Episode 8: Challenging tradition in a changing climate with Lorenzo BarbAsEtti Di Prun
Lorenzo Barbasetti Di Prun's initiative with colleagues Filippo Grassi (left) aims to revitalise saline soils by planting sea fennel and similar plants.
Season 1: Venice
Episode 8: Challenging tradition in a changing climate with Lorenzo Barbesetti Di Prun
Lorenzo Barbasetti Di Prun is a chef who challenges Italy’s culinary traditions by responding to climate change. Lorenzo trained in Fine Arts, at IUAV University of Venice, and is now pursuing gastronomy with a focus on foraging in diverse landscapes like London, the Dolomites, and the Venetian lagoon.
In this last episode of the Venice season, Lorenzo discusses foraging's role in adapting to climate change by reintroducing edible, salt-loving plants to abandoned farmlands, as part of his project The Tidal Garden.
In this episode we cover:
The Tidal Garden: Lorenzo's initiative with colleagues Filippo Grassi and Ludovica Guarnieri. It aims to revitalise saline soils by planting sea fennel and similar plants.
Cultural Adaptation: Educating chefs and the public about these plants to reconnect them with their local landscapes.
Tradition vs. Innovation: Lorenzo argues that rigid culinary traditions can stifle cultural and biological diversity. He emphasises the need for tradition to adapt and evolve.
Personal Journey: Lorenzo's background in visual arts and gastronomy. His experiences foraging in the Dolomites, Australia, and London have shaped his approach to food and ecology.
Challenges and Future Plans: Expanding the Tidal Garden project, increasing community involvement, and promoting sustainable agriculture in the Venetian lagoon and beyond.
Biography
Lorenzo Barbasetti di Prun is a chef and food researcher with a background in art and design. In 2017 he founded prometheus_open food lab to explore the edible potential of remore places. He developed his practice working between the Greenlab in London and Dolomiti Contemporanee in the Dolomites where he's still active.
In 2020, after moving to Venice he translated the research of Prometheus into the Lagoon, founding The Tidal Garden, with a specific focus on halophytes and salt marshes. He now directs The Tidal Garden with Filippo Grassi and Lodovica Guarnieri.
TRANSCRIPT
SR: Welcome to Art Destinations. My name is Sarah Rhodes, an artist based in Lutruwita, Tasmania. In this episode of Art Destinations. I'm in conversation with Lorenzo Barbasetti Di Prun. Lorenzo, trained at the IUAV University of Venice in Fine Arts and then went on to pursue a career in gastronomy. Lorenzo has a passion for foraging for food on the margins, whether it is in London's parkland, the Dolomites, or in the Venetian lagoon. This is driven by his desire to innovate our approach to food in order to adapt the changing climate. In this episode, Lorenzo explains how tradition is a risk to diversity and the evolution of culture. Art destinations will be published fortnightly and each season will focus on one place. The first season explores Venice and aims to provide an understanding of the layer tourist rarely sea. The second season will focus on Tasmania and the third Sicily.
SR: Please take a minute to sign up to the email newsletter on the website artdestinations.org, and follow this podcast on your hosting platform so you don't miss an episode. In this last episode of the Venice season, Lorenzo and I catch up after spending the afternoon on the island of Sant'Erasmo, foraging for sea fennel seeds with his colleague, environmental scientist, Filippo Grassi. Pop over to our Instagram page, artdestinations.podcast to see a vastly different island from the Venice city, only a short vaporetto ride away. And follow this podcast on your hosting platform so you don't miss an episode. In this last episode of the Venice season, Lorenzo and I catch up after spending the afternoon on the island of Sant'Erasmo, foraging for sea fennel seeds with his colleague, environmental scientist, Filippo Grassi. Welcome Lorenzo.
LBDP: Hello, Sarah.
SR: We've had a really lovely afternoon wandering around Sant'Erasmo, looking for seeds with one of your colleagues.
LBDP: Yeah.
SR: Maybe you could tell us a little bit about what we were doing.
LBDP: So we spend the afternoon collecting seeds of sea fennel. Sea fennel is a variety of those plants that are called, halophytes or plants that love salt that grows in saline soils along seashores. We are trying to introduce these plants as a new culture in abandoned former crop plants in order to make them productive again, to make them productive in a context where the salinisation of soil is pushing farmers out of their business. So that's the time of the year where we collect the seeds and we dry them and we preserve until the time where it's what we would need to, sow them in the field.
SR: So you're saying that you are going to abandoned sites and finding the seeds, or you're going to replant them in abandoned sites?
LBDP: We are going to replant them in abandoned former crop plants or, yeah, in those portion of land that farmers are forced to abandon due to the salinisation of soil. Which is a consequence of sea level rise and climate change more in general.
SR: So who are you working with?
LBDP: I'm working with, Filippo Grassi, who you meet before and who's taking care of all the agronomic part of this project and Ludovica Guarnieri who's taking care of all the cultural, more cultural aspects of the project. So we are trying to build a new culture related to these plants. So to introduce them back into the perception of people living in lagoon.
SR: So do you mean by the culture... Do you mean, educating chefs and promoting the taste and the flavors to other people working in the community?
LBDP: Actually, yeah. You got it right. We start with chefs, which are the medium for us to then introduce more and more people like the general public, and to bring the local culture back into the relation with the landscape and what's changing in the landscape and how we can use the resources already available to adapt. We call it a cultural adaptation to climate change. So it's the idea that we already have, some of the means to convert a potential disaster into opportunity or to be able to understand how to adapt and survive. They're already there. These plants grow spontaneously. They're endemic or even native of this landscape, but most of us can't even see them even if they grow everywhere.
SR: That's interesting. So the three of you're working together and what's the name of the group?
LBDP: The group, the project is called the Tidal Garden. So it's the idea of taking care of, well a landscape which is in between land and water and it's subject to tides and it's not like, wasteland, but it's something that we can work on and then we can educate ourself to see it in a different perspective.
SR: That's a really nice idea about the tides and it's sort of not being part of the water and not being part of the land. It's kind of this in-between or peripheral space. I'd like to talk about periphery a bit later actually. So what's your background? Like, how did you come to be in Venice and how did you come to be interested in working with food and ecologies?
LBDP: Well, I'm a chef or I've been working most of my life in, as a chef, so what drives me is trying to find new ingredients and novel tastes and not be satisfied of what is available on the market. So at some point I got into foraging and through foraging I started exploring the landscape and the relationship between the landscape and then communities and cultures leaving it and shaping it. But I also have a background in visual arts and design with a specific focus on social ecological and social design. So how we can design or program a culture to act in an ecologic relation with the landscape. So how we can activate or reactivate ecological responsibility of human activities into the landscape.
SR: So basically by kind of introducing new flavours to people, you're actually getting people to be more aware of their surroundings and getting them to look more closely and, to think about, sea levels rising, salinity, plants and just taking care.
LBDP: Yeah, I found that it really, like introducing new flavours, it really broadened the horizon of most people. So they suddenly realise of things surrounding them. And that's very interesting and it's a very powerful tool. So as soon as you realise that it's an element in the landscape that you can eat. So you start a connection with it and you start seeing it and perceiving it and understanding how it grows, how even in a very simple way. But yeah, you start realising that it grows where it's not supposed to grow or where it wasn't used to grow. So you start asking yourself questions and just start seeing things in a different, from a different perspective.
SR: Yeah, that's nice. And so when you were studying visual art, you were studying in Venice.
LBDP: Yeah.
SR: And what was the medium that you were focused on?
LBDP: I spent three years trying to find a medium. I think I didn't come to a conclusion. So I was really into drawing when I started BA. But yeah, at the end, I came out of the university that I realised I really enjoyed the process. I thought that art was a very powerful tool in terms of shaping minds. But I didn't have a medium at that point. And I think that for that reason, I went into gastronomy because it was my, I wouldn't say the backup plan, but in a way. And I wanted to start working at some point. So yeah, and then that was when I found my medium. So gastronomy, the food became my a medium. And then I tried to merge the two things in a new way.
SR: So in many ways, this tidal garden is kind of like an activation or, I wouldn't say it's performance in any way, but it's kind of a, it's performative and it's engaging people into an idea and it's unpacking an idea. So it was kind of using that same form of conceptual thinking from art school, but it's in a much more kind of practical and almost entrepreneurial approach.
LBDP: Yeah. It is. I think it's in the Italian way of perceiving art culture and being an entrepreneur as two separated things that didn't really work together. I don't think the same. I actually believe that if you want to have an impact on a cultural level and you want to shape the culture and promote a different way of perceiving things, you need to be aware of the economic sustainability of things. And that was crucial at some point in my way, my path at some point in time.
SR: Well, you want it to be something that can be pursued and actually sustain itself. Don't you?
LBDP: Yeah.
SR: You have this great website. Is it the tidal garden, the website?
LBDP: It's Prometheus Lab.
SR: Prometheus Lab, that's right. And on Prometheus Lab, you have a lot of writings or essays, and one of them is about your trip to Australia. So you mentioned that was sort of the seed of the idea of sort of foraging and sparking this sort of way of working. Can you talk about that?
LBDP: Yeah. So, well, Prometheus is a big project, the umbrella that holds the tidal garden and other things. And that's the first approach, the first attempt to bring culture and gastronomy, like art, design and gastronomy together. So a few years ago, I started it in the Dolomites in the first place. So I was looking into edibles in remote places and how edibles could help or finding new and novel edibles could change the perspective on remote places that are places not only far away, but also they might be like very close to us and easy to access physically, but towards which we might have lost the tools to understand. And so I was funding this lab in the Dolomites and that same year.
LBDP: I had a trip planned across Australia and so it was the first time I tried to test my idea into a completely different environment, landscape. I said like a completely different planet from some perspective. So I was very powerful and interesting and also I... Well, I was there for a few weeks, a little more than a month, so I just had the opportunity to scratch the surface of a lot of things, but it was very interesting to see how different culture read in a completely different way, the same landscape. And I was struck by the... And attract by the way the Aboriginal people understood their land and how the Western people, British first of all, didn't understand it and didn't understand the fact that the Aboriginal people were actually understanding it very well. And so that was very, very striking to me.
SR: Yeah, there's a lot of really interesting people cooking with bush foods and restaurants and hopefully there'll be some sort of synergy later in your career, 'cause that would be quite exciting.
LBDP: Yeah, I'd really love to go back and to go deeper into this. I went back with a whole luggage full of books and I've been keeping studying since then, but yeah, I'd really love to go back there. And, it's a completely different context, but somehow I think that even here it's completely different, but even here some traditional knowledge is perceived as not knowledge. So it's even more clear if you see that example, but you can somehow question what we have been doing here in Italy or in Europe as well.
SR: Well, it's true. There's often a reason why, they might put fennel seeds with salami or they grow tomato and basil together or... That's right. There's all this sort of knowledge that sometimes gets lost and it just becomes tradition without us knowing really why we're doing things.
LBDP: Yeah. And then what's left, we call it tradition, but it has nothing to do with tradition. I'm very hard on this and I believe that tradition should be a series of tools that should be able to adapt and transform. And otherwise they're just a dead body, something you can keep carrying, but it's useless and it doesn't apply to anything. And so it's not meant to be like this. So tradition is a very recent invention in many places. So it's something that you made up of what's left after you've lost everything.
SR: That's such an interesting idea. I find, I mean, tradition in Italy is pretty strong from an outsider's perspective and the weight of history.
LBDP: We've sold it very well, but most of it has been made up in the '50s or the '60s. And it has nothing to do with tradition. So we are now very jealous and very strict on things that doesn't even make sense, like using Guanciale or Pancetta in the Amatriciana. It's the same thing. I mean, it's before the '50s that the Amatriciana, you would do Amatriciana, whatever comes to your hands. So most of the tradition, like the cuisine in Italy comes from like humble origins, like poor household. So it's, you can't be like about Guanciale or Pancetta. It's just meat, like fat you put into the pasta. And that's a silly example, but it's a brand we created at some point to sell ourselves to the world.
SR: It worked well.
LBDP: Yeah, it worked hopefully well.
SR: Yeah. And it tastes good so.
LBDP: Yeah, but we are losing diversity in that.
SR: That's interesting. Can you talk about that?
LBDP: Yeah. So I think that when we codify, we build a code around a recipe, it's a dead end in terms of evolution. So you decide to go in that direction and it's not a direction, it's a dead end. You stop there. You think you have achieved the most, or the best recipe you can get. And then you lost everything that could evolve from that and all the branches that could come out from it. And that's a loss in terms of cultural diversity, but also in some extent of biological diversity or biodiversity, because you start selecting more and more the ingredients. So the tomatoes... It's a few varieties of tomatoes and, whatever else. It's just that one. And...
SR: That's interesting. I wonder how that played out across the, how the social structure of the country works as well, which we don't need to go into, 'cause I don't know enough about it, but Italy invests so much in the history of Italy and the tradition of Italy, and it doesn't seem to invest a lot in the young people of Italy, I could be wrong about that, but that's just kind of what it seems.
LBDP: Yeah. It's, that's a huge thing, but that's problem the reason why we're stuck in our tradition, because if we would invest more in the young people, then we, as young people, we would've like crushed the tradition. We have brought it to a completely different level. And it's, I don't like the binum of like culture versus tradition, or even let’s say I like the, that when you, they try to merge the two things, tradition and innovation, just stupid. And tradition it's supposed to be the most innovative thing in, it's the base, the very base, the very like, essential tools for innovation. And that's what we should do. Like as it's not matter of generation, but as young, we have a different perception of course of what's going on. And we should be able to adapt our tradition to, and our tools to what's happening and to what we foresee in the future.
SR: Yeah. It's interesting. So in the Dolomites, did you grow up in the Dolomites?
LBDP: No, I didn't. I grew up in the, in Padua, which is close to Venice and so in the very plain region, but I at some point ended up in the Dolomites and I found this amazing project that I'm still into, which is Dolomiti Contemporanee, which is, it works with the contemporary art to regenerate important buildings or architectural site. And so I ended up in the Dolomites, in the Venetian Dolomites, close to Cortina, and that's where I shaped my idea of remoteness and where I started working on animals. And when, where I realised that, tradition is a trap, mainly, 'cause tradition in the, especially in the mountains and in the remote regions or in those marginal areas, it's perceived as something like poor, like very, because they're, they supposed to have poor means and to live in a hard environment.
LBDP: So tradition, like traditional food needs to be rich, like rich in terms of calories intake, but very poor in terms of variety. And that's absurd. So when I arrived there I started exploring and they have like, there's a huge potential in terms of ingredients that have been completely forgot and even in terms of what's spontaneous, but also what can be farmed and grown there. So now there's like a few young farmers that are starting innovative again, businesses there. It's hard for them because the social and the economic fabric has been disrupted, destroyed by the tourists. Even at the national level, the government fund people to leave the farm and start building hotels and move to the hospitality and to the tourist sector of the economy. So.
SR: What does that mean in terms of there's too much focus on the tourism and what are the farmers growing? Are they growing, they're finding new ingredients or?
LBDP: There's a very few farms at this point and they haven't been for a whole generation, I would say possibly a bit more.
SR: And what are they growing there?
LBDP: Now the new generation are starting, they're starting from the basics, but still they're trying to bring back the farming sector, the economy related to farming. And then there's a few starting growing like specific varieties that grows well in the mountains, also getting inspired by different contexts and different mountains in different, even in different places of the, of Europe or even the world. And then there're, like fisheries are coming back and there's riding, sheep and goats and...
SR: Right. So all of this disappeared because of tourism?
LBDP: Yeah, it was a mix of, the glass in that region, that specific region. It first came the, industry, like the glasses industry and they still made glasses for Ray-Ban and most of the glasses that are sold all over the world come from there. Just a few major companies survived and a lot failed. But at that point, many people just left the region and those who left turned into tourism because it was the next big thing coming with the Olympics in the '56. I mean, it's a very simple way to tell it, but it's...
SR: It's complicated. So what's your interest in the remote? Because you mentioned that you're interested in the remote. In the Dolomites, but also you're working on the peripheries on the Tidal Garden when you're in sant'erasmo.
LBDP: Well, I'm not sure what it is. It can be the challenge or that most of the interesting thing later. I have a very wide idea of remote and the periphery as well it's. Wherever we lacked the ability to see, perceive and understand things. So that's where I'm driven to. I don't know what's exactly that attract me there but.
SR: The unknown.
LBDP: Yeah.
SR: Wanting to know.
LBDP: Yeah, the potential, the possibilities and...
SR: So you talked about living in London and still being drawn to the peripheries. Tell me about your time there.
LBDP: I lived in London for a year or something, something more. It was between 2018 and 2019. I didn't really want to go there, but at some point I needed to go. And yeah, I always see myself as a person like living in outside the cities and in these remote places. I was trying to understand, but when I arrived in London, I somehow felt at home because there was a lot to be explored there and like anywhere in parks or lanes and along the streets and... Or the, those environments that are somehow still enclosed or trapped into the city. So it was like a very, it was very interesting and useful, I would say, to test my idea and the different, the opposite side of the spectrum. So the wood of the Dolomites and in one of the biggest Metropolis in Europe.
SR: So what were you testing? What were you doing?
LBDP: I was working in a, like in different context. I was trying to apply my knowledge of foraging in parks and along the streets. There's a lot of fruit trees and herbs. I have a very nice, intelligent way of managing parks in London. So there's always a part that is left quite wild, wildish. I had, also I had the occasion to introduce people living there into, to these wild plants or to these fruit growing along the same streets they were walking or they were living. And they've never paid attention to what was there and to the fact that it's potentially edible. And that was very interesting to see the reaction.
SR: Okay. So this has been a thread that you've been developing for quite a long time.
LBDP: Yeah.
SR: That's lovely. So for... If you were to come to Venice and you wanted to go foraging, what would you do?
LBDP: Well, I shouldn't really promote foraging in Venice for a lot of reasons. So also most of the things we're working with, most of the plants we're working with. So we're doing it in a bit of a grey area because most of these plants and also the areas where they grow, which is the marshes, are protected, actually. So that's why we turn to private land. So we are very aware of this and we don't want to promote the mindless foraging or the mindless harvesting of these plants. But yeah, it's a good exercise to try to go even inside the historical center of Venice. We mostly work outside, like in other islands or in the mainland around the lagoon. But it's a very good exercise to do it while walking in the historical center of Venice.
LBDP: Because along the fondamenta, along the canals, there's a lot of plants growing. And more and more we see these plants, these salt-loving plants growing along the canals. And even like close, more and more close to the houses. So I wouldn't suggest foraging them. But also for, like safety reasons, because the water there is very polluted. But yeah, it's like sea forest, watch foraging or like plant watching [laughter]
SR: I was just curious. It was just a throwaway question, but I was kind of curious as to what you'd say now. What was your childhood like? Your childhood? Because I mean what you are, what you're describing a real kind of like, it's a, it's not childish at all, but it really taps into the inner child.
LBDP: It is. It is. It's probably something that missed in my childhood. I grew up in a city. So that's not something that you do or you don't really have this relation with, natural environment or what's natural in an environment. I always had occasion to go like outside in the, not much in the mountains, but in the hills. My mum is from small town in the hills in Friuli, so I spent like the summer at my grandparents house and that's where, I got in contact with plants mainly. But I can't see it coming from there actually. I don't know, I've never really reflected on this. It's more something that I missed, that it's an interest that it was part possibly during my childhood. But I, that I've never had the chance to actually pursue more.
LBDP: So that's a very good question for the future. We are in a very intense moment now, but, so there's a lot happening. The project is changing a lot is transforming, it's getting more and more structured and serious. There's still the three of us, but we are planning to grow more next year, we started an association and we are planning to develop more all the aspects of our work. So the agronomic side, trying to domesticate these plants to have more to work on more, fields, involve more farmers. And then to grow our community in terms of chefs and people that work with us, and to actually build this cultural related to these plants.
SR: Well, I think that sounds really exciting and I hope all the success for you 'cause it's really great to hear something so innovative and to taking such care of the world around us and teaching other people to take care too.
LBDP: Thank you. That's very nice.
SR: Yeah. Thank you for being part of it.
SR: Thank you for listening to the final episode of Art Destination Set in Venice. We will take a short break to start recording our next season in Lutruwita Tasmania. Please sign up to our fortnightly newsletter, follow artdestinations.podcast on Instagram, and follow us on your podcast hosting platform so you know when we'll be back. I'm your host Sarah Rhodes, Ciao for now.
