STANDING, MAYBE TRAVELLING – by Mauro Fiorese
Departure times and arrival times, tickets and extra charge, track number, destination, seat.Connection. Or else just Change? Once you have freed your mind and your heart from all this information – which is however useful and fundamental in order to set out on a journey – and once you have got on that train, you’ll be able to be finally transported witout the need of keeping your eyes fixed on the street. And then, the destination of your trip will become another Station.
From a Station you can leave, arrive or only transit, often without even noticing the architectural features, your hands tight on your baggage. But you carry first of all your cultural stock, beside your luggage. A treasure-house which belongs to you and which will never abandon you no matter where you go.
Most of travellers consider the Station a not ordinary place. Some others think of it as their own office, while other people consider it as their home, or even as their tomb. A place that changes its identity according to how it is experienced. Franco Donaggio sees the Station exactly like a place of transition, not only a physical room, but also a space of intellectual exchange, where you can follow an art path made of continual questions, a few certainties and much longing for knowledge. A journey, that of Franco Donaggio, where the mental condition of the artist, who’s physically surrounded by travellers like him, allows him to eclude himself in order to survive. In doing this, he is supported by his wish to fly beyond the mind limits – as the author admits – up to this parallel world where the identity and the age of the wanderers who cross it, count for nothing. What counts is instead his personal vision which makes him move trough this limbo, giving him the opportunity to witness the fact.
Donaggio’s vision, which is created both through traditional and digital photography, dosen’t absolutely coincide with a concept of objective or total reality. Donaggio’s attitude is very different from those who are compelled to use glasses to see better. In fact, he uses an optical instrument to move away from a perfect wel-defined vision of the surrounding reality. Donaggio’s aim is to offer us a new vesion of reality, perhaps twisted and deceptive, but actually evocative. A visionary story that, paraphrasing a concept of the author himself, becomes an extraordinary sweet “prayer made of images”.
Departure times and arrival times, tickets and extra charge, track number, destination, seat.Connection. Or else just Change? Once you have freed your mind and your heart from all this information – which is however useful and fundamental in order to set out on a journey – and once you have got on that train, you’ll be able to be finally transported witout the need of keeping your eyes fixed on the street. And then, the destination of your trip will become another Station.
From a Station you can leave, arrive or only transit, often without even noticing the architectural features, your hands tight on your baggage. But you carry first of all your cultural stock, beside your luggage. A treasure-house which belongs to you and which will never abandon you no matter where you go.
Most of travellers consider the Station a not ordinary place. Some others think of it as their own office, while other people consider it as their home, or even as their tomb. A place that changes its identity according to how it is experienced. Franco Donaggio sees the Station exactly like a place of transition, not only a physical room, but also a space of intellectual exchange, where you can follow an art path made of continual questions, a few certainties and much longing for knowledge. A journey, that of Franco Donaggio, where the mental condition of the artist, who’s physically surrounded by travellers like him, allows him to eclude himself in order to survive. In doing this, he is supported by his wish to fly beyond the mind limits – as the author admits – up to this parallel world where the identity and the age of the wanderers who cross it, count for nothing. What counts is instead his personal vision which makes him move trough this limbo, giving him the opportunity to witness the fact.
Donaggio’s vision, which is created both through traditional and digital photography, dosen’t absolutely coincide with a concept of objective or total reality. Donaggio’s attitude is very different from those who are compelled to use glasses to see better. In fact, he uses an optical instrument to move away from a perfect wel-defined vision of the surrounding reality. Donaggio’s aim is to offer us a new vesion of reality, perhaps twisted and deceptive, but actually evocative. A visionary story that, paraphrasing a concept of the author himself, becomes an extraordinary sweet “prayer made of images”.