Pierluigi Balducci

The interview

1 - A memory of Salone and Bordighera

The memory of a very welcoming and friendly place, a warmth consistent with the climate of the Riviera.

2- What did you like the most about Salone

A seaport of laughter... veiled by that melancholy that pervades those who, looking for a smile, find themselves having to talk about very serious things.

3 - What is it the humour for you?

For me, humor is an artistic and clever way of getting around the tragic sense of life, highlighting its sometimes grotesque side, because, as Ennio Flaiano said: *"The situation is tragic but it is not serious!"*

4 - Your life as a humorist, if you look back what cartoon do you see?

In one of my lives, that of a comedian, I see many things created and borrowed almost unconsciously from a great master of advertising communication like Armando Testa, who I had the honor of knowing, with whom I had the opportunity to work and who left me with a taste and pleasure for synthesis, for irony and for simplicity, always seasoned with great humility. In the sense that, when you use visual or textual language to create something artistic that transmits a message to your audience, you have to have the humility to make it extremely simple and extremely understandable.

5 - Were you born humorists or did you become such?

Perhaps one becomes a comedian out of necessity, because it is a harlequin-like way of getting around reality, which can sometimes be harsh and unpleasant, by capturing its most comical and incongruous side. So, instead of fighting, a comedian strikes with a pencil or a pen, which can be more or less scathing and pointed. They are weapons that sometimes lighten heavy situations, but sometimes leave marks as if they were bruises. Precisely because, when the tone seems joking, the defenses of those who watch or listen are lowered, it becomes easier to hit the heart of the topic.

6 - Risk or caution, what has characterised your professional life the most?

My professional life has been characterized, and I hope it will continue to be characterized, by risks. I, by nature, love to put myself on the line, even at the cost of often having to step down a few steps and start my journey all over again. I have done it several times and I do not regret it, even if sometimes this is not a winning strategy from the point of view of economic security. But, as the great De Crescenzo said: *"Since you cannot lengthen your life, you have no choice but to enlarge it."* My choice was to put very different ingredients in my private life and also in my professional life, to make it more tasty and interesting for me and, I hope, for others too.

7 - One of your cartoons that you'd like to dedicate today to the Salone, why?

A cartoon I created, which unfortunately has been and will always be very current for the metaphor of what it represents, is an image created with my photo-collage technique. It is a crucifixion in which Jesus has his arms nailed to the butts of two crossed pistols.

8 - The poster of Salone you like the most, why?

The poster I like the most, and that I am most aware of from the festival, is Quino's. With his great ability to synthesize and his wonderful style, he represents a castaway on a small island who is about to throw a bottle with a message into the sea, but the sea is completely full of bottles with messages. This is our contemporary situation, especially if we think about the crowding of messages available on social media, which are a great opportunity but also a big black hole, where excess communication becomes incommunicability.

9 - Humor today: its state of health. And behind the curve what do you expect?

Humor today, in my opinion, lives a double condition. On the one hand, political, social, environmental and economic situations make it increasingly bitter and more difficult to make humor in the laughing sense of the term. In this case, the role of a humorist is to find a channel to induce people to dwell on things and think. On the other hand, we live in a particularly crazy era, where, thanks to the enormous possibilities of spreading one's thoughts through social media and a thousand other communication channels, reality is unfiltered and is always two steps ahead, in terms of ridiculousness and surreality, compared to what a humorist can imagine. It is therefore a great challenge to remain in balance between these two realities.