Earthworms            reed
                                             Architects
          Transmissions
       Debates
                           herons      Farmers
             A poet                            techno feminists
artists
                                   Seeds
           New Agrarian Rituals
 

In the Belly is an artistic platform and a call to action to reconsider our food systems and the interdependencies that shape them. As a functioning transport vessel which moves food from a network of peasant farmers in Pajottenland* into the belly of the European Capital city of Brussels, it brings small-scale, local farmers into contact with the global flow of goods and foreign trade.

Amidst the already present theater of the canal, a rassemblement of farmers, seeds, artists, soil, the canal, poets, electromagnetic frequencies, solar energy, architects and techno-disobedients form the scene of a series of actions. Moving upon an unconventional, wooden canal boat in intimate relation, this constellation enables new imaginaries - through a slow, reflective process of repair, resilience and reflection on our habits of agri-cultural production.

In the Belly... is facilitates the transition of local food transport away from diesel trucks to water transport using the already-in-place infrastructure of the Brussels-Charleroi canal. Lead farmer, Tijs Boelens of Degroentelaar farm coordinates food grown by twelve farms to be transported from Halle to Brussels two times per week. Bundles of food are sorted and packed and paraded through the city by bike onto the shelves of cooperative stores and into collective kitchens.

The first season sets off with a program of food delivery, workshops, performances, artworks and debates – a platform for connecting cultural and artistic production with local food systems.

• Patjottenland is the a region bordering the city of Brussels in Belgium where Pieter Bruegel the Elder portrayed peasants in The Harvesters and The Magpie on the Gallows.

A Constellation of Collaborators

A diverse group of people and beings have collaborated to shape and facilitate an ecology of creative platforms that make up In the Belly. The project can be seen as an ongoing group residency and platform for exchange, debate and transformation.

Founding Artist Constellation:

• Futurefarmers, Lead Artist, Gent, BE/San Francisco, US (Amy Franceschini, Artist & Lode Vranken, Architect/Philosopher)
• Inge Braeckman, Writer, Poet, Gent, BE
• Honoré δ'O, Artist, Gent, BE

Lead Farmer:

• Tijs Boelens, DeGroentelaar

Boat Design:

• Lode Vranken, Architect, Futurefarmers

Boat Building:

• Lode Vranken, Elias Peeters, Mose Lein, Oscar Van Geertruyden, Jonathan Zwiessler

Website:

• Futurefarmers, Art Direction, Design, BE San Francisco, USA
• Maëva Borg, Graphic Design, France, FR
• Jérémie Nuel, Graphic Design/Programmer, France, FR

Fonts:

• Autopia
• Hershey Noailles
• bianzhidai

Funding/Support

In the Belly… is funded in part by S+T+Arts In The City: Where Our Food Comes From, an initiative of the European Community. This support lays the foundation for the development of a permanent, shared infrastructure which provides a platform for durable, reliable food transport and cultural production. By connecting cultural and artistic programs with local food infrastructures, the project demonstrates new forms of action and policy making.

S+T+Arts Local Expert Group:

• Marieke De Munck, Curator, Viernulvier, Gent, BE
• Julie Lebrun, Communication, EIT Food, Food for Hospitals
• Lynn Tytgat, Head of weKONEK. Brussels, Vrije Universiteit Brussel
• Sandrine Vokaer, Brussel Leefmilieu, Good Food Brussels
• Marie-Carmen Bex, Deputy Director, Innoviris
• Carl Lachat, Food Technology, Safety & Health, Gent University
• Joost Dessein, Food Democracy + Systems, Gent University
• Marijke Dhaese, Food Policy Council, Gent University

Gluon Team:

• Christophe De Jaeger, Director
• Anne-Sophie Delaissé, Production
• Gaspard Berger, Education
• Willie-Marie Hermans, Project coordinator

Further/In-Kind Support:

• Grégory Castéra, Curator, KANAL-Centre Pompidou, Brussels
• BC Architects/BC Materials, Brussels, BE

Schedule

In the Belly departs from Halle, Belgium two times per week. See link to the Calendar page for Schedule.

• Thursday 01 August 2024

  8h
  Food Transport
  Halle, Belgium

Biographies

• Futurefarmers
  Lead Artist, San Francisco/Gent

  Futurefarmers is a working group founded in San Francisco in 1995. They are artists, architects, computer programmers, designers, farmers, scientists and anthropologists aligned through a common interest in creating frameworks of participation that facilitate encounter, exchange and tactile forms of inquiry. Their various practices coalesce in many forms - from the far reaching digital realms to the deeply rooted earthly domains. . Their temporary public art often evolves into permanent, durable programs which have influence on public policy and city design. Futurefarmers' work has been exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Solomon R. Guggenheim, New York; MAXXI | Museo Nazionale delle Arti del XXI Secolo, Rome.

• Tijs Boelens/DeGroentelaar
  Lead Farmer, Peppingen

  DeGroentelaar is a small farm and part of a Pajottenland Grain Network and a network of farms in Pajottenland who grow and distribute organic food to Brussels weekly. Founder, Tijs Boelens has dreamt of using the existing infrastructure of the canal for food transit and as an act of engagement with consumers.

• Caroline Profanter
  Sound Artist, Brussels, BE

  Caroline Profanter works in the fields of electroacoustic and acousmatic music as a composer and performer. She creates imaginary soundscapes and sonic narratives on the perceptional threshold of familiarity; using recorded sounds and noises taken from the context of the everyday, interweaved with electronically generated sound material often including feedback-systems and amplified objects, as well as multichannel speaker configurations. She collaborates frequently with other musicians and artists, and creates sound design for film and radio. She has performed in festivals such as Espace du Son, Wien Modern, Plage Sonore Le Havre, Sound Spaces, Transart Festival, The Acousmatic Project, Nuit Blanche Brussels, Semaine du Son, among others. She has released records on les albums claus, bb15, Takuroku and Iki Gaga. Caroline is part of the team of Q-O2 workspace for experimental music and sound art in Brussels.

• ooooo.be
  Artist, Techno-feminist Collective, Sailors, Antwerp, BE

  ooooo.be re-appropriates tools and wireless communications, to short circuit patriarchal and capitalist neoliberal technologies. They are a transuniversal constellation hosted by Marthe Van Dessel and create interfaces, devices & protocols to instigate our urban and institutional hardware & software. They engage in the administrative, cultural, socio-political dimension of personal and collective identities. By triggering intersubjective alliances she confronts the 'self & other' with the commons, co-authorship and the redistribution into the public domain.

• Inge Braeckman
  Writer, Poet, Gent, Belgium

  Inge Braeckman obtained a degree in Law and studied Germanic Languages. She has worked as a journalist and copywriter for the publishing house of art books, Ludion. During several years she wrote the exposition texts for Galerie De Zwarte Panter in Antwerp and art critics for ART Magazine. In 2009 she debuted with her first collection of poems Beeltenissen and since then she published more than 9 poetry books. She often works together with contemporary artists by combining their work of art with her poetry. In 2013 one of her poems was selected by Saskia J. Stuiveling for the 100 best poems of the VSB Poetry Prize. In 2016, she wrote a poem for Anton Zeilinger.

• Lode Vranken
  Lead Architect, Futurefarmers, Gent, Belgium

  Lode Vranken has been installing situations of renewed socio-spacial dynamics amidst Futurefarmers projects since 1993. He received his masters in a UN Course on Human Settlements + Architectural Philosophy from the KU Leuven, Belgium and began teaching in 2005 as a Ned delegate at The Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain and from 1993-94 at the Asian Institute for Technology in Bangkok, Thailand. Lode co-founded the architectural research coalition, De Bouwerij in Belgium focused on social living structures, passive housing, and zero-energy construction. He is also a partner of dearPigs in Belgium and a member of the The Ghent School for Metaphysics.

• Gosie Vervloessem
  Artist, Brussels

  https://gosievervloessem.com/

  Gosie Vervloessem's artistic research focuses on the position of the researcher in times of multiple crises. Her work faces the challenges that arise within this role, and looks for new ways of producing knowledge. Her practice is an ongoing quest on finding tools to relate to a world that is messy and chaotic. Therefore she juggles with and re-interprets the practices of cooking, digesting, co-digesting, immersion or osmosis, as tools to literally embody that relation. In scrutinizing this relationship she focuses mainly on the concept of nature and tries to unravel the ideas that underpin this concept. In doing that, she identifies herself as a Sick Detective, a character that involves the vegetal kingdom as a possible ally in her research. Her work is highly inspired by plant biology, comic books, horror movies.

Farms:

• Seizoensmaak, Londerzeel
• Perkuus, Sint-Pieters-Leeuw
• Daan Desmet, Halle
• MishMash
• Jos and Monique Vandersmissen, Halle
• Hof Seghers, Bever
• Jasper Vanopstal, Sint-Pieters-Leeuw
• Georges Van Lathem, Sint-Pieters-Leeuw
• Danny Billens, Gooik
• Marlies Billens, Gooik
• Neerhof, Dilbeek
• Plukplek, Ternat
• Terloft, Ternat
• Dubbeldoel, Gooik

Co-op’s/Restaurants:

• BLOUM - Épicerie
• Pois Chiche - Restaurant
• Kamilou - Restaurant
• Gasap Mazette + Jeremy Pontiff
• Hogue Cuury
• Eddie Boglons, Strombeek
• Eldoradis
• Mazette- Restaurant
• CABAS Cooperative
• Commune Racine
• The Barn
• Beescoop
• Belakker
• Belmundo
• Belcanto
• Belfood
• Herbéa
• Belcampus, Groote Eiland - Cooperative

Bicycle Transport:

• Recyclo, Brussels (Koen Berghmans)
• Groot Eiland, Brussels

Alliances/AFFINITIES/KIN

buratinas/nadine is a small solar-powered boat that functions as a short-term residency space. Artists are invited to explore Belgian waterways and to work with and in this specific landscape.

Contact

If you would like to use the boat for programming or inventive transport, please email us!

• Art related questions: info_AT_futurefarmers_DOT_com
• Farming Questions: tijsbtijs_AT_gmail_DOT_com

*You will have to copy and paste the mails into your mail application and replace AT with @ and DOT with a period.

A BOAT

“A significant strand in cognitive science would consider the ship not as a thing, nor even a collection of objectively existing thing parts, but rather as an organizational structure that has perceptual continuity.”

McGilvray, James. Chomsky: Language, Mind and Politics

A 13 x 3.7 meter wooden, flat bottomed, canal boat with water reed roof moves through the former swamplands of Brussels pointing to the past and to the future extending metaphors of cultivation and to larger ideas of self-reliance and the foregrounding of organic processes in the development of land use, social relations, and cultural forms.