra­velling and turned it into a vacation, which ety­mo­lo­gi­cally comes from “vacare”, i.e. “to be absent”. A lack, the­r­efore, an absence. Today, our fre­netic daily life is com­pen­sated with total dis­con­nection on holiday. The tra­vellers of the past, on the other hand, tra­velled for the sake of tra­velling, they were always very present: the senses were active and focused and they were intent, indeed eager! to absorb all the mes­sages of a place.

The ancient Romans called otium the time opposed to negotium, but attri­buted to it an equally useful role in the cul­ti­vation of the mind. The tra­vellers who embarked on the Grand Tour knew that they were about to embark on an extra­or­dinary edu­ca­tional expe­rience and that when they returned months or even years later, they would have become dif­ferent people. They also knew that the journey could involve unfo­reseen events, they had the time and the will to sur­render to them and to even learn from them. Expe­ri­ences that we can no longer allow our­selves in this hyper-regu­lated world that feeds our fears with the utopia of zero risk.

My travel note­books are, in a way, emo­tional decoders: in the places I like to narrate in pic­tures and words, I first pause, take my time, put aside my pre­ju­dices and jud­gement in order to per­ceive what the place is trying to tell me with its soft, subtle voice.

Sket­ching a place is in itself a way of slowing down to allow the light to change its pro­perties, to dis­cover hidden details, to sharpen the senses and per­ceive more subtle scents and sounds. Some­times there is even the chance of an unex­pected encounter that leads to a deeper and more authentic know­ledge of the place. Ulti­m­ately, a place tells as much about me as I do about it, and through the place I also speak about myself.

You have for­mu­lated eight prin­ciples for yourself that are firmly anchored in your everyday life. They read like a per­sonal mani­festo, a bucket-list of mindfulness.

1. Free myself from the super­fluous and at the same time pre­serve what enriches me in terms of function and beauty;
2. Make time, matter and the rhythm of nature meaningful to me again;
3. Nourish myself well — phy­si­cally with healthy food and spi­ri­tually with pro­jects that express my inherent potential;
4. Find the balance between con­cre­teness and dream;
5. Cul­tivate con­s­tructive and enri­ching rela­ti­onships and separate myself from those that interfere with my prin­ciples.
6. Let fear not rule my decisions and non-decisions;
7. Travel con­sciously, according to spi­ritual affinity and inner dis­po­sition, with a soul that is open to sen­si­tivity;
8. Each day, make mindful choices that protect the planet;

These eight prin­ciples are an important exercise for me to enrich my life. They concern my natural pre­dis­po­si­tions, my visions, my hopes, but also my limi­ta­tions, which I would like to work on.

They involve my rela­ti­onship with pos­ses­sions and the focus on essential needs that are really important for my soul. They refer to my body and soul, both of which want to be nou­rished in the most natural, healthy and balanced way. 

They describe the blurred line between my quest for lightness and the dic­tates of gravity, between dream and vision that guide my gaze into the distance and rational dili­gence that is necessary to manifest the dream within a creative project.

They regard my “rela­tional hygiene” in order to reco­gnise con­s­tructive rela­ti­onships and keep away the toxic ones. They focus on how I deal with fear and its frigh­tening, limiting and mis­leading effects, with the accep­tance of mistakes and the ability to see oppor­tunity behind adversity.

They apply to my way of tra­velling, my ability to deal with the unex­pected, the right relation to time, the training of the phy­sio­lo­gical per­ception of places in order to reco­gnise those that convey harmony, and to listen without pre­judice to the people I meet.

And they involve my daily inter­action with my envi­ronment, the sense of respon­si­bility for what I leave behind, what I take away or change, and the con­scious actions and decisions that arise from this.

Whilst reading these prin­ciples, I find myself thinking of the islands: of their ambi­guous dimension of shelter and prison, which are both an invi­tation to stay and an impe­rative to leave. I think of the strong sense of deli­mi­tation that cha­rac­te­rises them, of their humble aspi­ra­tions, of the creative energy, of their role as cata­lysts for negative and positive emo­tions. I think of their genuine pro­ducts of land and sea, of their ability to absorb the back­ground sounds of our noisy civi­li­sation, the relation to loneliness and one’s own fears. For me, islands are a labo­ratory of insight and self-awa­reness.  

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Interview and text editing: Britta Krämer, January 2022.

Credits: Luca Giannini, Erica Brenci Studio

The houses