Sjellik and the 75 years of Jan van Eyck Academie

 

The Travelling Farm Museum of Forgotten Skills is a participatory, mobile museum where artists, citizens, and farmers share stories about their relationship to food and the landscape. Comprised of The Outsiders collective in collaboration with Casco Art Institute, they operate vehicles that physically and symbolically convey ideas about food sovereignty, ecology, and relationality to different local publics. By visiting farms and food producers and connecting heritage skills to present challenges, they create tools for listening and dialogue that connect environmental care with art and critical pedagogies.

Travelling Farm Museum’s latest iteration centers around the figure of the mooswief (Limburg dialect for “vegetable woman”), an expression used to describe rural women who in the past would come to Maastricht to sell their goods at the weekly market. Each year a larger-than-life marionette of the mooswief is hoisted up a pole in the city’s market square to inaugurate the Carnival festive season. Just as Carnival celebrates the return of light and a renewed spring, the mooswief has come to symbolize fertility and a deep connection to the land. Shepherding her spirit along this journey are memories and lore of sjellik, a once ubiquitous but now largely disappeared local cruciferous vegetable.

Formerly a wagon covered in mirrors to blend into the surrounding landscape, the Travelling Farm Museum of Forgotten Skills now bears a kaleidoscopic image of the Maastricht city border and its neighboring farmlands. Accompanied by a soundscape of the countryside, The Outsiders move as mooswiefs through the public square, engaging those around them in a conversation about food, heritage, and the possibility for a common future.

For the 75th Jan van Eyck anniversary we cooked a communal meal together with the Food Lab and served to the guests. Here Sjellik was roasted on the bbq and served with asparagus and mushrooms. Further we took the Sjellik home and pickled the leaves. Here is the recipe: Take the sjellik leafs and wash them carefully. Remove the midribs by cutting them with a knife. Bring water to boil with a pinch of salt and add the leaves. Boil for 10 min. In the meantime prepare your pickling pots by sterilizing (also boiling in hot water) for 5 minutes. Include the tops of the pots. When ready reserve. When the leaves are boiled, zeef them and you can start to fill the pots by adding a spoon of sea salt, spoon of sugar, and herbs that you find interesting. Add vinagre. I added coriander seeds. You can also add garlic. When the pot is full add boiling water and close the pot with the tops. Be aware that all the superficies needs to be clean, otherwise microbes can enter and ruin the whole process. When the pot is full, turn it upside down and leave for a day. Conserve and cool places or refrigerate.

 

Ultradependent Public School(UPS) at BAK: Tales of Symbologies Here and Then, Now and There (Hussein Shikha and Sadrie Alves)

The carpet is a multilayered entity with many dimensions and functions, tangible and intangible. It carries stories and gathers people. Borrowing Foucault's idea of a heterotopia, the Persian carpet is also a plan-like representation of a Persian garden. Its motifs of the frame, central medallion and grid represent various architectural elements found in Persian gardens, such as the surrounding wall, central fountain, kiosk, and doorways. The carpet is also subjective map of a locality, a temporary home, and a space for gathering. In this workshop we will not only look at but see through a collectively generated textile. 
During this training, we will look into the ancient crafts and symbols of tapestries as well as woodblocks of different geographies. These art forms are surrounded by immaterial cultural heritages—symbolic ornaments, visual languages—that have been undermined by the modernist lens of less-is-more. 
Together, we will translate our surroundings into a collective composition, analogous to a tapestry. Through the use of different media, analog and digital, we translate our locality into a tangible vocabulary. The workshop consists of collective readings, screenings, visual exercises, time for reflection in small groups and the larger group, the crafting of a collective work, and a shared meal. This encounter is a space of theoretic insight and hands-on practice. 
Hospitality 
Collective vegan lunch from 12:00–13:00 hrs. Meal included in the enrollment fee. The abundance and variety of the menu depends on the luck of the b.ASIC a.CTIVIST k.ITCHEN’s dumpster dive. Asia Komarova, Anna Clara, Sankrit Kulmanochawong.

110% Oosterwold

Bewoners initiatief 110% Oosterwold stelt zich voor!

Wij zijn een groep bewoners in Oosterwold die een centrale plek missen voor ontmoeting en gezamenlijk gebruik. Vroeger kende we in Nederland de Meent, in het engels the Commons genoemd, waarmee een stuk onverdeeld gemeenschappelijk bezit bedoelt werd. Vaak een lap grond waarvan het gebruik ten dienste stond van de gemeenschap. Met ons initiatief onderzoeken we hoe een Meent in Oosterwold eruit zou kunnen zien. Dit najaar komt er een oproep vanuit de gemeente naar bewoners initiatieven voor archeologische percelen. Op veld H zijn meerdere kavels aangewezen als archeologisch perceel en wij zijn als initiatief al enkele maanden bezig met het maken van een plan voor het toekomstige beheer en gebruik van de kavels K en J, tussen de Platoweg en de Zonnelaan.

Om alvast een start te maken met wat er op deze kavels zou kunnen gebeuren organiseren we op 8 oktober een gevarieerd programma aan activiteiten rondom 110% Oosterwold. We brengen in beeld wat er al gebeurt aan bijzondere activiteiten en verzamelen de behoeften en ideeën van bewoners om de gewenste gemeenschappelijkheid te creëren op deze plek in Oosterwold. Want Oosterwold is meer dan een los verband van zelfbouwers en grondbezitters. 

We krijgen hierbij hulp van het Design Lab Agroforestry, bestaand uit het ontwerp bureau Circular Landscape en The Outsiders, initiatiefnemers van het Travelling Farm Museum of Forgotten Skills. Zij ondersteunen ons om zo veel mogelijk uit de dag te halen dat onze plannen kan voeden. Ook begeleiden zij ons in het maken voor een lange termijn visie voor de beide percelen waarmee we ons als bewoners tot de Gemeente zullen richten.

Het programma van 110% Oosterwold op 8 oktober bestaat uit een verzameling van diverse workshops, waaraan bezoekers gratis deel kunnen nemen. Een ‘walkshop” door de doorwaadbare zones, wildplukken, een ecologische kook workshop, fermenteren, composteren, broodbakken, houtbewerken en nog veel meer. Bovendien kan iedereen aan de dag bijdragen door zelf iets mee te nemen. Dit kan bijvoorbeeld de eigen oogst van de stadslandbouw zijn, een muziekinstrument, een foto of tekening. Bovendiennodigen we bewoners ook uit alvast na te denken over wat ze willen doen of betekenen voor het initiatief. Denk aan diensten en kennis zoals cursussen, organisatiewerk, hulp bij klussen, tuinieren, voedselverwerking, fondsenwerving en programmering.

Naast het verzamelen en in kaart brengen van van ideeën en wensen, maken we er bovenal een gezellige buurtdag van met een gevarieerd programma, muziek en eten. Door een chef-kok worden gerechten bereid met de producten die we meenemen uit onze eigen tuin. We besluiten de dag dan ook met een gezamenlijke maaltijd bij het vuur en life muziek. 

text by Theo Tagelaers

Tidal Bodies & Oceanic Cocktails | Studium Generale 2021

Studium Generale Rietveld Academie 2021–2022:

How can we liquefy our ways of being? How can we think from and with the ocean?

In 2021-2022 Studium Generale Rietveld Academie takes a deep dive into the ocean. Through the reflective surface and from our own liquid bodies, we imagine the ocean as a sensorium that feels, perceives, registers and creates.

Most of what happens in the ocean, we cannot perceive with our own senses. Yet we are doing enormous damage to it. The ocean should therefore also be considered a ‘critical zone’ threatened by human activities and greedy extractive economies.

If we take the ocean as a discontinuous and asynchronous time-space, this critical zone also includes histories of exploitation, fear and death: from transatlantic slave trade to contemporary boat refugees and coastal and islanders displaced by sea-level rise.

What is an ocean in terms of ideology? What kind of power relations are at work and how can we create a new sensitivity and awareness of what is outside our own sensory or biased system?

From another perspective, the ocean can also be experienced as a transformative and immersive space: a space of affect and metamorphosis in which bodies and identities become fluid, and in which human and non-human entities meet.

How can we liquefy our ways of being? How can we think from and with the ocean?

Oceanic Imaginaries 

8 December

Tidal Bodies / As the Tide Recedes
talk by Miek Zwamborn, with an oceanic cocktail composed and served by artist/ecological cook Asia Komarova

&

Tidal Bodies / Tidal Thinking
talk by Arjen Mulder, with an oceanic cocktail composed and served by artist/ecological cook Asia Komarova

Read more at studiumgenerale.rietveldacademie.nl

AGE OF WANDER “What is the nature of a 21st century ‘human’?” held in 2014.

This masterclass took place few years ago, but yesterday researching in my archives I found these pictures and decided to dedicate some time to un-dust these and give them a proper post. These are documentations of a 3-day masterclass led by Rachel Armstrong and Arne Hendriks, with my participantion as chef. 

Background

This masterclass raises questions that challenge our preconceptions about the nature of humanity in the 21st century. It investigates what a culture based on humans-as-ecology might be, in contrast to the idea of humans-as-machines that shapes our modern world. Four fundamental pillars of existence are explored during the masterclass namely: the body, technology, environment and community. Participants will be recruited from across the sciences and the humanities and work in groups to produce an alpha prototype of what it means to be an ‘ecological’ human. Their ideas and output of the masterclass will take the form of a real-estate1 brochure, where the value systems of ‘ecological’ humanity are expressed through the language of identity, land and desire that embodies the idea of a new production platform that underpins human development. Such an eventuality has radical implications for the way we imagine, work and live in the world in ways that are not bound by the logic of industrialization but are life- promoting, stochastic, may be shaped using existing techniques in agriculture and gardening and as such, are also directly compatible with Nature. Indeed, the outputs of this new production platform are post-natural or, “icological fabrics”2 – that interweave nature, technology and culture – and may form the building blocks of 21st century communities and cities that can be combined in ways that are as rich and diverse in terms of their environmental performance as life itself.

Masterclass

The masterclass will take participants on a journey that may change their view of what it means to be human in the 21st century at a time of ecological crisis by providing them with a set of conceptual tools. These take the form of ecological frameworks that will enable participants to explore and critique the boundaries of their own practices from first principles using a new existence framework. Specifically, each participant will work together in groups, where they encounter a series of challenges that reframe the way we may think about our lives, and ourselves so that we are no longer ‘machine-humans’ but ‘ecological- humans’. Groups will be allocated guides that are dedicated to each of the four specific themes to provide continuity throughout the masterclass should participants decide to switch between projects. Perspectives from invited inspiring speakers will also be proposed, who will share their research and insights into working in ways that may be considered ‘icological’ – where the convergence of design, nature and technology provide new opportunities for making and being.

Fundamental philosophical assumptions about the nature of reality will be raised as well as the nature of the human body, how this may be extended through assemblage-based technology and what kinds of practices constitute a meaningful ecological existence with our environment. These forms of human expression will then be interwoven into a notion of a community using architectural tactics that deal with spatial programs to shape the idea of a place from which new images of future humans may appear. Underpinning these transformations is the ‘assemblage’, which currently exists as a philosophical proposition outlined by Giles Deleuze and Felix Guattari3.

Assemblages are groupings of empowered materials, which differ from the matter from which machines are composed, as they exist at far from equilibrium states. Assemblages can therefore be considered as a technology, which possesses a degree of autonomy that can be shaped using ‘lifelike’ strategies that are drawn from the emerging field of natural computing. In this masterclass the assemblage is regarded as a real operating system that underpins an alternative technological platform than machines. Participants will be invited to respond to the series of talks, presentations and discussions they will encounter during the masterclass by producing a real- estate brochure themed on one of four possible sites: 8 billion city, a starship, Venice beach or a suburban home, which raise new possibilities for living. Each of these projects invites participants to live and colonize them as ecological humans by articulating their own new understanding of the body, environment, technology and community. The final brochures are aimed to be disseminated further, to reach new audiences and bring more people into the discussion about how we may positively and creatively bring about radical modes of thought and support new technological platforms to shape human development. The positioning these brochures is also hoped to reveal how a new relationship with Nature can influence our value systems, economy, notions of landownership and power structures. Indeed, we anticipate that the outcomes of these discussions may help inspire new research into alternative platforms for human development that have different impacts on our ecological systems than our modern, industrial technologies.

1 “Real-estate” refers to the modern system for valuing land, which is based on 2D geometrically ascribed property plots. The term is used in the context of this masterclass as a provocation to rewrite the rules of the relationship between humans and environment in the 21st century, which will be based on discussions about land, property, nonhuman communities and soil fertility as a means of opening up new dialogues about existing power structures in cities and ways that existing power inequalities may be addressed. The final document of the mastercllass may therefore be considered an ironic comment on modern cities, which we hope will invite further discussion.

2 “Icological” is derived from the notion of ‘instrumented ecology’, which differs from post-natural by being propositional about the kinds of fabrics produced by the entanglement of natural and artificial systems, rather than adopting a term that defines a system by what it is ‘not’.
3 Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. 1979. Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia (Athlone Contemporary European Thinkers). London: The Athlone Press.

the Basic Activist Kitchen (the BAK)

BAK, basis voor actuele kunst in Utrecht announces Trainings for the Not-Yet, a project convened by artist Jeanne van Heeswijk. An exhibition that unfolds through a series of trainings in civic engagement, radical collectivity, and active empowerment, the project brings together collaborators from various fields and communities to create and practice alternative imaginings of being together in the face of the pressing emergencies that shape the world today.


Throughout the course of Trainings for the Not-Yet, the Basic Activist Kitchen (the BAK) organizes daily cooking sessions and meals for trainings participants as well as for passers-by. The Basic Activist Kitchen is run by a group of Utrecht-based activists, artists, and researchers with backgrounds in theatre, art, squatting, organizing, anthropology, history, and gender studies, in collaboration with Food for Good, Asia Komarova (Casco and the Outsiders), M. G. Lostia, Willem Geertman Art and Culture Collective, Revolutionaire Eenheid, Sayonara Stutgard, 3k, and others, initiated by Jeanne van Heeswijk.