Of course everything started during Covid. At that time I was in the preparatory year for my PhD in Paris, working on ecology and new ways of relating living beings to law— a field in full evolution and at the forefront of current Anthropocene debate. When I found myself locked down by confinement, my research was reduced to reviewing literature from a screen, which created a major moment of rupture and dissatisfaction: I knew something was off.
So my confinement soon became a search for escape, for freedom. Within the rules of lockdown in France, there were several exceptions to mandatory isolation, and one of them was the transport of goods (delivery, coursier) by bicycle, which granted you a transit permit. As crazy as it sounds, I decided to put my thesis aside and ride through the empty streets of Paris while everyone else was locked inside— and I worked hard, very hard. At first I found a job for companies like Amazon and food delivery, where I was immersed in the new capitalism of goods and services mass distribution, the 'dark stores', precarity, and where everyone working shared one same condition: being migrants (like me).
Later I found a group of wild, bearded coursiers from the world of cycling— with whom we delivered expensive products for bohemian-bourgeois clients and drank canned beers while repairing our bikes and exchanging parts. Without realizing it I had entered the world of bicycles, a fascinating object, both simple and complex, where a small difference could change your experience from disastrous to spectacular. My ecological reflection— a subject that has massively interested me during my studies— had found its place in the bicycle, perhaps the most 'Good vibes' object ever invented. Eventually I chose to take a year-long training course where I learned to repair bicycles professionally. By then I had already a BAC+5 but I learned one of the most beautiful professions in life and above all the legitimacy of knowing the difference between a good bike and a bad one (and believe me— there are many of the latter).
That’s how ITALO MECANO is born: a great tribute to the bicycle as an object, but above all, with a deep reflection on its role as an object of ecological transition. We see it in Paris, where its inhabitants have started to use it massively.
Welcome to my universe.