Futurefarmers

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 material entanglements, from food policy and public transport infrastructures to rural farming and global seed networks.

Founded in San Francisco in 1995 as a design studio with an artist residency platform, Futurefarmers has since evolved into a working group that forms around situational or collaborative constellations of actors in various locations (most recently in Belgium and Seattle). As a general rule, they approach art as a space of openness: an area of ‘not knowing’, outside of knowledge, truth and ideology. Instead, their aim is to create a gap — a place to nurture, a hole in society, from which it becomes possible to ask: ‘Who is part of our assemblage?’ (Nico Dockx & Pascal Gielen). The public art projects that emerge from this research might unfold over years and across multiple continents – such as in Seed Journey (2016–2018), a mobile seed library that sailed a rotating selection of heritage grains from Northern Europe back to their lands of origin in the Middle East and wove connections between cultural institutions and activists — or evolve into self-sustaining organisations supported by local actors, such as in Flatbread Society (2012–2018 and ongoing).

In the Belly… transposes these concerns to an urban context. Part public sculpture, part conceptual laboratory and part cargo vessel, it uses the existing infrastructure of the canal as a site for envisioning – and enacting – alternative food distribution networks in Brussels. Twice weekly, organic products from farms on the periphery of the city are shipped to designated drop-off points along the canal, where they are picked up by bicycle couriers and delivered directly to local cooperatives, organic shops and kitchens. During trips up and down the canal, the barge – with or without cargo — is an open platform, a heterotypic space that hosts workshops, events and live radio. As with all Futurefarmers projects, the ethos is resolutely ‘low-tech’, ‘craft-oriented’ and ‘open-source’; collaboration is key.

EB: (Ezra Babski) Before discussing your project for the canal, I’d like to acknowledge that Futurefarmers has existed for 30 years. Where does the group stand now in relation to its earlier configurations?

AF: (Amy Franceschini) In many ways, it’s not that different. Futurefarmers grew out of Atlas magazine, the first online magazine that documented photographers working on stories for National Geographic and Geo. Atlas was different – it highlighted in-depth, nuanced photography and published stories that would usually be overlooked or heavily edited in more traditional magazines. At the time, the internet was still in its early stages, and as designers, we had to figure out how to create visual essays with the limited tools available. The idea of using the internet was counterintuitive – why put images online when you could make beautiful, tactile prints? That approach still holds true for Futurefarmers: we work with tools we invent ourselves, even if they’re impractical. When we form working constellations, we try to create a gathering of diverse skill sets and perspectives, which enable us to expand the collective knowledge or skills of the group.

On the other hand, the material setting of Futurefarmers has also changed over the years. We no longer have the design studio, which means a different modality of work. Back then, we’d work together, go on walks, eat, cook together — that’s how ideas would emerge. The studio space shaped Futurefarmers in a particular way. But since people have been displaced due to economic pressures — Michael Swaine is in Seattle, I moved to Belgium — we’ve had to constantly reinvent ourselves in different locations. We’re also older now; we can’t just drop everything and go embark on a multi-year adventure like we used to. We are still trying to figure out how we can adapt. At the moment, we are more selective in what we work on with the intention of working more locally on long-term projects.

EB: Your residency project at Gluon in Brussels, In the Belly…, is conceived as an artistic platform and a call to action to reconsider our food systems and the interdependencies they create. How did the project come about?

AF: It started when we met Tijs Boelens through the Seed Journey project in 2016. Those activities quickly translated into a work, Open Akker, for the public art programme Bruegel Awakens, for which we asked the municipality of Dilbeek if they had fallow land available for ‘Participatory Plant Breeding’ [1] – the practice of slowly adapting seeds to new environments. Tijs, who runs a small-scale organic farm in the Pajottenland, wanted to revive an ancient grain he had discovered during the Seed Journey. On this fallow land, Open Akker was inaugurated with a wild scattering of Tijs’ seeds and a selection of 24 varieties with the working group Li Maestri.

Through this process, we got into closer relation with the farming practices and concerns of Brussels’ peripheral countryside. One of the challenges faced by small, organic farmers in the Pajottenland is delivery of food to the city: time, traffic, fuel… Since they are in such close proximity to the Brussels-Charleroi Canal, Tijs has always fantasised about having a boat to move the food into the city. Into the belly… of the city.

TK: (Thessa Krüger) What about the poetic title, In the Belly…?

AF: The title, like the project, is a framework and also a play on words. The ellipsis leaves space to fill depending on the context or people engaging the boat. In the Belly…Electromagnetism, In the Belly…a Debate, In the Belly… a Farmer, to give a few examples. It also imagines the ‘belly’ of the city as both a beast and 1.2 million stomachs.

We imagined the project as a signal that enters the belly of the city — the capital of the EU, a fertile stage where so many decisions are made — and the canal as a constant presence running through the it, circulating goods and materials. Brussels had a mandate that 30 per cent of local food should be organic by 2025 [2], but they missed the mark. Now it’s been pushed to 2035. Cities often set mandates as a strategy to direct efforts. Our role has been to identify these mandates (in the city) and weave partnerships and ideas from the field — politicians often don’t have time to articulate things practically. In the case of In the Belly…, we found overlaps in the efforts of Good Food Brussels, Good Move, Port of Brussels, ULB, Kanal-Centre Pompidou, food cooperatives and farmers’ efforts. The project is a way of illuminating these mandates and the many challenges of using the canal to distribute food. Without ‘seeing’ this demonstrated in In the Belly…, the involved parties wouldn’t have had a precedent or reference for dealing with those challenges. So in a way our projects often point to the lack of a certain kind of work that could be done in urban planning — the work of connecting dots and turning ideas into action.

The ‘image’ of the boat is key, the unconventional form. It’s an example of what we call ‘relational objects’, things that immediately raise questions like, ‘What is this? Why is this here? Why are we using this material?’ Questions that lead to action, not only discourse.

TK: You mentioned Tijs as one of the initiators. Who else is involved in the project?

AF: The project is an assembly of farmers, city dwellers, waterways; apples, carrots, the soil clinging to farmers’ boots; harbourmasters, lock operators and port authorities; seeds, wind, sediments, histories, frequencies… and many more who deserve mention here. The boat builders, Oscar Vangeertruyden, Mose Lein, Jonathan Zweissler. The boat architect, Lode Vranken. The reeds on the roof supplied by BC Materials. It’s the captains who steer the boat, like Tom Torbeyns. Radio operators, cyberfeminists like artist Marthe Van Dessel (ooooo.be), who also stepped in as a sailor. The movers and transformer of apples in our Mouvement du Pommes: Diede Roosens, Max Patron, Gosie Vervloessem, Maryam Alirezabeigi, Léa Beaubois. Then there are the actors who participated in the public programme. We organised a debate between politicians, farmers, academics, activists, Radio Panic, Good Food Brussel and Brussels Environment. We wanted to bring everyone together around the question: How can this boat and the canal function as an agricultural commons?

Practically, Gluon was an essential partner and fundraiser for the boat, with Christophe De Jaeger, Willie-Marie Hermans and the educational team involved from the start. They approached Futurefarmers to apply for the STARTS funds. Gent-based writer and poet Inge Braeckman and artist Honoré δ’O were part of our ‘Founding Artist Constellation’. Finally, two other crucial partners are Groot Eiland, a cooperative to which Tijs distributes, and our friend Koen Berghmans, coordinator of the bike delivery service Recyclo.

EB: How does loading the boat work in practice?

AF: There are about ten farmers involved, with Tijs coordinating and collecting the food at his farm, DeGroentelaar. It usually happens at night – after the harvest, the farmers gather at his place to sort everything. It’s a beautiful moment, like a choreography. Farmers are shouting, calling out figures, meanwhile others are weighing produce and loading it into a van according to the delivery schedule. It’s a highly orderly chaos – five bodies in motion, bright colours and songs lifting the operational to the near transcendent. It’s something really special. Later on, we did the sorting process on the boat to take advantage of the three hours of travel to enter the city, since it takes the farmers about three hours to sort the produce. 

One of the outcomes of the project was a strengthening of relations between old and new partners — and of credibility. The project was a proof of concept: we managed the logistics with farmers, bikes and canal transport and even built a functioning, legal boat! The unending patience, persistence and humour of Lode Vranken… Now we need to figure out how to make it financially sustainable. There’s an ongoing conversation happening between Good Food Brussels, Sandrine Vokaer of Brussels Leefmilieu, Groot Eiland, GoodMove Brussels and others about this.

TK: The concept of the commons refers to something, a resource, that is accessible, used and shared without ownership. You encourage politicians, farmers and others to participate in your project, and the group continues to grow. How does authorship function in your work? How do you navigate the tension between individual contributions and the collective ‘ownership’ of an artwork?

LV: (Lode Vranken) I think there’s still a long way to go in art with regard to this issue. Imagine if this project paved the way for legislation that would allow smaller boats to sail on the canal – would you want to claim credit for that achievement as an artist?

There’s something compelling about projects, especially those undertaken collectively and concerning the commons, that show the importance of abandoning authorship. The artwork, the thing itself makes it possible for you to step away; it takes over the authorship. Then that thing becomes the main actor in your play, your story, your trajectory. It is the movement of authorship that changes society, by redefining the relationship between initiators, artworks and people.

AF: It’s an interesting question. For this particular working constellation, we worked with classical artists, farmers, an architect, city planners and a poet, all of whom work quite differently in terms of where and how they are active and their ambitions for art. I often think that we sometimes didn’t understand each other’s practices, but bringing these various ways of working together expands the notion of what art and authorship can be. For example, Honoré imagined the boat as a poetic-shamanistic signal with the potential to change the world, while I question how much the image alone can carry a project. I think of the practical questions – like the fact that we need more captains to steer the boat right now. But the project is all of this and ultimately about relations and relating in new ways.

LV: It depends on what your goal is. If it’s poetry, it’s poetry.

AF: It’s nice that, even amongst ourselves, we all have different ways of thinking about the boat. And that the boat itself can operate in different ways depending on how people imagine and engage with it. When we invite people in, it’s always a response to them wanting something. For me, the project really gets interesting when people start inviting themselves into it and claiming it. If we can make the framework open enough in the beginning, people will feel a sense of agency to participate and collectively decide on the future of the boat. Futurefarmers seeds the project with programmes and then it continues through word of mouth or radio — people might start saying to each other, ‘We have to keep this going, I heard the debate on the radio. How can I participate?’ The radio people want to use the boat as a studio because it’s cool to be on the canal, broadcasting on this channel. The boat supplies a practical and poetic framework that mobilises imaginaries.

EB: The context of Brussels as the de facto capital of the EU seems significant. While the project doesn’t have an explicit, direct political message, it does seem to resonate with certain critiques of what some perceive as top-down agricultural regimes imposed by indifferent European technocrats. Is that a reasonable interpretation? 

AF: That’s definitely a conversation that could be started, but it’s not coming from Futurefarmers. ‘In the Belly…’ invites questions of how, where and who creates policy. It’s a demonstration – a signal, a possibility. And it highlights many other aspects that are important, such as the challenges of getting food into cities on a smaller scale, access to food, farmers rights, and so on. This might raise questions about big companies with massive distribution networks – perhaps they are more ‘efficient’ – but we want to make space for the complexity inherent in these systems and create space to negotiate and imagine together.

That sense of openness has been crucial in the temporal and social durability of our past projects. People often want definitions – What’s the aim? What’s the mission? – and it can be frustrating when we don’t give clear answers to those questions. Of course we work from underlying ideas or orientations, but if you close off too many avenues, especially in the early stages, you foreclose the possibility of surprising yourself.