Alessandro Baronciani: visions on paper between music and comics

Creativity as a rebellious act

A visual storyteller, capable of creating universes where emotions take shape in black and white and sometimes with explosions of color, always full of meaning, Alessandro Baronciani has managed to build a strong and recognizable identity without ever ceasing to experiment and surprise his audience; he is a punk at heart. Not only for the aesthetics or musical influences, but for the free and countercultural approach to creativity. His independent projects, such as limited edition handcrafted books, are a declaration of creative independence. True immersive experiences.

Between music and illustration

One of the distinctive elements of Baronciani's work is his connection with music. It is no coincidence that his style often accompanies music projects. Collaborations with bands like Tre Allegri Ragazzi Morti or Colapesce are proof of this. Music becomes an integral part of his visual language, with album covers and posters that narrate sound through image. In this sense, he manages to transform the synergy between sound and line into a multisensory experience, where viewers can feel the music through his illustrations.

I asked Alessandro to tell me a few things, let's discover them through this interview.

#1 answer

Hello Alessandro, thank you for making yourself available, let me declare immediately: I really appreciate your books and I love your style both in comics and illustrations. While preparing for this interview, I discovered several things about your work that I didn't know, but above all, I realized that you have been asked almost everything that I would have asked you too. So, what have they never asked you about your art, maybe an aspect that has remained more in the shadows compared to others and that you would like to talk about?

Um, difficult question. I have never thought about a question that I have never asked myself and that no one has ever asked me. It would even make me laugh to spend time imagining questions that I have not - but would have liked to - answer. Much more than questions, there are thoughts that linger in my mind that would need a listener to be brought out, or as they say in English, explained. Ideas swirl in my head, like stories, it's when we expose them to someone that they become true in a way. When they are understood, perhaps only at that point, you have found someone willing to believe in them and give you a hand to make them happen.

#2 answer

In April, Bao Publishing released an annotated edition of your first comic book collection: Una storia a fumetti, built starting from the self-produced comics you used to send all over Italy over twenty years ago. What are the differences between this edition and the one published in 2006 by Black Velvet?

There are many more pages, panels that I sent by mail, stories that had ended up in fanzines or published in magazines. I found the letters I used to write to myself and I tried to make many things more understandable compared to twenty years ago. Today it has become almost incomprehensible to write a letter to oneself, I'm talking about mail sent, received at home, and put in the mailbox by the postman. The mechanism by which we exchanged our comics or records by mail was complicated even twenty years ago when I started photocopying my first comic stories. Inside the envelopes, there were flyers, mini leaflets with which we advertised new releases. You had to hope that some magazine would publish a mini review of yours so that other curious people who wanted to approach your comics would send letters. In short, it was a world that revolved outside the newsstand - which was a kind of internet back then - and that moved outside the traditional distribution. Una storia a fumetti, in addition to the first sentimental disasters that happened to me, also tells of this: how difficult it was to navigate the publishing industry trying to tell stories outside the market.

#3 answer

In all your books there is an invitation to active participation by the reader, in some cases involving them even before the comic is printed as with the self-produced comics you sent to subscribed readers, or Like Completely Vanishing, Monokerostina and the latest RAGAZZAcd for which you launched a crowdfunding; in other cases the invitation is to go beyond the drawings, as in RAGAZZAcd where the book must be flipped through while listening to the accompanying CD, or in The Girls in Munari's Studio with the insertion of cartotechnical inventions. There is a desire to experiment and involve the reader on multiple levels, where do you draw inspiration in building the stories you draw?

In The Girls in Munari's Studio there is a page that becomes the entrance door to the protagonist's library. That page, born a bit randomly, just because I was happy to see it in the book, has a small die-cut peephole in the paper where you can see the girl waiting outside the door. When you turn the page it's like opening the door to the library. Isn't it fantastic? I like it when someone helps me discover something more than what I see. For example, today I saw a video by Falcinelli, an art critic specializing in graphics, illustration, and color, talking about the color scheme almost in black and white in the scene where the entire caravan of puppies is forced to walk in the snow in The 101 Dalmatians. He compares that scene to videos of the Second World War, when footage was shot during newsreels with entire populations having to leave their cities. When someone helps me discover things that are hidden so well, it's like jumping to a higher level. I like it when someone notices what I hide in my stories. I also like it when they tell me what they have seen and thought of that I had never considered. Stories, narratives are not born to be read but because you hope someone will give them a reading.

#4 answer

In your books we find fantastic worlds and characters, what feeds your imagination in the creative process?

Oh, difficult question. There are no ways to feed the imagination. Indeed, fantasy is the one that is going through a tough period! If you think that almost half of the products on streaming platforms are based on properties from almost forty years ago. Half of the catalog consists of works of fantasy born in the last century or that refer to trends and stories set twenty or thirty years ago like Stranger Things, or belong to a fantastic world where new stories can be set: think of the various TV series born from the Star Wars universe. Even the words we use to define a genre are replaced by the fantasy world of reference. For example, The Lord of the Rings does not belong to the fantasy genre. The Lord of the Rings is a brand, just like Harry Potter has become. It's strange, but there are many people who think that elves are tall and blond and have pointed ears. When you point out that they are "fantastic" and that therefore you can fantasize and see them as you want, with your imagination, they continue to say no, that it's not possible. Elves are like that. So, more than feeding the imagination, I like to find problems to solve in a creative way. Working in typography, I started using materials that were being thrown away and optimizing typographic printing to have almost no waste. That's how Monokerostina was born! I tried to make the most of the printing format of the typographic machine that Montaccini, my reference typography, had. I ask, I get advice on how to optimize it to the best and in the end, I find the creative solution while staying within "the box," within the production boundaries.

#5 answer

Over the years, even after a certain success, you have continued at times to self-produce, certainly not due to lack of interest from publishing houses, why?

Sometimes because certain stories don't manage to make it to bookstores. Think of a book like How to Completely Disappear, if it had ended up in a Feltrinelli in Stazione Centrale it would have definitely gotten lost, or much more simply someone might have noticed it and not finding anyone to ask about it, would have left it there. It's a book that a bookseller is unlikely to open for you, because they're afraid of losing something from the content and many people who buy it want to be sure it has never been opened before.

How to Completely Disappear is a book that you started reading from the first pages of the blog where the protagonist told small stories of her life. In a way, the reader had already started to enter the world of the book. And all this was possible if you detached yourself from the idea of the publishing house and distribution in bookstores. An experiment that I managed to carry out in a good period for online fundraising. Ratigher had created something similar with the comics Prima o mai più, where he asked readers to get a book that would be made in limited edition and only for those who had bought it online, other crowdfunding campaigns helped bands or other editorial projects to come to life through the support of fans. It was a beautiful period, browsing the internet you could also finance with little projects of support, awareness campaigns, independent festivals or see the birth of new prototypes. This is the reason why these books were born, otherwise they could not have been born.

#6 answer

On September 17th, DUE was released, the new book by Enrico Brizzi and the sequel to Jack Frusciante Has Left the Band. You illustrated the cover and the fanzine reserved for those who pre-ordered the book, how did this collaboration come about and what did it mean to you?

When they called me for the cover of the sequel to Jack Frusciante, I couldn't believe it. I had already read the news online and couldn't wait to buy the book. I love Brizzi and have read almost all of his books and comics, because he had also published a comic book version of Bastogne, but he had definitely done something else in comics that I'm forgetting. I was very afraid of what DUE could be, and when we had the first meeting with the agent, the editor, the publishing house, the graphic designer, and many other people, I asked more questions than all the participants in the chat! Then there was Brizzi's phone call where he read me the opening of DUE for the first time. I was as happy as when my high school girlfriend called me! The work was quite tough, I had just gone through a series of closures and hadn't even taken a day off, and it was late summer. During that first mega meeting for the book cover, the idea of creating a fanzine as a "support" for the book release came up, and Brizzi and I, who are the same age, thought of a photocopied booklet, as was trendy in high school. A booklet with stories of what we used to try to write as kids when you first try your hand at things you write and others will read. A kind of blog. Which, by the way, a blog already sounds like something old!

Inside the fanzine made by the two of us, there are a lot of references to the Bologna of that time! The ducks around the intro are a tribute to Pea-Brain, a Bolognese artist who had filled the city with these duck-shaped drawings. Even the clip art on the first page are the things you would print directly from Microsoft Word! There are collages, crosswords, things photocopied and pasted without Photoshop, and drawings made on photocopies of photos. Small quotes here and there, and my favorite is the one dedicated to Skiantos.

#7 answer

You are a musician, all your art is infused with music, every story of yours is accompanied by musical references or sometimes songs and one of your books: When everything turned blue has become a record of which you are the author of the pieces. Proposal: do you feel like pairing each of your books with a record, apart from Ragazza cd?

Oh, increasingly difficult. I can't find them all but I can try.

When everything turned blue before going to press as a provisional title I had found something similar to She lost control by Joy Division.

La distanza is a record by Colapesce, Ah! Also When everything turned blue is the title of a song by Colapesce.

Negativa is Picture of you by The Cure,

Come Svanire Completamente was born and was designed while listening to Laughing Stock by Talk Talk but, of course, the title is borrowed from How Completely Disappear by Radiohead. One day I received an email from a girl who was leaving me, it was the lyrics of that song.

Monokerostina is a record by Arcade Fire.

RAGAZZAcd was born after creating the record of When everything turned blue, it was a - very difficult - challenge in which we started from the music and then arrived at the story. During that period, Corrado and I were listening to Menneskekollektivet by Lost Girls.

A comic story with many musical references: Blonde Redhead, Fine Before you came, Cosmetic, Bellicosi, Fragments, a lot of punk hc. They were all bands that I listened to and saw at concerts where I exchanged and sold my comics!

#8 answer

In recent years, one of the most debated topics when it comes to creativity is definitely artificial intelligence (AI). Do you see it more as a threat to your work or as a tool to support creation?

AI has already grown tired of making illustrations! It's not interested anymore. It has become so good at taking photographs that it immediately understood, within a year, that the evolutionary step from drawn images would be the likeness to reality: reality. In a year, it did what photography took almost over 100 years to become a documentation of reality. Look at the fake photos of Trump kissing Kamala Harris, or the one of the Pope in a trapper jacket! AI is used to manipulate reality, while illustrations are used to imagine new worlds.

#9 answer

I know you are working on a new book, can you give us a sneak peek?

Very few! I can say that it is set in a city that I love very much and I am very afraid to draw it because it is made up of a lot of little bricks.

#11 answer

We are almost at the end of the interview, in the editorial office we are all passionate about music, and it is one of the artistic languages that we privilege, in short, we love this form of art like you do. Can you tell us three tracks that you are particularly attached to? Thank you.

I can tell you the three tracks that I am listening to right now: one is called "Il mio brano" and it's a new piece from the album that has yet to be released and that I still have to record by Altro. Then "Romance" by Fontaines DC, "Bandiera Bianca" by Battiato: try to sing the first verse of the song without taking a breath halfway through! It's very difficult, you have to start with a huge supply of breath, it's like swimming underwater: Mr tamburino I don't feel like joking, let's put on our shirts, the times are about to change.

And since we're at it, I would close with three more tracks, because just three are too few and we can't even escape a playlist on Spotify. This summer I would put on the album in my headphones and fall asleep immediately listening to: "Excoriating Abdominal Emanation" by Carcass, "Son of Lilith" by Coroner, and "Whirlpool" by Sound.