Seasonal Matters Rural Relations

Belgian booklaunch of Seasonal Matters Rural Relations (Onomatopee, 2024) by Seasonal Neighbours, with exhibition, at The Green Corridor, Brussels
14/09/2024, 16-20h

Seasonal Neighbours examines the ongoing material and social transformations of cohabitation in contemporary rural areas. The collective, based in the EU, brings together artists, designers, chefs, writers and architects whose practices touch on aspects of seasonality, temporary cohabitation, agricultural practices, cultural memory, and practices of belonging.
We share a methodology of learning-by-doing and strive for a practice of neighbouring. The collaboration results predominantly in site-specific interventions, rituals, audiovisual works and other forms, engaging us with places and their inhabitants.

What if traditional relationships, between humans and non-humans, plants, the weather and the rhythm of the seasons, are being lost in the race for profit and for increasingly intensive methods of production? In sixteen contributions, interdisciplinary collective Seasonal Neighbours attempts to observe, record and archive narratives for the existing, disappearing and newly emerging relationships in the countryside.

Both theoretical and artistic contributions serve as a guide for perceiving the agricultural landscape. As a collage-style field-guide, Seasonal Matters Rural Relations (Onomatopee, 2024) addresses the role that artistic practices and fieldwork can play in the complexity of rural relations. The collective reflects on storytelling and the variety of themes from the evolution of metabolisms in horticulture, the changing rural landscape, stories of European labor migration to questions of robotisation and upscaling, domesticity, public space, new forms of citizenship, etc.

Seasonal Matters Rural Relations, (Field)notes on rhythms, rituals and cohabitation gathers different nuances of the agricultural realities experienced by the collective members in their neighbouring processes, working side by side with farmers, seasonal workers, plants and crops. These fieldwork experiences helped shape a variety of contributions moving from visual essays to graphic collages, poems, maps, short stories, picking songs and musical scores to intercultural recipes with wild plants.

With contributions by: Claire Chassot, Jonathan De Maeyer, Anastasia Eggers, Fernando Garcia-Dory (Inland), Ciel Grommen, Pia Jacques, Carolien Lubberhuizen, Ioana Lupascu, Sébastian Marot, Karolina Michalik, Yacinth Pos, Caroline Profanter, Maximiliaan Royakkers, Ines Marita Schaerer, Arnd Spahn, Mona Thijs and Ewoud Vermote.

Practical

16u00: opening exposition ‘Rhythms of the Field’ + handout edition
16u30: Fieldwork Poems by Ioana Lupascu
16u45: Introduction to the book + ‘Rhythms of the Field’ by Max, Claire and Ils
17u00: presentation of ‘Seeding Noise’ by Ines Marita & Caroline Profanter
17u15: Talk by Carolien van Lubberhuizen+Q&A
18u00: drinks

Address

The Green Corridor
Rue de Bosnie 102
1060 Sint-Gilles

This event is supported by the Dutch Embassy in Belgium. The book is co-sponsored by the Flemish Community and Grensverleggers