PACKAGING THE AIR, BETWEEN PROVOCATION AND ETHICAL DOUBTS

[07. Up-to-date
It is the packaging that knows how to be in constant relationship with the society of which it represents the values.
Packaging reflects the culture of the company and in turn contributes to creating it. They do this through messages, which pass through their shapes, their graphics, their symbols: thus they transfer models, participating in the evolution of contemporaneity.

Packaging the air, between provocation and ethical doubts: packaging as an unconventional mass medium to enhance the territory

Among the most curious news spread during the summer just ended, one in particular emerges that brings attention to packaging and its use as an unconventional means of communication, in addition to the ethical implications that this entails: the sale of “air of sea” of Porto Cesareo, in Salento.

With the “Aria Ti Mare” project, Antonio D’Elia offers tourists, instead of the usual souvenirs, a series of small bottles each associated with a typical place of the Salento area.
During the summer of 2022 three types of “air” were put on sale, which take their name from three different areas: “Nanzi la turre” (or “in front of the tower”, referring to the tower of San Tommaso di Torre Lapillo) , “La sapunara” (historical inlet of Torre Lapillo), and “Ientu ti tramuntana” (“north wind”, which characterizes the Ionian Sea).
Are we facing the joke of a joker? Or a virtuous example of creativity of how packaging can really enhance any content, even the qualities of a territory?

As we know, packaging is what transforms an anonymous content into a product with its own identity, gives it the status of a commodity and allows it to access the circuit of goods that are subject to commercial exchange.
It is a form of staging that generates value both for the company that introduces it to the market and for the people who buy and consume it.
But what happens when something intangible or difficult to “pack” like a city or a geographical area is packaged? Or, even more provocatively, the air of a certain place?

Packaging and selling “air” is not really new. In fact, there are many cases in which over time packaging has been used as an unconventional mass medium to promote a territory or even just as a joke or provocation.
Antonio D’Elia himself, author of “Aria Ti Mare”, tells how he found inspiration in various initiatives, from the most spontaneous ones resulting from Neapolitan creativity, to those that constitute real territorial marketing operations, where instead of selling traditional postcards, air from different parts of the world is “packaged”.

An interesting case in this sense is Canned Air, a series of cans launched by the American company Fattrol, and sold as souvenirs of cities such as New York, London, Paris, Zurich, Tokyo, Dubai, or Shanghai, to name a few examples. According to what is stated on the package, the content is “100% organic” and consists of “fresh canned air that relieves stress, cures homesickness and helps fight melancholy”.
The atmosphere of each city is given by the set of its monuments and its main attractions, which constitute the “formulation” of the product.

 

The air, rather than referring in a didactic way to the gaseous mixture that forms the earth’s (physical) atmosphere, evidently refers in a figurative sense a vast range of meanings, which constitute the (metaphorical) atmosphere of a city, from the beauty of monuments and landscapes to the sensations and emotions that can be experienced in that place. Just think of what the expression “air of Naples” can evoke in those who have been able to know the Campania capital and its inhabitants.

The first version of the so-called “Aria ‘e Napule” was invented by Gennaro Ciaravolo, who after World War II spread the news that he had designed and sold the air of his city, reusing the empty cans of food aid provided by US troops after the liberation.

The rumor circulated rapidly and was welcomed by friends and acquaintances as an expression of Ciaravolo’s genius, even capable of reselling to the Americans the containers – empty, being “filled” only with air – of the products they distributed to the Italians: in Naples they had found the way to make money even with war.
It was then thanks to a 1966 film by Dino Risi (“Operation San Gennaro”) that the Air of Naples then definitively became part of the imaginary associated with Neapolitan popular culture.

Ciaravolo’s invention was obviously a joke, which actually wanted to express a criticism of an idea of ​​”Neapolitanism”, which was gaining ground at that time, which put scam and deception in the place of the ability to solve problems and to transform a difficult situation into a resource, which on the other hand is typically Neapolitan and at the basis of the proverbial ability to “get by”.
The provocation of the can of “Aria ‘e Napule” by Gennaro Ciavarolo was actually caught by few and considered only a manifestation of Neapolitan “cunning”. Just as few took the reference to the cruet of “Air de Paris”, provocatively proposed a few decades earlier by Marcel Duchamp, a French conceptual artist known for his famous Ready-Mades.

 Subsequently, in 1970, it was the artist Claudio Ciaravolo, grandson of Gennaro Ciaravolo, who decided to really manufacture the famous cans, transforming them into provocative works, similar to what Duchamp made in France.

In addition to the Aria di Napoli, which the young Ciaravolo exhibited and put on sale on a stall outside the Venice Biennale in 1972 (in two versions: with smog and without smog), followed by the Aria Fritta (in Milan), the FOG (in London-Carnaby Street), Aria Pacis (in Paris at the end of the Vietnam War), up to Aria Santa (in Rome for the Jubilee).
After the “arias”, the Neapolitan artist then also produced a series of “waters”, always with the same provocative spirit: from the water of Naples to that of Venice, up to the famous water of Capri.

Subsequently, the idea of ​​bottling or canning the air, although certainly no longer a novelty, continued to spread gradually, inspiring the birth of numerous other proposals, both in Italy and abroad, of territorial enhancement.
Among these it is worth mentioning the Aria di Romagna of the brothers Davide and Massimo Ottaviani, producers of wines with particular organoleptic characteristics determined by the microclimate in which the vines are located, that is, in the context of the Valle Del Conca Wildlife Oasis.
Hence the idea of ​​”packaging” the local air and sending it as a gift – along with wines and other typical products – to those people who, during the Covid-19 pandemic, were no longer able to travel.

Main benefit of the Romagna air: it gives a good mood. Among the more “scientific” aspects, the morning air collected in the valley has various properties, given by the presence of the sea, the river and the hills of Rimini: it is rich in mineral salts, helps circulation and finally strengthens the bones.

My Baggage, a UK company that deals with international removals, has also created bottles of air from England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, to cure the nostalgia of the “home fragrance” of those who live abroad. Special limited edition bottles from the London Underground and a Norfolk fish and chip shop are also available. Also in the United Kingdom, to raise public awareness on the problems of air pollution, Aethaer  launched in 2016 a series of containers, each “filled” with air from one of the 5 so-called “Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty” Natural Beauty – AONB) from the British campaign. For its part, Coast Capture Air offers a variety of air from Britain’s rugged and rocky shores.

The examples seen so far must not, however, be confused with other types of products currently on the market, where the air is actually taken from uncontaminated areas, to be then packaged in spray cans and “breathed” when necessary, remembering those used in the field doctor for taking medications in pre-dosed aerosol format.
Among the companies specializing in this sector, we find for example the Canadian Vitality Air, which sells fresh air from the Rocky Mountains, the New Zealand Kiwiana, the Swiss Swissbreeze and the Italian Breathaly. These are products sold in particular in those countries, such as China, where air pollution is a particularly serious problem, with particularly alarming levels of contaminants.

Of course, the idea of ​​bottling or canning air can generate amazement and unleash hilarity, especially if you think of those souvenir packages that we can find on the stalls in Spaccanapoli or on the beaches of Salento, as a souvenir of a nice holiday.
However, this type of initiative could also raise ethical doubts, in light of major environmental emergencies, from climate change to the energy crisis, which force us to reflect and question certain practices and their associated impacts.
A container full of air can, in fact, easily be considered a futile waste of resources, as an expression, for example, of over-packaging.
Yet, if we try to change perspective, and look at these objects that are so provocative from the point of view of the values ​​they express and the experience they produce, we realize that the reality of the facts is not so negative.

In the first place, since it is a souvenir, it is assumed that that package will never be thrown away, but carefully preserved, as a collector’s item, without ever having an impact on the environment.
Secondly, thanks to the communicative elements of the packaging and its narrative dimension, the air in a bottle or can tells a territory in an unconventional way and tangibles its intangible qualities, enhancing them, according to a logic of “packaging storytelling”.
Paraphrasing Marshall McLuhan, we can rightly say that the packaging (the medium) is the message, the container in other words is transformed into the content we are consuming.
Even if what you buy, therefore, is only “air”, what you actually get from a symbolic point of view is the memory of a journey, the memory of the experience lived in a certain place and the emotions associated with it. , perhaps snatching us a smile every time we look at that unconventional souvenir displayed on the desk or in the home library.