AMALGAMA, Italy

AMALGAMA focuses on the submerged ecologies of the Lagoon of Venice. It explores how native and non-native algal species – largely invisible, under-researched, and feared as ‘aliens’ – might be meaningfully integrated into local ecologies, food systems, economies, and culture. Rising sea levels, increased salinity, the arrival of non-native species, and eroding marshes are reshaping the lagoon’s fabric. Amid these changes, seaweeds are not merely surviving but thriving: acting as bioindicators, offering potential ingredients, and pointing toward new forms of adaptation.

AMALGAMA asks: how do we adapt, culturally, scientifically, and gastronomically, to a transforming ecosystem? How can we move beyond fear, cultivate familiarity, and learn to live with these submerged ecologies – in relationship, rather than in dominance?

Rooted in the southern lagoon, at Casoni Millecampi and Da Sandro – traditional fishing huts – during autumn and winter, AMALGAMA convenes food and art collectives (Barena Bianca & TOCIA! Cucina e Comunità), fishermen, marine scientists, and local participants in intimate workshops that:

• map lagoon challenges and changes, using seaweeds as material anchors;
• support and amplify the work of fishermen such as Devy Chinazzi, who experiments with integrated aquacultures – multispecies underwater cultivation of oysters, samphire, and potentially seaweeds – as practices of resilience and care;
• develop recipes with overlooked or unwanted species – from seaweeds to invasive blue crab – probing how these foods enter, or are excluded from, local foodways.

Here, culinary knowledge becomes a form of ecological intelligence. The recipes inform a co-written, multidisciplinary recipes book, promoting the use of climate-adaptive species; reframing non-native and invasive populations not solely as challenges to be managed, but as opportunities to shorten food circuits, relieve pressure on threatened species, and nurture place-based food cultures.

The book is not just an artistic outcome, but an invitation to gather, taste, and imagine otherwise. Through Convivi Acquatici, participatory aquatic banquets led by TOCIA! Cucina e Comunità, wider publics will encounter these submerged companions in spring 2026, nourishing and being nourished by the lagoon. While deeply rooted in Venice, AMALGAMA also seeks to connect local practices with broader European conversations on submerged ecologies and cultures. Visibility will be amplified through Ocean Space’s international platform – Ocean Community and Ocean Archive – as well as through NICHE, The New Centre for Environmental Humanities, Venice.

Please note, AMALGAMA is not the start of a new project, but a confluence – of people, research, places, and relationships grown over time, connected by the shared ecological sensibility and the desire to work slowly, carefully, and together. In doing so, it counters the extractive logic often present in Venice’s cultural scene, where local ecologies and communities are too often reduced to backdrops for spectacle. AMALGAMA continues the trajectory of Convivial Tables 2025, an active field research program commissioned by TBA21–Academy for Ocean Space. It unfolds alongside a reimagined Sagra dell’Alga – a traditional food festival centered for the first time on seaweeds – and a new publication on the lagoon’s algal life, to be released by b.r.u.n.o publisher in September 2025.

GOALS

Community-driven alliances. Fishers, scientists, artists, and chefs collaborate across rarely connected fields, building new networks of solidarity and exploring innovative lagoon management rooted in multidisciplinary, local-ecological knowledge and lived experience.

Ecological and cultural adaptation. By engaging with overlooked and invasive species, AMALGAMA develops new recipes and practices that ease pressure on native species and reshape what is considered edible, valuable, and worth preserving.

Shifted perspectives. The project moves into liminal spaces, questioning what is often left off-screen in dominant narratives of the Venetian lagoon: submerged life forms, overlooked vegetal bodies, and more-than-human alliances that persist at the edges of visibility.

Embodied engagement and legacy. From shared meals, workshops, and storytelling in fishing huts to the seaweed festival (Sagra dell’Alga), public banquets (Convivi Acquatici), and a collaborative cookbook with b.r.u.n.o. publishing, AMALGAMA does not celebrate, but listens and decomposes. Algae are not merely resources to be catalogued or manipulated; they are vital agents – presences capable of transforming and connecting. Like a composting process, the knowledge gathered is left to ferment, stratify, and overlap, generating situated, collective intelligence in continuous mutation. The project extends its learnings from local communities to international audiences.