978-94-90322-24-3

Mind Design - Niels Schrader

208

15,5 x 22 cm

paperback

In 2010 Jap Sam Books and myvillages.org formed an editorial alliance to produce a new series of books.

This publication has been made possible by the Stiftung Niedersachen Hannover, the Städtische Galerie Nordhorn and the Mondriaan Foundation.

Release date: April/May 2011

English

There are few topics that evoke so many different notions and images as do farmers and agriculture. The publication Images of Farming explores the production of these images in the fields of culture and myth formation, publicity and the sciences, the cultural heritage, and the fine arts. 

myvillages.org is an international artist initiative, founded in 2003 by Kathrin Böhm (D/UK), Wapke Feenstra (NL) and Antje Schiffers (D). The interest of this international foundation is the rural as a space for and of cultural production. The collective aims of myvillages.org are informed by the contextual nature of the individual practices of Böhm, Feenstra and Schiffers and the autobiographical fact that they all come from small villages.

myvillages.org activities range from small scale informal presentations to long term collaborative research projects, from work in private spaces to public conferences, from exhibitions to publications and from personal questions to public debate.

Contributors:

Iris Andraschek (1963, Horn, Lower Austria) lives in Vienna and Modring. She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and is a member of the Wiener Secession und Foto Fluss. She has been awarded numerous prizes and grants and has featured in various exhibitions. She specializes in projects and artworks in public spaces.

Doris Berger (1972, Linz, Austria) is an art historian, currently working freelance as a writer, curator and editor (Getty Research Institute) in Los Angeles. Until 2004, she was Director of the Kunstverein Wolfsburg, where she curated numerous exhibitions and worked on collaborative art projects, such as I am in the Steppe, Imagining LA, Touristic Gazes, and Appropriated Spaces. She was a lecturer at different universities in Germany before moving to Los Angeles in 2008. Her PhD thesis Projizierte Kunstgeschichte: Mythen und Images in den Filmbiografien über Jackson Pollock und Jean-Michel Basquiat (2009) was published in 2009.

Susanne Cockrell and Ted Purves create social art projects that investigate the overlay of urban and rural systems on the lives of specific communities. They ask questions about the nature of people and places in relation to socio-economics, history and local ecology. The collaboration began with a two and a half year public project called Temescal Amity Works (2004-2007), which facilitated and documented the exchange of backyard produce, conversation and collective biography in the Temescal Neighbourhood of Oakland, CA. In addition to their collaborative practice, they are both professors at California College of the Arts (CCA) in San Francisco.

Marloes Eskens (1982) is a Dutch architectural historian with a broad interest in several related fields, including architectural theory, urban planning, landscape architecture, cultural geography and environmental psychology. In 2008-2009 she worked as a junior researcher at the Fries Museum in Leeuwarden on the exhibition project about the nineteenth-century Frisian architect Willem Cornelis de Groot (1853-1939). She is also (co-)author of several books and articles on the architecture and life of Willem Cornelis de Groot. At present, she is doing a research master's in Art History and Archaeology at the University of Groningen where she is specializing in the fields of built heritage and the history of cultural landscapes. 

Fernando Garcia Dory is a neo-pastoral artist and agro-ecologist. His work focuses on themes affecting current relationships between culture and nature within the framework of the landscape, the rural environment, desires and expectations related to aspects of identity, the crisis, utopia and social
change. He often uses self-organizing strategies, initiating collaborative processes of 'soziale plastik'. He studied Fine Arts at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and completed his PhD in Agroecology at the Institute for Peasant Studies (ISEC). He has developed projects with diverse institutions including the Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona/MACBA, the Folkecentre for Renewal Energies in Denmark, the Carnegie Mellon Gallery in Pittsburgh, Laboral Centro de Arte and Medialab Madrid. He is currently working on INLAND project with Museo Reina Sofia (Madrid) and resides in the Grizedale Arts Centre (UK).

Pietsie Feenstra graduated in communication studies and Spanish at the University of Groningen (Netherlands), then specialized in film studies at various European universities (Nijmegen, Madrid and Paris). She obtained her doctor's degree in 2001 at the department of Recherches Cinématographiques et Audiovisuelle at the Sorbonne Nouvelle, with a dissertation entitled La construction de nouvelles figures mythiques dans le cinema de l'après-franquisme (1975-1995). She currently teaches film studies at the Sorbonne Nouvelle University III in Paris. Her main specializations are myth and film and contemporary Spanish films. She is a member of several European research groups.

Wapke Feenstra is a founding member of the artist initiative myvillages.org. She lives and works in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Her works explore the direct physical and mental environment by tapping into local knowledge. She developed Former Farmland, an on-going project that was part of the Ars Electronica Festival 2008 in Linz and of Landschaft 2.0 in the Edith Russ Haus in Oldenburg.
Since 2010, Wapke Feenstra has been exploring the landscape in Limburg in Belgium and tracks the processing and transport routes of different primary products. She grew up on a dairy farm in North Frisia.  www.wapke.nl

Amy Franceschini is a pollinator who creates formats for exchange and production. An overarching theme in her work is a perceived conflict between humans and nature. In 1995 Amy founded Future Farmers, an international collective of artists, and in 2004, she co-founded Free Soil, an international collective of artists, activists, researchers, and gardeners who work together to propose alternatives to the social, political and environmental organization of space. Amy Franceschini's solo and collaborative work has been exhibited internationally at ZKM, Whitney Museum, the New York Museum of Modern Art and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco. She received her BFA from San Francisco State University and her MFA from Stanford. www.futurefarmers.com and www.free-soil.org

Alexandra Gaba-van Dongen is an art-historian educated at Leiden University. She has been working at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, since 1986, where she began as assistant curator. Since 1992 she has been curator of pre-industrial design and has organized many temporary exhibitions and authored publications on the subject of artefacts in relation to the visual arts. She currently works on ALMA or Afbeelding Linkt met Artefact (Images Linked to Artefacts), a website launched in 2010. ALMA links religious, decorative and domestic artefacts and utensils from the pre- and early industrial period (1400-1900) to depictions of the same types of objects in contemporary paintings and prints.

Simone Helmle is a researcher and lecturer at the Department of Agricultural Communication and Extension, part of the Faculty of Agriculture at the University of Hohenheim (Stuttgart/Germany). She has published  articles on organic farming ('Fortschrittlich - das Image von Bio-Betrieben in Deutschland', 'Öko-Pioniere im sozialen Wandel'), rural women and the image of farming.

Hansjörg Küster (1956, Frankfurt am Main) studied biology at the University of Stuttgart-Hohenheim. He was awarded a PhD at the same university in 1985 and gained his habilitation at Munich University in 1992. He has been Professor of Plant Ecology at the Geobotanical Institute of Leibniz University, Hanover, since 1998 and President of the Lower Saxon Heimatbund since 2004. Important publications: Geschichte der Landschaft in Mitteleuropa, third edition (Munich: 1999); Geschichte des Waldes, third edition (Munich: 2008); Kleine Kulturgeschichte der Gewürze, third edition (Munich: 2003); Die Ostsee, second edition (Munich: 2004); Das ist Ökologie. Die biologischen Grundlagen unserer Existenz (Munich: 2005); Die Elbe (Munich: 2007); Schöne Aussichten. Kleine Geschichte der Landschaft (Munich: 2009).

Hubert Lobnig (1962, Völkermarkt, Carinthia) lives in Vienna and Modring. He studied at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna and was the recipient of a state grant for photography. He has participated in numerous exhibitions and projects at home and abroad and established the Tigerpark and Tigerpark Room in Vienna.

Jack Luiten is responsible for media relations at LTO Nederland (Dutch Organization for Agriculture and Horticulture), which protects the interests of the farming sector. In 2009 and 2010 Jack Luiten was press liaison officer and one of the media spokesmen on Q fever for LTO member-organizations. It was essential to convince the public that the farmers (goat and sheep) were doing everything possible in 2008 and 2009 to get the disease under control. Eventually, vaccination (only limited supplies of serum were available in 2009) was the means of preventing further spread and lowering the number of cases among humans.          

Robert-Jan Muller is an art-historian. He works as an advisor on arts and graphic design, and as a writer and curator in both fields. In 2003 his monography/biography on the painter Erik Andriesse was published. Since 2004 he works as a curator and project coordinator for KCO, an art organization in the eastern province of Overijssel. Robert-Jan Muller gave a keynote in 2005 at the Village Convention (organized by myvillages.org) in Ditchling on projects in Polder Mastenbroek, Overijssel NL. He is an editor for AICA International Association of Art Critics.

Claudia Neu (Aachen, 1967) graduated in Home Economics from the University of Bonn in 1993 and lectured there from1994 till 2000. She was assistant professor at the University of Rostock from 2001 till 2008, during which time she wrote her PhD thesis on the social mobility of collective farmers. She spent the next two years as a senior researcher at the Johann Heinrich von Thünen-Institut (Bundesforschungsanstalt für ländliche Räume) in Braunschweig. Since 2009 she has lived in Mönchengladbach, where she is Professor of Sociology and Empirical Social Research at the Niederrhein University of Applied Science. She specializes in the analysis of social structure, demography and rural sociology, with particular emphasis on the effect of the decay of rural infrastructure on rural communities.

Roger Owen graduated from the University of Wales Aberystwyth Drama Department in 1987 and pursued a PhD in Welsh-language Theatre since the Second World War, while also working sporadically as a professional actor. He currently teaches Theatre and Performance Studies at Aberystwyth University. Issues of interest are: Contemporary Welsh-language Theatre, Performance Analysis, Performance Writing, Theatre and Society and Analysis of Space. Roger Owen is from a farming family, a background he regularly uses to illustrate his academic lectures.

Ted Purves and Susanne Cockrell create social art projects that investigate the overlay of urban and rural systems on the lives of specific communities. They ask questions about the nature of people and places in relation to socio-economics, history and local ecology. The collaboration began with a two and a half year public project called Temescal Amity Works (2004-2007), which facilitated and documented the exchange of backyard produce, conversation and collective biography in the Temescal Neighbourhood of Oakland, CA. In addition to their collaborative practice, they are both professors at California College of the Arts (CCA) in San Francisco. Ted Purves was founder of the CCA's MFA Area for Social Practice and continues to be one of the leading professors for the central workshop within that curriculum.

Paul Roncken  is a landscape curator, writer and cultural critic. He is a  University Teacher and Coordinator of the Bachelor's Programme in Landscape Architecture - Wageningen University. His research theme focuses on the sublime as an underrated aesthetic motive to design landscapes. Under the name 'Volle Hoop Reiziger – full hope traveller' he gathers professionals to act in public art projects such as 'art at the A50 highway' and 'thousand year wood'.

Maarten Rooijakkers is a pig-farmer in Aarle-Rixtel, the Netherlands. He also chairs ZLTO, the pig-farmers association in the south of the Netherlands. ZTLO is an association of 18,000 members that promotes the interests of farmers and horticulturalists in North Brabant, Zeeland and South Gelderland.

Antje Schiffers is a founding member of myvillages.org. She was a flower illustrator in Mexico, a travelling painter in Italy, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kirgistan and Uzbekistan, company artist in the tire industry and ambassador and correspondent in the Gallery for Contemporary Art in Leipzig. She participated in barter trades with farmers and with corporate consultants and has worked together with Thomas Sprenger since 2005. Antje Schiffers grew up in Heiligendorf and now lives in Berlin. www.antjeschiffers.de

Adam Sutherland has been Director of Grizedale Arts since 1999. He was previously Director of art.tm, a visual arts organization in rural Scotland. Adam leads the core development of Grizedale Arts - curating off-site projects, writing and pig-farming. Grizedale Arts describes its activities as follows: 'We run a programme of events, projects, residencies and activity which seeks to develop the contemporary arts in new directions, away from the romantic and modern assumptions of culture, and to make artists more useful in this complex and multiple-cultural environment. GA has neither studios nor exhibition space, but rather provides artists with the opportunity to realize projects using the social, cultural and economic networks of the area and beyond. Each year, circa six research and development grants are awarded to artists and creative practitioners, to develop ideas for projects in relation to the extraordinary environment of the Lake District. The GA programme actively engages with the complexities of the rural situation. Rather than aiming to create a finished art product we place an emphasis on process and the dissemination of ideas to a wider audience. We work alongside the local community to develop and realize the work with artists, and consequently the projects often challenge the artists as much as the local (participatory) audience.' www.grizedale.org