Futurefarmers
The Space of Possibility
The walking, crawling, jogging, flying and swimming denizens of the Belgian capital might notice a new presence this spring on the Brussels-Charleroi Canal: a solar-powered sailing vessel, something more than a boat. Twice a week, as night falls, a movement begins in Halle, a Flemish city south-west of Brussels that the canal crosses. Apples, carrots, eggplants, potatoes, onions and other goods harvested from various fields in the Pajottenland travel through the hands of ten farmers towards an oddly shaped barge moored at the canal’s edge. Under the light of the moon, they sing and shout: ‘Twaalf wortels voor Groot Eiland!’ Others measure out the right amounts of oranges, carrots and fennel, sorted and packed according to the delivery schedule, and carefully load them into the bobbing structure. It’s a scene of organised chaos, a choreography of bellowing and bustling, stacking and shoving. It’s the opera of the night.
The vessel, the farmers and the canal are all part of In the Belly…, a project commissioned by Gluon, the Brussels-based platform for art, science and technology, as part of the European STARTS in the City residency programme. The driving force is a group known as Futurefarmers, a loose but stable international alliance of artists, designers, architects, anthropologists, writers, computer programmers and farmers whose socially engaged projects offer poetic disassembly of our social and mater (…)
