Agenda

LAGOON TALK | AMALGAMA: Practising Adaptation with and for the Venice Lagoon
Convened by Chiara Famengo with Barena Bianca (Fabio Cavallari, Pietro Consolandi), and Tocia! Cucina e Comunità (Marco Bravetti, Fulvia Larena).

In conversation with Antonia Majaca (Ca' Foscari University of Venice, PI Radical Epistemologies: Political Ecology and Transversal Practice research cluster at NICHE).

June 5, 4 PM - 5:30 PM
Ca' Bottacin (Aula B)&Online
Calle Crosera 3911, Venice 

Abstract: AMALGAMA focuses on the submerged ecologies of the Venice Lagoon, inquiring how native and non-native algal species – largely invisible, under-researched, and often framed as ‘alien’ – might be integrated into local ecologies, food systems, economies, and culture. The Lagoon is undergoing profound environmental shifts: rising sea levels, increasing salinity, the arrival of new species alongside the disappearance of others, the erosion of marshes and seabeds. As fishers observe, “we cannot read her any more,” pointing not only to ecological transformation, but to the loss of the knowledge systems once used to navigate and understand these waterscapes. Rather than framing response in terms of control or restoration, AMALGAMA understands adaptation as a relational practice that emerges through attentiveness and negotiation across cultural and ecological domains. Seaweeds become central to this inquiry. Often dismissed as marginal or threatening, they both signal environmental change and thrive within altered conditions, revealing overlooked forms of resilience while offering ecological, gastronomic, and medicinal potential. AMALGAMA asks how we might adapt with these submerged ecologies, moving beyond fear toward forms of familiarity, coexistence, and mutual transformation.

The research includes a series of transdisciplinary gatherings titled Lagune Ribelli, bringing together artists, chefs, scientists, fishers, and local communities to frame adaptation as a practice emerging through situated engagement rather than abstract speculation. Rather than treating scientific research, local ecological knowledge, and cultural imagination as separate domains, the project brings them into contact through communal meals, field-based practices, and shared attention to the Lagoon. Within this framework, seaweeds are placed in dialogue with more familiar, emblematic Lagoon species – Manila clams (Ruditapes philippinarum), flat oysters (Ostrea edulis), and blue crabs (Callinectes sapidus). Each carries distinct histories of introduction, cultivation, exploitation, and regeneration, revealing how ecological entanglement is inseparable from the systems of value that determine which species become visible, usable, or disregarded.

From these dialogues, AMALGAMA is developing a collaborative publication conceived as a collective pact for inhabiting the Lagoon under conditions of climate instability. Combining rules, reflections, and experimental recipes – culinary, ecological, social, and imaginative – the publication proposes provisional ways of living within a shifting waterscape, while attending to the unwanted, the discarded, and the forgotten. It draws inspiration from the Mariegole dei Pescatori (“the mother rules of the fishermen”), the manuals and codes developed by Venetian guilds to organise shared responsibilities and forms of coexistence within the Lagoon. 

Zoom Link https://unive.zoom.us/j/86037663707

Founded by European Commission through TIDAL ArtS, a Horizon Europe project contributing to the EU Mission to Restore our Ocean and Waters by 2030.
Photo Credits Barena Bianca