Powering Slow Fish

Today, the 18 of May, is a rainy day. This sky that seems to have an infinite amount of water waiting to fall down has also characterized my recent experience in at Slow Fish in Genova, where I stayed for almost three weeks. I was there because of my internship with Slow Food Promotion. The first time I went to the office for the interview, I was curious to better understand what was behind the organization of an event. I didn’t have a clear idea of what I really wanted to see, so I made myself available wherever I was needed the most, as long as it involved organizing events. I ended up in the logistics office, where there was no place for imagination. At least, this was what I thought.

I have to be grateful to the office in which I interned, because it gave me the chance to see the whole picture of an event. It was in my office that Slow Fish gained a foothold, at least under a logistic and structural point of view. We started to organize the space available for the event, mapping out the different areas such as the market, the street food area, the beer zone, etc. Nothing could be easier, I thought at first, wherever it fits best, there you can have your street food kiosks.

Nothing could be more wrong! Behind an event like Slow Fish, there are several obstacles to face. Imagination is easy, logistics and reality are not. When you visit a festival, you only see what your eyes want to see, and you hear only what your ears want to hear. In an event such as Slow Fish, you’re easily distracted by the multitude of smells, voices, and colors that surround you. Your belly asks for delicacies that your nose smells, and your curiosity drives you from one stand to another one. But there’s an element of this landscape that usually goes unnoticed: in order for your belly to ask for food, and for your ears to investigate each curiosity they have heard, there are some challenges that have been faced. Such as electricity. This edition, Slow Fish wasn’t hosted in the fair area of Genova, where it used to be, but in the Porto Antico, the old harbor. And in the main square, Piazza Caricamento, where all the street food was, there are no electric hook-ups. There is no place to connect an oven to an electric plug. No electricity means no food, and, generally, no event. In order to provide to the necessary amount of power needed, my colleagues and I spent hours trying to find a solution with the architect of the event. We considered several options before we found the solution: dozens and dozens of meters of electrical cables running from the nearest electrical substations to the different kiosks. Those cables were running over people’s head thanks to the construction of scaffolding called americane that enabled them to cross above the streets. One day, while I was visiting the street food area with my family, I pointed the structures out to them, asking if they knew what they were for. Their answers helped me realize that in the context of a fair, you are easily distracted and never ask yourself how everything stands and runs the way it is supposed to. You just enjoy it, standing in a queue, waiting to be served a cone full of fried fish and a cold beer.

Francesco Weber