Study Trip #1: Puglia

We are now back from our first Study Trip to Puglia. My program includes 3 of these trips: the first one in Italy, second in Europe and third outside of Europe.  And though this first excursion wasn’t too far from home, the Southern region of the country felt like a whole different world, compared to the North. 

Our week was completely full: every day we visited different, local, food producers. Both small and large scale cheese, wine, pasta, bread, tomato, olive oil and flour productions. These visits were mostly incredible because they were things I would never have done on my own – I wouldn’t have had the access or interest. 

I was definitely pushed out of my comfort zone: it isn’t exactly a vegetarian’s idea of a good time to visit baby pigs grazing in a field and then go straight to the slaughter house where they will end up. Luckily, there is a Muslim man in my class who felt equally as uncomfortable, so the two of us opted to wait in the office of the butcher shop – with a good wifi connection and a clear conscience.

But otherwise, we learned a lot and ate just as much. We explored tomato greenhouses, learned about the competing methods of bread production in Matera and Altamura and witnessed the coagulation and formation of mozzarella. We sampled olive oil, Primitivo wine, focaccia, burrata & artichokes. It was truly a celebration of the food culture in the South. 

The highlight of the trip was definitely our last day in Bari. Also the sunniest day of the week, we had an amazing food tour and visit of the city. We saw women making traditional orecchiette on big wooden tables on the streets, tasted freshly caught sea urchins and clams and enjoyed homemade pistachio gelato. The sky was perfectly blue on this final day in Puglia and, during our free time, sitting by the Adriatic Sea in the sun was one of the happiest moments of the trip

Part of our trip involved interviewing the producers we visited and taking pictures of their workers and factories, in order to create a final ‘information artwork’. I was assigned to interview at the industrial cereal mill we toured, and my artwork was focused on the women making orecchiette in Bari. The latter part proved to be difficult: the old woman I wanted to photograph made it clear that she would not be behind the lens unless a few purchases were made from her stall. So, a big bag of Taralli in hand, I eventually managed to get the shots I needed as she warily smiled over her trays of pasta. Below is the final information art and the website we created can be viewed here: http://www.thelexicon.org/puglia/

Thanks for reading!

-N