How many times during the past year have we felt the need to leave our homes and let the wind carry us. In the absence of the possibility to leave, Irene and Chiara Trancossi have found a way to go away by staying still and with “Fernweh” they invite us to travel with them.
“Fernweh” is an idea developed by the two sisters during the lockdown, born as a photographic project that soon became something more. It is a meeting point between the skills of Irene and Chiara, respectively set designer and photographer, with the music and voice of the singer-songwriter Glomarì.
Music, poetry and photography come together in an all-female project that shows how art can often be the only cure to reality. We were lucky enough to be able to ask a few questions to these three incredible women who spoke to us about “Fernweh“, but not only. Don’t miss our interview below!
Chiara e Irene Trancossi
Hi Chiara, hi Irene. You are respectively set designer and photographer. Tell us about your artistic paths and when you decided to work together.
We grew up amidst the notes of Tosca and Aida, and it is no coincidence that both of us began our careers in the theatrical field, respectively as set designers for operas and stage and show photographers. The theater and the proximity with music have predisposed us to conceive the art in a multifaceted and multidisciplinary way, with an osmotic fusion of multiple expressive languages. In 2016 together we realized our first project “Querida”, in Spanish Cara. It is a photographic series of self-portraits as sisters, which sanctions our indivisible bond and the birth of our poetics with symbolic-evocative implications, as well as the consequent definition of an aesthetic imprint that still characterizes us. We consider this project the manifesto of our artistic vision that led us to undertake a shared path of Art Direction and Direction exploring various fields such as fashion, video art, video-clips.
For “Fernweh” you have collaborated with Glomarì, but it is not the first time you have worked together. Looking at your works and listening to his music it seems that they come from the same imaginary, from the same “world”. How did you meet and when did you realize you could work together?
The meeting with Glomarì happened by chance, or rather by luck, just when the singer-songwriter was about to start shooting “A suo modo danza”, the first video that constitutes the Trilogy of Inaccadimenti, of which she herself directed. Immediately between us there was a strong harmony and a magical understanding that led us to realize together also the other two videos of the Trilogy itself; “Liberà” and “Mostarda”, video winner of the First Prize at the Competition Artefici del Nostro Tempo of the Biennale d’Arte in Venice 2020. Together we have produced numerous other artistic projects, always characterized by a purely hybrid and eclectic cut, approaching video-poetry. Our collaboration is a continuous and sparkling exchange of opinions and stimuli and it is mainly based on a solid friendship that Glomarì herself defines as an “artistic sisterhood”.
Your latest work is “Fernweh”. Explain to us this title. What does it mean? How did you come up with it?
Fernweh is a very curious German word that immediately caught our attention; it doesn’t have a precise translation in the Italian language and its closest meaning is “nostalgia of elsewhere”. In this word, we found a strong correspondence with our state of mind during the interminable months of the lockdown of the first Covid quarantine19. The desire to escape and break the constraints of the repetitiveness and monotony of everyday life was the fuse that generated Fernweh.
The project was born as a game between sisters, aimed at transforming banality into novelty through the connection with an “other” world, which implies and touches the most sensitive and hidden chords of the human soul. This project has been fundamental for us because it represents our way to resist, continuing to produce art in a hostile and adverse historical moment.
“The project was born as a game between sisters,
aimed at transforming banality into novelty …”
“Fernweh” was born last year during the lockdown. Where did you shoot it?
Initially “Fernweh” was born as a photographic project during the first lockdown, shot in our backyard, with the means we had available. The video-poetic project came out soon after, as soon as it was possible to gather the crew and it was also shot mostly in our garden nostalgically transformed into a small film set. We thus attracted the curiosity of our neighbors, who for two whole months saw us grappling with mermaid tails, inflatable pools, houses, flying carpets. Without understanding their motivation, they gave us their support in providing us with the material we were temporarily lacking. We certainly didn’t get bored!
“Fernweh” offers us the chance to take a trip with our imagination, both through a dreamlike atmosphere and thanks to elements such as the flying carpet, the mermaid, or the tent with pillows and blankets. What inspired you and where do you want to take the viewer?
The images that follow one another during the video-poetry allude to distant and dreamy imagery that has its roots in the childhood of us sisters, recalling the colors, scents, essence, through the free flow of reminiscences similar to ghosts. The slow flow of these visions wants to transport the viewer into a dreamlike dimension and evoke an elsewhere, far from the perverse dynamics of consumer society, an “insecure refuge” for sensitive souls capable of transforming wounds into loopholes, distances into closeness.
The words whispered by the singer-songwriter Glomarì amplify this muffled, hypnotic and delicate dimension.
Glomarì
For “Fernweh” you wrote music and lyrics. What is the creative process that leads to the writing of a song that is based on already chosen images?
Writing and composing from images is a process that comes quite naturally to me, I think it’s a form of synesthesia that I’ve only become aware of in the last three years. Many of the songs on my first album “A debita vicinanza” were born that way.
Certain images open a window on landscapes of hybrid sensations and feelings, and it is very stimulating for me to try to translate them into music and words. This is what happened with Fernweh. When Chiara and Irene showed me their photographic project, I found it very close to what I was feeling at that time and the words of the song came out very naturally. By the way, by pure (and wonderful) coincidence, I had been wanting to translate into a song that sense of “nostalgia for the unknown” of which the project speaks. I couldn’t have found a better opportunity to do so.
How would you describe your music and, in your opinion, why does it fit so well with the visual imagery of Irene and Chiara?
My music is the result of a very intimate and visionary approach to things and situations, it represents the instrument with which I interpret myself in the world and become aware of my journey through existence.
The fact that it matches the imagery of Chiara and Irene, I believe, depends on the fact that they, as much as I do, never tire of being surprised by things. It is above all this approach to life that binds us, and the aesthetics come as a consequence.
Let’s close with a question for all three of you. Each of you works with a different artistic medium. In your opinion, does art serve to escape from reality or to live it better?
We believe that art serves to live reality better for the simple reason that it has the power to transform all experiences into beauty, especially negative ones. More than evasion we could talk about sublimation.
