Man has no choice - everyone will visit me - day and night! W.C
For my fortieth birthday, my wife Katarina offered me a forty-day journey. In giving me this surprising present, a hundred and sixty days before my birthday, she imposed a number of conditions. I wasn't allowed to plan my itinerary in advance, I couldn't book planes or hotels in advance, and I had to make the journey alone. Without Katarina.
I took Katarina in my arms.
This was really something! Wow, what a present! But could I accept? Was I capable of breaking away from the everyday routine of my professional and private life, organised through and through? Could I live for forty days without a schedule, without appointments and deadlines? Might I not suddenly feel useless and worthless?
Katarina put her arms round me.
I was born in a small village not far from Stresa. I studied history and philosophy in Milan, and after university, I taught in various schools in Italy. When war broke out in Sarajevo, the school I was working in organised aid convoys, and when, with the Dayton Accords, peace returned to Bosnia and Herzegovina, I went to Sarajevo and established a privately-funded Italian cultural institute. That's where I met Katarina, and we were later married in Sarajevo.
We hugged each other.
And now I work in Zurich. I have made myself a career, as my colleagues put it so nicely. They could see what I had turned into. I had managed to become the director of the official Italian Cultural Institute. And in a hundred and sixty days, I was going to be forty years old - My name is Renato!
Despite all my doubts and reservations, I accepted the gift. All that was needed now was my boss's agreement. In the course of a lengthy telephone conversation, I succeeded in convincing him that I needed a creative break. My boss in Rome is an intelligent and generous man, and he allowed me forty days uninterrupted leave.
As for the trip itself, I had no plans, no intentions, wishes, or expectations. I was simply to get going, to drive off, to fly away. I wasn't planning then to write a diary or produce a photo album, but neither did I want to close off these possibilities. And so I would take with me on the journey a blank writing-book, and a camera and film. And my mobile phone.
* * *
Shortly before setting off, I wrote a letter to friends and acquaintances from my forty years of life. I wanted to warn them of a possible visit. I wanted to remind them of times spent together, and to dream of the future:
40daysbefore40: Encounters on a journey
I am dreaming. Suddenly I wake up. An interruption in the dream narrative. An interruption that gives me the opportunity to continue the story. The possibility of many continuations.
In the story of my life (soon to be forty years old) there have been occasions like that. Encounters that came to a sudden end.
Forty days before my fortieth birthday, I would like once again to return to those encounters. To consider the possibility of the loss and the renewal of their many possibilities.
In a few days I shall begin my journey. I do not know where it will take me. Perhaps I shall ring you. Perhaps I shall come and visit you without knocking on the door! So, bearing this in mind,
See you soon!
Renato
* * *
The first few minutes of the journey. Those were the most depressing. I was free yet imprisoned, imprisoned in my life of 40 years minus 40 days! I didn't know what I should set out to do with my freedom, as helpless as a child just born into the world. Certainly I could have bawled, but who would listen to an almost forty-year-old man? A new-born child often has it easier.
I kept my eyes and ears open and started to write. Not systematically, not every second, not every minute, not every hour, not every day. Stories from everyday life, scraps of words, things written and drawn on walls went down in my little red, square book. Together with memories from my past, and wishes and dreams for the future.
Into this book, which became my best friend on the journey, went scraps of telephone conversation, text-messages and e-mails from all over the world. Back in my native village, I used always to meet my friends at the coffee bar. This was the meeting point, the focus of my life. On this journey its place would be taken by the mobile phone and the Internet cafés where each time I would go and pick up my mail.
The first time I visited a toilet in Zurich a graffiti struck my eye: "Man has no choice - everyone will visit me - day and night! W.C." This was what inspired my choice of photographic project: every day and every night, the toilet bowl and the shoes I wore that day would appear through the lens of my camera. I'd press the shutter-release. Once, twice, three times, sometimes ten times. The pictures obtained like this are recollections of these places. Visits to the toilet have been one of the few constant things in the last forty years, as they were in those forty days and nights before my fortieth.