Notes from Areal VI: village dramaturgy
The sixth Areaal meeting was a collaboration with AR-TUR, a platform for architecture and space. AR-TUR welcomed the network in the context of the Dorpsmakersfestival (Village Makers Festival), in which Seasonal Neighbours, Breg Horemans / TAAT, Maxime Vancoillie and Amber Vermaete set to work with the Kempen region. On 22 October, Seasonal Neighbours and Maxime Vancoillie shared their process with the network.
The international collective around seasonal work, Seasonal Neighbours, brought their 'House of Seasonal Neighbours' to Wortel. Together with visual artist Tijana Petrović, they immersed themselves in living together in the rural context of the Kempen. Based on the question 'How can a village adopt a different policy from new perspectives that takes into account the different temporary flows of residents who coexist?', they settled right on the axis that connects the church, which is used by the Romanian community, with the village café. Their reflections and encounters resulted in embroidered handkerchiefs with quotes from interviews on the theme. The gathering culminated in a concert of Romanian music. The village square became a place for unusual encounters.
Photographs © Kelly Donckers
Not far away, in the colony of Merksplas, Maxime Vancoillie is at work. In her proposal 'Kalenderkringen' (Calendar Circles), Maxime wants to make the cyclical movement(s) of elements from the village visible (again) and set them in motion. She uses three figures for this: the calendar of observation (time), the circle ditch (space) and the circle rituals (action). In this way, she is working on a conversation format that enables us to enter into meaningful relationships with environmental elements such as heather flowers and their cycle. Within the tree circle at the cemetery, Maxime reported on her first attempt to engage in conversation with local experts using the conversation format.
A more detailed report of the day can be read here on the AR-TUR website.
Photographs © Kelly Donckers
ABOUT AREAAL
Areaal is a learning network focused on artistic practices outside the city. In 2022/23, Areaal will consist of the architecture and space platform AR-TUR, the outdoor network, the art space for co-creation, craft and diversity Manoeuvre & laboratory for contemporary transdisciplinary art nadine, the loose-fixed art collective Seasonal Neighbours, the practice for soft power and radical imagination DEVET, and the performance-spatial collective TAAT. In addition to the core partners of the network, artists participating in the Veldwerk programme supported by Kunstenplatform PLAN B and those interested in the specific theme of the day are invited to participate in the meetings.
Each meeting is organised around a theme chosen by one of the participants in the network. The aim of these meetings is to share practices and experiences with creating and supporting artistic work outside the city with each other and with the affiliated artists. This creates a fabric of shared knowledge around art and/in rural areas and hopefully generates more fertile ground for artistic practices in rural environments.
ORGANISER
As a cultural platform for architecture and space, AR-TUR has a major impact on the spatial quality of village and small town environments. This has a positive effect on the quality of life for residents. As a coach and co-creator, AR-TUR activates the relevant players, stimulates synergies and collaborates with all players in the field. The playing field – the free cultural space – gives AR-TUR the opportunity to think and act broadly and uninhibitedly.
Seasonal Neighbours is a loose-knit collective focused on different forms of seasonality and ways of living together in rural Europe. Through fieldwork, art and design interventions, conversations with stakeholders, critical representations and written research, this subject is explored in a myriad of themes. From the evolution of horticultural metabolism, the rural landscape and European labour migration stories, to questions about economies of scale in the agricultural sector, domesticity, public space, new forms of citizenship, etc.
Maxime Vancoillie is a spatial creator from Ghent. She has a spatial and artistic research practice and works as a teaching assistant in the Interior Architecture programme at KU Leuven.