Food Studio

“ We have fertile dreams, landscape-wide aspirations and determination to become autonomous from large-scale food systems. We wish to shape stable networks of producers and consumers that can support a regional economy whereby bread becomes the currency of resistance.”

Open Akker is a multi-species gathering upon a small plot (of land) in the Pajottenland – the land where Pieter Bruegel the Elder portrayed peasants in The Harvesters and The Magpie on the Gallows. A rassemblement of farmers, seeds, soil, birds and trees flanked by a high-speed train and two roads in proximity to a watermill, form the scene of a series of actions. In intimate relation, this constellation enables the shift of a fallow field to a “new commons” – a collectively farmed land dedicated to the propagation and multiplication of peasant seeds.

By hand and harrow, the soil of Open Akker has been prepared – a stage is set. A “collection” of twenty-five distinct varieties of peasant grains sown seed by seed by the association Li Mestère. On the same field, a “peasant” mix of wheat and rye (masteluin) is wildly scattered by De Groentelaar to make flour for “resistance bread” at the nearby mill. The plot resonates with different practices, temporalities and agencies by entangling millers with soils, seeds with late medieval paintings and observations with actions.

Read more; futurefarmers.com

Open Akker is commissioned by Bruegel’s Eye: Reconstructing the Landscape | DILBEEK