“We are doing what we call a crazy tea-cocktail party,” says restaurateur, style maven and artistic instigator Michèle Lamy of her temporary restaurant-on-water, Bargenale, created for the 2015 Venice Biennale. 

The labor of love is the latest incarnation in the changeable island of misfit toys that Lamy has been assembling on and off since her days as a designer and then owner of seminal Los Angeles hangout Les Deux Café, and features artwork by her daughter Scarlett Rouge, and a recording studio presided over by super-producer James Lavelle and his bandmates from UNKLE. In between takes on a track she is recording with Lavelle and her pal A$AP Rocky, Lamy caught up with NOWNESS to lift the lid on the happening in Barbara Anastacio's film. 

Chef Dieuveil Malonga, whom Lamy met through their mutual friend Mos Def, entertains the shifting group of luminaries from the world of art, money and media, with his particular spin on afro-fusion cuisine – such as flower-adorned islands of local shellfish in a Venetian style lagoon of sweet potato sauce. “People, coming from all over the world, really found themselves in the food,” says Malonga. “It became a voyage around the world together – and they are feeding me back.”

Based on the Villa Malaparte in Capri, where Bardot swanned around in Godard’s Le Mepris, architect David Leclerc’s designs for Lamy’s barge left exposed the scaffolding that held it all together – but Lamy’s expectations for the salon-on-water are somewhat less clear. What she hoped for, and still does, is that her series of cultural gatherings – begun with the ferry boat-slash-restaurant at Frieze London last year – will inspire the participants to begin a dialogue with far-reaching effect, from Cyprus to Israel and Palestine. “Perhaps even someone who is going to change the way you see things," she says. “Let us start the story that will change the world.”

Chris Wallace is Senior Editor at Interview Magazine.