Kiribati – the meaning of travel

Two young designers go to Kiribati – a nation formed of 33 islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean – and produce a book on the history of a state that may be wiped out by climate change.

Alice Piciocchi e Andrea Angeli, Kiribati

Alice Piciocchi, Andrea Angeli, Kiribati. Cronache illustrate da una terra (s)perduta, 24 ORE Cultura, Milano 2016

Kiribati is a lovely book. First of all, it is a lovely object with an attractive and fascinating cover, printed on beautiful paper and illustrated with elegance and sophistication. It tells an equally beautiful story, a beauty spawned by its very genesis.

Alice Piciocchi and Andrea Angeli set off for Kiribati with the intention of going on a journey that would also be a test of their relationship and of what they would do “when they grew up”. She is a designer and he is an architect, so it could never have been a tourist jaunt. That is not what travelling means to a 30-year-old couple accustomed to using their brains. A tourist jaunt is more about consuming than learning.

So why go to the other side of the world? On a quest for self-discovery? Partly, but primarily to tell the story of a place and a people at risk of being wiped out by climate change.

Their journey was a combination of love, design, sensitivity to topical issues and a work method that at least partially contradicted Lawrence Osborne’s prophetic book, The Naked Tourist, (North Point Press, 2007). Our two also went in search of the exotic but did so in our global and post-colonial world with a sense of commitment that has given rise to a new literary genre. Part anthropology and part graphic novel, it ends up being a light-hearted but serious ethnographic tale.

They returned home weighed down with materials that included handwritten notes, photographs and videos, sketches, online searches, contacts with local bodies, official documents, archive searches and human relationships. Before setting off, they had thought about producing a video work but afterwards realised that what they possessed were actually notes. Processing the whole called for a different form of communication and they decided on the book, a paper one.

This whole process is also of great interest, with photographs and videos becoming the notes for drawings and words, in an inversion of communication media that seems to question the greater reliability of the former over the latter. Perhaps, more simply, they were a bit “short” on connections in Kiribati and the book form seemed more plausible or maybe the slow processing of the experience made them more inclined towards a book which, among other things, enabled each one to play a clear-cut role, with Alice responsible for the texts and Andrea the drawings (with a regard for late-19th century encyclopaedia illustrations and a firm grip on a mouse).