in, around, through, from the Pasture 🏇
Inspired by the ubiquity of horses along the trail, we began to take an interest in the concept of “horsification”, a dynamic in the Flemish countryside where farms and their adjacent agricultural lands are turning into residential villas and horse meadows, causing land prices to rise sharply. At the same time, the few operative farms still existing in the area house a much larger number of animals that remain invisible in the landscape.
As a collective exploring contemporary agriculture and its marginalised voices, we turned our attention to the animals living in the region —those visible, and those kept out of sight. We observed which creatures roam freely and where access is curtailed, and, in conversation with the people of Zwalm—those living with or from farm animals—uncovered a range of reasons behind these boundaries. From hygiene regulations to protection from predators, the motivations are varied, and each draws its own line across the land.
How can the territorial practices of animals reveal unbalanced ways of accessing land ?
During our monthly walks, we saw sheep’s wool stuck in the barbed wire, observed pigs making nests in the pigsty, listened to chickens in the run, and smelled horse manure along the pasture. Drawing from how animals state their presence–by leaving traces or producing sounds, we create spatial interventions that stage different forms of access to the land, wishing to reveal the absentees and the hidden.
The project is a response to an invitation of Plan B to create a collective artwork to be shown during the festival Kunst&Zwalm in August 2025, based on a yearlong observation of the landscape of Zwalm.
More information: website Kunst&Zwalm︎︎︎
As a collective exploring contemporary agriculture and its marginalised voices, we turned our attention to the animals living in the region —those visible, and those kept out of sight. We observed which creatures roam freely and where access is curtailed, and, in conversation with the people of Zwalm—those living with or from farm animals—uncovered a range of reasons behind these boundaries. From hygiene regulations to protection from predators, the motivations are varied, and each draws its own line across the land.
How can the territorial practices of animals reveal unbalanced ways of accessing land ?
During our monthly walks, we saw sheep’s wool stuck in the barbed wire, observed pigs making nests in the pigsty, listened to chickens in the run, and smelled horse manure along the pasture. Drawing from how animals state their presence–by leaving traces or producing sounds, we create spatial interventions that stage different forms of access to the land, wishing to reveal the absentees and the hidden.
The project is a response to an invitation of Plan B to create a collective artwork to be shown during the festival Kunst&Zwalm in August 2025, based on a yearlong observation of the landscape of Zwalm.
More information: website Kunst&Zwalm︎︎︎
Poster design and photo by Ioana
Rural Relation Writing Club
Contributors: Ioana Lupascu
What stories take root in rural relations—and how might writing help us trace them?
A slow-growing series of writing workshops exploring rural life, memory, and imagination. Each session centres on a theme—kinship, grief, or harvest—and invites participants to write from personal experience, collective rituals, and everyday observations.
Gatherings follow a simple rhythm: we eat together, write through a series of gentle prompts, and share what we choose to. The space is informal, welcoming, and open to anyone curious about rural storytelling in all its forms and languages—no writing experience needed.
Initiated and organised by Ioana from Seasonal Neighbours in collaboration with Myvillages, the group grows from the belief that rural stories deserve time, attention, and collective care.
You can reach me at writing.rural.relations@gmail.com
A slow-growing series of writing workshops exploring rural life, memory, and imagination. Each session centres on a theme—kinship, grief, or harvest—and invites participants to write from personal experience, collective rituals, and everyday observations.
Gatherings follow a simple rhythm: we eat together, write through a series of gentle prompts, and share what we choose to. The space is informal, welcoming, and open to anyone curious about rural storytelling in all its forms and languages—no writing experience needed.
Initiated and organised by Ioana from Seasonal Neighbours in collaboration with Myvillages, the group grows from the belief that rural stories deserve time, attention, and collective care.
You can reach me at writing.rural.relations@gmail.com
✧ Rotterdam Writing Sessions Overview ✧
#1 — Neighbours
Theme: Kinship, feuds, friendships, and everyday ties
Date: 27 March 2025, 18.00 - 20.30
Dish: Pilaf with cabbage salad and dill
Focus: Explored the emotional and social bonds that shape proximity—how rural and urban neighbours relate, remember, and sometimes clash.
#2 — Rituals of Grief and Mourning
Theme: Loss, rituals, and shared memories
Date: 10 April 2025, 18.00 - 20.30
Dish: Tomato Pea Stew
Focus: Attuned to the quieter layers of grief—personal, collective, and environmental. Writing as a way to hold absence and remembrance.
#3 — Sowing
Theme: Seeds, soil, and the working hands
Date: 8 May 2025, 18.00 - 20.30
Dish: Roasted Paprika Stew
Focus: Looked at rural labour and the temporalities of sowing—what is planted, passed on, or left dormant.
#4 — Kitchens, Cooking & Labour
Theme: Recipes, routines, and relational care
Date: 29 May 2025, 18.00 - 20.30
Dish: Bean Salad
Focus: Thinking with food, preparation, and domestic work as sites of memory, connection, and artistic method.
#5 —Visitors: Those Who Come and Go
Theme: Hospitality, intrusion, welcome, and distance
Dish: TBC
Date: 2 July 2025, 18.00 - 20.30
Focus: Exploring the rhythms of arrival and departure—how visitors shape the spaces they enter, how we host or guard, and what movements tell us about belonging, care, and boundaries.
#6 — Creatures of the Night: Soil, Fur, Feather
Theme: Ecologies shaped by farming, wildness, and cohabitation
Dish: TBC
Date: 6 August 2025, 18.00 - 20.30
Focus: Attuning to the lives that move alongside us—seen and unseen. From burrowing animals to night sounds, we’ll write through the traces of shared landscapes, feral relations, and more-than-human presence.
Images by Kelly Donckers & Jonathan De Maeyer
Ghosts in Town
Event on the 22nd of Octobre 2023 in Wortel Dorp (Be), as part of “dorpsmakersfestival” organised by Ar-Tur, platform for architecture and space in the Kempen.
Contributors: Jonathan De Maeyer, Ioana Lupascu, Claire Chassot & Tijana Petrović
What can we do as village dramaturgs in Wortel?
How are/can rural conditions in western and eastern Europe (be) linked?
What makes a house a home?
"Come here, come here!" Her voice carried across the street, beckoning those who knew her.
In the parking lot of De Guld Café in Wortel a slightly taller-than-legal house on wheels stood motionless after a long journey. Its sharp and light grey exterior is a strange invitation for snooping around.
Four individuals stumbled diligently to make this space feel like home, cleaning, wiping, hanging drawings and folding maps. They took breaks for coffee and cigarettes, making the space a little messier. They shyly called the passersby from the Sunday church service or the cafe visitors to join, but there was little avail, and that was also alright. The setting was there as an open invitation.
To the right, next to the bike parking area, a wide canvas displayed a printed image from Bucovina, marking the space between the street and the parking lot. You could see from both sides this atypical landscape had taken residence between two trees. Behind it, bar tables were draped with wine-stained cloths, further, you could spot an open car trunk supermarket refreshments - juices and water. There was no backstage to this parking lot dramaturgy, the stage-like spots set up for intimate chit-chat, snacking, sipping drawing, and hanging out. The air was a simmering scent of coffee, tea, and deliciously hard homemade chocolate cookies.
And then there were five, R stopped in sight of the hanging landscape, and then they joined in helping out. "Come here, come here!" Her voice carried across the parking again, beckoning those who heard her to join in a photo together. And then there were eight, six, twelve, twenty, seventeen, or more.
It rained, maybe for the best. A small group sheltered inside the house on wheels, pushing the Kempen-printed landscape further inside to make space for each other. She spoke about her connection to this place, its history and Ar-tur. Another small group took Polaroid photos of the foreign landscape, drying dripped photos on the clothes. Others stumbled around, in search of nothing in particular while enjoying some snacks.
Sometime past one in the afternoon, under the tone of Andreea’s voice songs from Bucovina were sung. The audience joined in a dancing circle, a hora they call it. This dance is about spinning in circles while holding hands as a big group, the proximity is both awkward and endearing. Some scattered, some spun, and a lot of them took photos and smiled.
Many thanks to Ar-Tur for organising this opportunity, to Gheorghiță Macovei from Sint-Jan Baptistkerk, the collective minds of Seasonal Neighbours, Edith Wouters, Ciel Grommen, Maximiliaan Royakkers, Annelies Hofmans, Sien Beyens, Bo Struyf, Zus & Peter Ouwerkerk from Dorpscafé De Guld, Dirk Vanhaute. There are many others that have helped in visible and invisible ways. We are grateful to have met you.
© Selma Gurbuz
Migrating Seasons
Contributor: Anastasia Eggers
Can a farmers’ almanac become a tool to explore the distorted nature of post-seasonal agricultural practices?
The farmer’s almanac is a traditional calendar documenting the rhythm of the agricultural year including knowledge on sowing dates, tide tables, and weather forecasting. However, due to global trade and the modernization of agricultural technology, the knowledge of this almanac became obsolete or at least out-of-tune, as well as the traditional harvest celebrations and rituals.
Migrating Seasons is an attempt to redraw the farmers’ almanac according to the contemporary post-seasonal world, where the growing, harvesting, and consuming of food is no longer dependent on natural factors. The project looks at agricultural practices and their interdependence with phenomena such as the trans-European movement of workers and goods, international politics, labour rights, and energy supply. Several events representing crucial aspects of modern agriculture are highlighted on the timeline of the year. Can they become the subject of new celebrations and rituals that introduce the invisible realities behind our food system?
During the Seasonal Neighbours group exposition, a first two timelines/rituals were explored:
The Eggplant Relay
Every year during week 44 the "olympic fire" of the aubergine season is passed on from Westland (Netherlands) to Almería (Spain) to mark the switch of the seasons between Europe’s two biggest exporters of aubergines. Looking at how the season is directed by economic aspects, and what are the logistics making this switch possible, the project follows the aubergine season and its pathways and traces in Europe.
Bread and Salt*
On the occasion of the arrival of seasonal workers on Flevoland’s farms, locals reflect on their ideas on temporary habitation in the countryside by collecting objects that will be presented to the workers as a welcoming gift. The exhibition in Z33 was an in-between station for the objects that will be passed on to the workers at the beginning of the season in 2022.
*Bread and Salt (Bulgarian: хляб и сол / Polish: chlebem I solą / Russian: Хлеб-соль) is a welcoming ceremony in several cultures that is mostly know by its Slavic names. Guests are welcomed with bread and salt, bread representing wealth and prosperity, and salt is associated with friendship.
Biography Anastasia Eggers Made possible by a grant from the Creative Industries Fund NL.
CHŁOPI
Contributor: Karolina Michalik
How can I explore representations of “Polskość” (Polishness) through the lense of migratory seasonal labour in the European countryside?
In Poland, harvest festivals called Dożynki were celebrated as early as the 16th century. Originally a folkloric event, the rural communities celebrated a year of harsh labour on the field with dance, songs, and art; specifically the weaving of a wreath (a wieniec) in the form of a crown from local grain harvests.
Looking to the contemporary forms of these celebrations as a public representation of the modern Polish rural identity, I observed folklore being used as a colourful tool of political agency: enabling and maintaining a selective interpretation of the past and present based on nostalgic, religious and land-rooted patriotism. Contemporary versions of rural culture, including migratory seasonal work, are excluded from this narrative.
My goal is to create a wieniec, that will be qualified to enter the competition for The Most Beautiful Wieniec Dożynkowy at the annual Presidential Dożynki hosted in Warsaw. This creation process is an attempt to broaden the folkloric representations of contemporary Polish rural identity; a hybrid construct entangled between strong notions of tradition and locality, and Poland’s engagement within the complexities of the European agricultural system. By doing so, it also seeks to debate the role of traditional artefacts as democratic tools for representing multidirectional narratives of exchange between history, surroundings, and communities.
Exposition: Z33 (Hasselt, BE) - 30 January 2022 > 17 April 2022
At the Seasonal Neighbours group exhibition in Z33 I presented the metal skeleton of the wieniec that will enter in the Presidential Dożynki 2022. The “architecture of the body” is one of the voting criteria (0-5 points) which refers to the overall form of the wieniec. While adhering to the guidelines provided in the contest rulebook, the form of this wieniec symbolizes my interpretation of work in contemporary European agriculture.
Biography Karolina Michalik