The World Ledger: Field Archive and a Visual Archaeology of 73 Countries Traversed
Joseph Pisani left New York in 1995 not to explore the world, but to confront it. This ongoing expedition is the foundational research for his Impossible Pledge: How to Do Everything in just one Lifetime. Over three decades, across 73 countries and counting, he has intentionally navigated away from the easy route to gather the visceral grit and circumstance that defines his work. Armed with little more than a backpack, a camera (his Second Sketchbook), and a journal, he treats foreign lands as a sensory laboratory. Refusing fixed itineraries creates space for Serendipitous Mischief: the unplanned detours, chance encounters, and all necessary transgression that ignite the sensory overload and cultural friction from which the paintings are born.
«There have been rough moments along the way,» Pisani notes, «but it's the trouble spots that often bear the most exciting memories and the most potent material. »
This evidence is curated in two forms: first, as the Field Archive, a selection of key experiential coordinates; second, as the World Ledger, the complete catalog of all countries traversed. Each entry represents a site where experience was compressed into potential art, where the "swoosh of air" of a fleeting moment was seized and later translated into the permanent ledger of canvas and pigment.
There have been rough moments along the way, but it's the trouble spots that often bear the most exciting memories, and the most potent material.
Field Archive: A selection of Significant Waypoints from over Three Decades in Motion
This archive features a selection of defining encounters from 73 countries navigated in pursuit of the Impossible Pledge. These entries capture the friction and sensory data of the road in their raw form, the foundational ingredients for Pisani's Existential Landscape paintings.
- The Self-Guided Safari: Tracking migration paths alone across Zambia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, and Namibia; the proximate, breathing darkness of a tent in the African bush: hippos grazing around the truck and lions calling in the distance, the source material for the Sounds of the Darkness series.
- Jaipur, India: During the Royal Teej, a massive ceremonial parade moving through the Old City, he slipped into the press ranks, allowing him to photograph the event from within the procession itself, surrounded by traditional dancers and decorated elephants.
- Southern India, The Kanthari Documentation: A three-month immersion mapping a charity's work across the subcontinent of India. This culminated in an exhibition and charity auction hosted by an auctioneer from Sotheby's Zurich.
- Kathmandu, Nepal: Immersion in the chaotic, spice-choked sensory overload of the Asan Tole market at rush hour. After leaving Myanmar due to illness and a hospital stay in Bangkok, he followed the call of a Bob Seger song that beckoned him to the city, and Nepal in general.
- Cairo, Egypt: The immense, historical weight of being alone inside the Great Pyramid.
- Iron Curtain Roulette: A journey spinning through the atmospheres of the former Soviet Union, which required bribing military men and border guards to gain entry into a country that doesn’t officially exist.
- Siem Reap, Cambodia: The act of "playing Indiana Jones" amidst snakes and the rocky ruins of Beng Mealea.
- Flores, Indonesia: The otherworldly chromatics of the Colored Lakes at sunset.
- Yangon, Myanmar: Confronted the yellow-fluorescent chill of a hospital ward at dusk while battling high fever and seeking urgently needed antibiotics.
- The Red Sea, Egypt: The narcotic tension of a claustrophobic cave dive at 63 meters, followed by an extended decompression hovering ‘in the blue.’
- El Nido, Philippines: Exploring sharply carved, desolate paradise in the form of uninhabited islands filled with monitor lizards and palm trees.
- Sri Lanka: A deliberate pursuit and discovery of serendipity in the land Serendip was named after (culminated in the Oh Sweet Serendipity solo exhibition that traveled from Zurich to Austria, then to the United Nations under the patronage of the Sri Lankan ambassador).
- The First Expedition, 1995: The foundational solo journey through Europe where observation was first translated into sketch, pigment, and performance.
- Jerusalem: Walking the historic Path of Sorrows.
- Greece: Getting stranded on a Greek Island and needing to stowaway on a ferry to escape rather than waiting a week for the next boat with space.
- Southern Jordan: Slept without a tent in the desert’s expansive silence. Played guitar in the middle of Wadi Rum, then lit a Cuban cigar and listened to the amplified crackle of the tobacco filling the moonlit sky.
- Battambang, Cambodia: The rhythmic, slightly precarious journey on a "bamboo train."
- Muang Sing, Laos: A bike ride to the Chinese border. The border guards let him venture into China on foot, but held his passport as ransom until he returned.
- Prague, mid-1990s: Living, painting, and performing within the electric atmosphere of a newly unlocked country tasting its first years of freedom.
- The United States: The initial survey of home, a coast-to-coast drive across 44 states.
- New Zealand: The chromatic atmospheric sky and sulfurous national parks.
- Arizona, USA: Confronting the exposed strata of geological time in the Grand Canyon and playing an impromptu concert at a local music bar.
- Fez, Morocco: Learning his way around the labyrinthine souk where smells and history abound.
- My Supermarket Ritual: The deliberate, grounding act of visiting a grocery store in every new country, a method to learn about the culture and discover new foods.
The World Ledger: 73 Countries and counting Traversed
The following list catalogs the specific countries Pisani has explored in the ongoing execution of his Impossible Pledge: How to Do Everything in just one Lifetime. This is a commitment to forge lived experience into a ledger of art and memory, a pursuit that is far from over.
- Andorra
- Australia
- Austria
- Botswana
- Bahamas
- Belgium
- Bosnia & Herzegovina
- Bulgaria
- Cambodia
- Canada
- China
- Croatia
- Cyprus
- Czech Republic
- Denmark
- Egypt
- England
- Finland
- France
- Georgia
- Germany
- Greece
- Holland
- Hong Kong
- Hungary
- Iceland
- India
- Indonesia
- Ireland
- Israel
- Italy
- Japan
- Jordan
- Kosovo
- Laos
- Liechtenstein
- Luxembourg
- Macedonia
- Malaysia
- Maldives
- Moldova
- Monaco
- Montenegro
- Morocco
- Myanmar (Burma)
- Namibia
- Nepal
- New Zealand
- Philippines
- Poland
- Portugal
- Qatar
- Romania
- Serbia
- Singapore
- Slovakia
- Slovenia
- South Africa
- Spain
- Sri Lanka
- Sweden
- Switzerland
- Thailand
- Transdniester
- Tunisia
- Turkey
- Ukraine
- United Arab Emirates
- USA (44 States)
- Vatican City
- Vietnam
- Zambia
- Zimbabwe