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http://www.labiennale.org/en/cinema/festival/lineup/off-sel/orizzonti/orizzonti.html?currentpage=4

The art work was born with the aim to explore the truck freight transport phenomenon that in Italy and Europe has an important role for economy and commerce. Anyway, since the beginning my interest has been caught by the protagonists, the social actors involved in this phenomenon. The interaction with the protagonists of the truck freight transport is a constant in the whole project and different levels of interaction drive the artistic work output itself. At the early stage of the project the interaction with the truckers allowed me to produce some preliminary serial 1:1 images of the frontal side of the truck tractor unit. The truck caught my attention because they were decorated in such a way that they resemble more of communication media than transport means. These images are characterized by the search of the “right distance” that could allow me to catch the details without invading the private space of the trucker. I didn’t feel completely satisfied with such result: they had a high emotional and aesthetical level, but didn’t tell enough about the story and life of the protagonist. So I decided to go on with my research focusing more on the interaction with the truckers: I started to mix with them at the highway stops, truck gathers and parties, I started to know their names, their life, their families and children. I even started to travel with them as a passenger sometimes. I started to enter inside their tractor unit and discovered that it is a lot more than a simple claustrophobic room in which they spend the 80% of their day: it is a casket full of psychological and social meanings, values, artefacts that resembles their membership to the “trucker culture” .

I discovered that truckers belongs to a social group, characterized by their symbolic system and language. The communication within this group takes place through a language and media specific of this community. Moreover, this language has a double nature: it’s a verbal language that unravels through radio communication; it’s even a visual language that covers the inside and outside of the tractor unit, and whose syntactic is composed by decorative elements of that culture, both personal and social, like tattoos.

The third moment of my research is the change from the use of static images to the use of video to represent this phenomenon. This change has been caused by the increase of interaction with the truckers. I needed a richer media, that could allow me to represent in a deeper and wider way this reality. Furthermore, in 2009 the project took a more international direction: I had the chance to take part at the DE.MO. Movin’up residency program at Platform Garanti in Istanbul. I tried to get in contact with the protagonists of truck freight transport in Istanbul and in Turkey in order to represent from a privileged point of view the “travel experience” between West and East theme. I discovered some extremely interesting sub-culture. Most of them within the national Turkish freight transport I had the chance to interact with the most colourful and lively cultural aspects, and observe the richest artefact production. In the Eminönü  district in Istanbul there are many informal spaces in where truckers meet and interact. In the national truck parks in the Zeytinburnu district and in the city of Gebze, it is common to run into lots of collective conviviality moments and feel like an outsider that secretly enter a community. The artefact production mainly concerns the decoration and set up of the truck, which both reflect the personality of the trucker and follows some silent rules of shared cultural meanings. In Turkey it is very common to decorate the back of the truck with brush naïve paintings. The most common themes concern the “way home”, the homesickness, the bravery, together with a sense of fatalism and the impossibility for the mankind to escape from its destiny and from the inevitable flow of time. Sacred elements share the same space with profane ones and on the outside of the truck often truckers write strophes religious of sings together with funny or nostalgic good luck sayings.

During the making of the project in Istanbul I encountered many communication problems because the most of the Turkish truckers don’t speak English. The Turkish truckers speak a local dialect and slang that is very difficult to understand even for a Turkish mother tongue. Again it was the interactive mode and the limitations of the communication in this case, to determine the production of the art work. The impossibility of using the verbal language, pushed me to fine tune observation: I shoot some video/ scanning of the inside of the Turkish truck tractor units with the truckers on board. The complete lack of words and actions, the barely perceptible plop sound coming from the outside world paired with the unnatural closeness with the subject reflect both my curiosity through this sub-culture and the big distance with it.

More in detail:

1. “Alterity” analysis. Every time we meet a different culture we have to relate with this anthropological phenomenon, which as to do with “otherness”. Turkey is a UE candidate State, but which are the current social, political and economical problems interfering with the in progress negotiations? How is it possible to investigate this aspect considering people point of view and looking at it from a special point of view, like the truck passenger compartment can be, through a sea highway or through the Pan-European Corridors?

2. Istanbul as a strait that links and as a strait that divides, like an arriving, departing and a transition place. What cultural landscapes, which life experiences, emotions are connected to the act of arrive and depart in/from this city?

3. The concept of Journey to East, and travelling as a trait d’union between different cultures, what makes possible the encounter and the development of a complex network, a weave that enriches human life and artefacts. Travel is work and life of truck drivers: they spend their lives on board of their truck, travelling across Mediterranean places and islands which are more and more humanized and interactive. How to explore such a symbolic and cultural aspect of the “travel experience” universe within East and West freight transport? From a brief research among truck drivers communities, I noticed that, at present, a transport route map between Turkey and Italy and viceversa does not exist. Creating such a map through a participative approach by taking part in the travel, would allow us to track a parallel narrative, artefacts, social experience and dreams map, which would reflect the main characters universe

A view of the Istanbul Fatih Sultan Mehmet bridge from the Asian side of the Bosphorus strait.
The bridge is the main freight transport linkage between the two parts of the city.