How it all started

In 2017 I was commissioned to do a project for the Grand Tour (Nou Côclea) and I carried oak saplings, grown out of acorns from the forest in the Netherlands where I was born, from the French-Spanish border to the Montserrat mountains, planting them on the way. It was a group walk, organised well and towards the end of our 3 week walk we spent a night and a morning at CACiS, a centre for Contemporary Art and Sustainability in the Catalan countryside, housed in and around former limestone ovens. I regretted we couldn’t stay longer, feeling the magic and sincerity of the place. When I saw they had an Open Call for a residency period I wrote them this:


“Perhaps the people who most easily perceive that nature is sacred are a few religious people, artists of great sensitivity, and children. With their compassion they often perceive, at the very least, that nature is something beyond human intervention and that it should be revered. The poets who write about nature, the painters who turn it into works of art, the people who compose music, the sculptors ….. I would like to believe that they are the ones drawn to what is truly meaningful. But if an artist’s understanding of nature is unclear, no matter how keen his sensitivity, no matter how refined his technique, he will eventually find himself lost.”
 
- Masanobu Fukuoka, Sowing seeds in the desert

Masanobu Fukuoka was a Japanese farmer and philosopher celebrated for his natural farming and re-vegetation of desertified lands. He advocated no-till, no-herbicide farming methods traditional to many indigenous cultures, from which he created a particular method of farming, commonly referred to as "natural farming" or "do-nothing farming”.

His book “The One-Straw Revolution” became a bestseller and is one of the founding documents of the alternative food movement. His philosophy has become integrated in Permaculture Design thinking and his ideas to use seed balls for desertification and achieve global food security by using natural farming are still revolutionary. At the basis of all of this was a wish to provide a deep and renewed understanding of the relationship between human beings and nature.

Natural farming isn’t about farming in the first place. Mr. Fukuoka says: “The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings.” What strikes me in that line is that I always thought about my artistic practice in a similar way. It is not about making art. It is about creating meaning, becoming a better human being, cultivate understanding about the world and accepting the mystery of it.

Throughout the years, my art practise has developed into a way of being that embraces activism, ecology, slowness, sustainability. Everything I do I call art but it is most of all about being in the world in the best way possible. Being close to the world, close to nature, making connections, researching and writing, observing, growing ideas.

My work is usually site-specific and although I often work from a clear starting point or plan, I work best when I make detours and when place and time show me the way. In the last 6 years my focus has been on long distance performative walks, moving through the world in a 3 piece walking suit (or business suit), carrying all I need on my back, sleeping in the forest, surviving in nature, talking to people on the road and embroidering their stories on my suit but also communicating them online straight away with the help of mobile internet and a small solar panel to power my devices. I incorporate small projects on the road and make exhibitions and give lectures and workshops afterwards.

For a long time I’ve been wanting to spend some time researching the similarities between Fukuoka’s farming and my way of making art. I can only imagine doing that the way he worked. “The best planning is no planning” he said which doesn’t mean starting from nothing but leaving as much room open for what can happen by trying different things in an intuitive way, listening to and looking at nature, supporting the process by becoming of a place and listening to it instead of trying to put your stamp on it. I can only imagine doing it by using seed balls like he did. Mixing different seeds and adding nutrients to stimulate them and clay to protect them. When you spread them around randomly, the seeds that “work best” in the environment where they find themselves will grow.

My seeds are the media I use, the skills I’ve got and some ideas I’ve always wanted to work on. Photography, video, drawing, performance, writing, walking, cooking, collecting wild edible greens, gardening, constructing, connecting, observing, sensing. Making paper out of vegetable waste, using oak galls to make ink and use it for drawing, walk the surroundings (or maybe just the same path, or maybe even just a circle around a tree) again and again and again and again, backwards, forwards, with eyes closed, at daytime, at nighttime, alone, with others, building huts that are really altars (although I don’t know for what yet), making murals with moss, or completely different things. The history of the site, the nature and available resources will be the main inspiration sources, keeping Fukuoka’s ideas in the back of my mind at all times.

What I want to propose is an open research process where I will document the process and some parts of the research might develop into bigger “projects”. I’ve got no idea what it will look like. I know there will be a lot of small results, beautiful failures, unexpected outcomes and knowing from experience: in the end everything will fall in place and be connected. There might be a big installation or a performance or a collection of small works or something that looks like a laboratory set-up. There will be a lot of writing and hopefully I’ve come a bit closer to connecting natural farming and art (or seeing how they have always been connected).

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This is how it started. They said yes. And I got a little nervous about my plans. Stupid. The nerves I mean, not my plans. Or maybe I should say unplans. Let's see what will happen. May 26 - June 26 on location. And here, before that and during, where we will meet in words and images.