An actor, director, cultural entrepreneur, founder of Art Aia - Creatives In Residence, promoting environmental and biodiversity protection, inviting communities to take action on the climate emergency.
Born to a German mother and an Italian father, at age 19 I moved to New York to become a professional actor. I interned at the Actors Studio for about one year, and since then, I deepened my long-time study of Method Acting thanks to my collaboration with both sons of Lee and Paula Strasberg.
In 2016 I wrote the preface to the Italian version of Strasberg's book Per scelta, per caso. Oltre l'Actors Studio and published, in collaboration with Google Arts & Culture, the online exhibition Strasberg Legacy in 2020. I also graduated from the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome, directed by Giancarlo Giannini and since 2001 I took part in several films including Last Days directed by Gus Van Sant and Roberto Faenza's Viceroys as well as performing and directing stage performances working with Ellen Stewart founder of Café La MaMa, Ted Mornel, Bryan Reynolds and Lidia Biondi to name a few.
I am involved in Climate Change Theatre, being the founder of Art Aia - Creatives In Residence, an ancient agricultural center in Italy during the times of sharecropping converted into an art residence.
I promote environmental protection and biodiversity preservation, inviting territorial communities to take action and to inform on the state of Climate Emergency. Through artist-in-residence programs, I support sustainable art practices such as those developed by Australian Kelly Leonard and Norwegian Beatrice Lopez during The Arts Territory Exchange project in 2014, carried out in collaboration with The Centre for Sustainable Practice in the Arts. In 2014, I also curated Mappe fluide, artistic research by the Marsala 11 collective that reinterpreted, through landscape excursions, the natural environments adjacent to a late 19th-century barn.
I wrote several essays sharing my experiences in the arts and my perspectives on arts management in the Western and the non-Western world thanks to my international collaborations, such as the one with Uronto Artist Community in Bangladesh.
I served as the artistic director of the interdisciplinary event Climate Change Theatre Action on the Tagliamento, collaborating with several partners within Climate Change Theatre Action, a worldwide series of readings and performances of short climate change plays presented biennially to coincide with the United Nations COP meetings. During the event, I incorporated art, theatre, science, environmentalism, and business, emphasizing an educational action by involving a representative of the Italian environmental association Legambiente and a scientist from the Regional protection agency who have shared tools for sustainability to fight Climate Change. I staged, at sunset on the banks of the Tagliamento River, the play When written by Canadian Wren Brian, which received a special mention in the Climate ChanCe competition organized by the Ca' Foscari University of Venice in 2021.
In 2022, I delivered a talk about Environmental, Climate Change, and Sustainable Art Practices at the International Conference on Opportunities in the Arts “Create the future” organized by the Transcultural Exchange in Boston.
Giovanni's ClimateCultures posts
Create the Future – Creatives in Residence for Climate Change