Who does the country(side) belong to?

#1 Terra Libera #2 Extractivism #3 Photofestival Enschede

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Contents

Foreword 2 Caroline Breunesse Introduction 7 Josien Beltman Terra Libera – the free land?

Josien Beltman

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Extractivism 28 Photofestival Enschede 38 To Twente in company of artistic researchers: times and tidings of the landscape Peter Sonderen

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Tanja Engelberts Budhaditya Chattopadhyay Wapke Feenstra Jonas Staal

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Works on display 76 Colophon 96

Foreword Caroline Breunesse, Managing Director, Rijksmuseum Twenthe

One of the works on show in the project Who does the countryside belong to? at Rijksmuseum Twenthe is a pamphlet from 1930, the year the museum was founded. p.19 The pamphlet is a reaction to the rapid development of agriculture at the time, intended as a voice for the preservation of Twente’s nature and culture. It offers advice like: ‘Guard the hedgerows around your pastures and fields.

They serve as nesting grounds and refuge for birds that help eradicate pests.’ And: ‘Keep out unsightly advertising where possible. Tend to your farmyard and your flowers. They spark joy and give credit to you and your surroundings.’

The pamphlet shows that the debate on the use of the land is as timeless as it is timely. Where one has always aimed to exploit and develop the land for profit, another has always striven to preserve it and let nature take its course. The pamphlet was signed by the boards of cultural heritage association Oudheidkamer Twente, Natural History Museum Natura Docet, Het Oversticht and the director of the Rijksmuseum Twente. I wonder whether I would consider signing such a pamphlet today in my capacity as director.

Should we as a museum call on people to change their behaviour? Wouldn’t that seem a bit patronising?

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Perhaps we should find inspiration instead in another work on display: a poster by the Christelijke Plattelands Jongeren (Dutch Christian Rural Youths), who protested against pollution of the countryside in 1973. It shows them demonstrating with signs like ‘Once upon a time... there wasn’t any trash’, ‘No garbage’, and ‘We want to keep living here for a while’. Should we as a museum be a bit more activist? Should I participate in protests in my capacity as director?

Through the Who does the countryside belong to? project, we choose to participate in the dialogue; not through pamphlets or protests, but through exhibitions, debates and lectures. We aim to bring issues up for discussion, to serve as a platform for debate and reflection on current issues.

Because the issues of the day, the current events and the topics discussed by politicians and over the dinner table also belong in the museum. We are not blind to what happens outside our walls. There are a lot of people already living in our small country, and soon there will be even more. Will we still all fit in the future? Where will we find room to live, work, relax, or just breathe?

In the search for answers to these questions, it is good to know that we have artists on our side. Because they are the ones who can visualise our world, and make us think.

This project and publication offer information to feed the dialogue. There is no single answer to the question of who the countrysite belongs to, of course, but I think it mainly belongs to the next generation. To me, the countrysite belongs to young people, because young people own the future. So in everything we do, let’s think beyond the boundaries of our own time, and try to become good ancestors for future generations.

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#1 Terra Libera

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Introduction Josien Beltman

We live in a time when old certainties falter and new developments come in quick succession. The impact of climate change is penetrating our lives, even as the energy transition gathers steam. In the Netherlands, the nitrogen crisis confronts us with the downside of industrialized agriculture, while globally, geopolitical developments show how vulnerable our food supply is. We’re seeing major societal shifts—deeply interconnected changes that cause tensions to rise. Competing interests are exposed, nowhere in such sharp relief as out in the country.

How do we deal with land when it’s in short supply?

Do we build, or farm, or return the land to nature? And what effect do wind turbines or solar farms have on the landscape? All these dilemmas first appear in the countryside. But the country is also where solutions can be found and the future secured. What do we want that future to look like? And how do we get there without losing each other in the process? Who does the countryside belong to?

These developments and questions form the impetus for Rijksmuseum Twenthe to look to rural areas. From the independent position of the arts, we hope to contribute to the conversation on these pressing issues. The manifestation Who does the countryside belong to? opens the dialogue with three exhibitions, an extensive program of activities, and the opportunity for artistic research.

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#1 Terra Libera

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Terra Libera As a museum, we can look beyond the latest spectacle and zoom out, placing current developments in a wider historical context. With the Terra Libera exhibition (“the free land”), we do this by tracing the roots of the relationship we have with land today. Why do we deal with land the way we do? Why do we have monoculture crops and nitrogen pollution? Why do we view nature and agriculture as separate worlds? How did we get here and what worldview made it possible?

In Terra Libera, artworks old and new provide insight into how Western peoples over the centuries have cultivated the land and made it serve their own purposes. That’s a way of doing things that stems from an anthropocentric view of the world, a view with roots in early Christianity where man sees himself as the center of existence. Both the positive and negative effects—higher yields and prosperity on the one hand, and harm to the environment and colonialism on the other, to name but a few—are explored in Terra Libera using old maps and prints, paintings, drawings, photographs, and video installations.

Artistic research And finally, we at Rijksmuseum Twenthe went in a new direction for this project, inviting artists to carry out artistic studies in our part of the country. It was important for the museum that this project reach out to rural areas in the vicinity. We wanted to connect with the dilemmas facing the people of rural Twente in their daily lives and the larger themes involved. And artists can play an important role here. From their relatively independent position, artists can cast certain issues in a new light and draw connections between seemingly disparate fields of knowledge.

The museum invited Budhaditya Chattopadhyay, Tanja Engelberts, Wapke Feenstra, and Jonas Staal to do field research in Twente and the surrounding area in the months leading up to the manifestation. The artists visited key sites, learned about the region’s past and present, listened to the landscape, dove into the archives, and most of all, spoke with area residents and experts. The four artists’ studies culminated in four art installations for the Terra Libera and Extractivism exhibitions. Thanks to support from the Mondriaan Fund, the museum is able to acquire these works for the collection. You can learn more about the installations and the artistic studies that inspired them later in this publication.

Extractivism A second exhibition, entitled Extractivism, goes deeper into the effects of land use and the extraction of natural resources. Many of the minerals and other resources we depend on in our daily lives—from fuel for the car to the cobalt in our cell phones—are found in places far away or out of sight. In Extractivism, twelve contemporary artists and artist collectives use their work to make the traces left by the extraction of these resources visible to us and tangible. What are the consequences for the landscape? And what is the economic, social, and political impact of how we use land and natural resources today?

Public dialogue The question Who does the countryside belong to? is one we put to ourselves and the artists, but also to the public. After all, one aim of the project is to contribute to public dialogue. The exhibitions themselves prompt public discussion, of course, as do the various activities. We also held gatherings with a great number of artists, designers, policymakers, farmers, scientists, politicians, landowners, nature conservationists, members of the public, and museum visitors, to explore the countryside’s past, present, and future. With this publication, we hope to continue the conversation.

Photo exhibition The third exhibition that’s part of Who does the countryside belong to? is also part of the city’s biennial photography event, Photofestival Enschede. On display are a series of photos by Natascha Libbert and a series

by Toon Koehorst. Natascha traversed the globe for her series Undermined to photograph places where human activity has left deep scars in the landscape. The result is a series of surreal and stunning photos with a dark undercurrent. Toon Koehorst is fascinated by the massive role technology plays in Dutch agriculture. In his Substrate series, Toon shows the high-tech side of operating a modern farm—a reality far removed from any romantic notions about a farmer’s deep connection to the land and the soil.

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#1 Terra Libera

#1 Terra Libera

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Terra Libera – the free land?

Josien Beltman Josien Beltman is Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at Rijksmuseum Twenthe.

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Who does the land belong to? To all of us? To those who can claim ownership? To the Creator? Or does land belong only to itself? The answer depends on your perspective.

Early civilizations didn’t see themselves as possessing the land; their worldviews were more animistic. The natural world for these people was alive and had a soul. Gods and spirits dwelled in rivers, stones, and forests, and were to be respected. But the rise of Christianity brought something revolutionary: the earth was declared dead and soulless.

The Bible spoke of only one God, who gave people power and dominion over the earth. God’s message in the Book of Genesis was to Go forth and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and every living thing that moves upon the earth.

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Diego Valadés Mexico 1533 - c. 1582 Italy Rhetorica Christiana, The Great Chain of Being, 1579 engraving. courtesy the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München, 4 Hom. 2211

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Abel Rodríguez Cahuinarí, Colombia 1941 El Arbol de la Vida y la Abundancia (The Tree of Life and Plenty), 2020 acrylic on paper. Collection Teylers Museum, Haarlem. Gift of Marc-Jan van Laake and Ellen Gevers

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Ruler over the earth According to the Bible, everything in the universe has its place in the grand scheme of things. This idea is represented as the great chain of being. 1 In a 16th-century print of such a chain, we see God portrayed at the top, as almighty ruler, then people, followed by the “soulless” animals and trees and plants.

At the bottom, we find everything that’s considered “lifeless,” such as water, rocks, and the ground.

From the moment Western man saw himself as ruling the earth, he stepped outside the natural order.

He no longer considered himself as part of nature, but above it. This worldview determined how land was claimed and cultivated, and how natural resources were utilized. Land and nature had to first and foremost prove useful to humans.

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Anthropocentric worldview As Europeans colonized other parts of the world and converted people to Christianity, this worldview spread. And now in our own time four centuries later, anthropocentrism—where people place themselves at the center of existence—is dominant around the globe, infusing every aspect of our consciousness.

That’s not to say, however, that other perspectives on people’s place in the world don’t still exist.

Colombian artist Abel Rodríguez reveals a very different worldview in his drawings of The Tree of Life and Plenty. 2 Rodríguez is a member of the Nonuya, an indigenous people of the Colombian Amazon. In the eyes of the Nonuya, nature has a soul and humans are part of the natural order. The artist’s drawing of the tree of life conveys the Nonuya’s origin story and how they relate to the natural world. The tree provides plenty of food, but if people take more than they need, the tree will cease to bear fruit.

Abraham Begeyn Leiden 1637 - 1697 Berlin, Abraham Bloteling Amsterdam 1640 - 1690 Amsterdam Aerial view of Honselaarsdijk Palace, c. 1684-1690 colored print. Royal Collections, The Hague

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Alexander de Lavaux Berlin c. 1704 - unknown Map of Suriname, 1737 - 1757 etching and engraving, hand-colored. Collection Rijksmuseum Amsterdam

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Daniel van Breen Middelburg 1599 - 1665 Amsterdam Map of the diked lands of the Beemster in the year MDCXLIV, 1644 copper engraving. Collection Inter-Antiquariaat Mefferdt & De Jonge, Amsterdam

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Nature as a lifeless machine Somewhere along the way, people in the Western world lost touch with the idea that nature is imbued with a soul. During the scientific revolution of the 17th century, natural phenomena were increasingly explained using mathematical laws of nature. The French philosopher René Descartes viewed nature as a lifeless machine that must be controlled by humans.

People also started to look at land through the eyes of a surveyor, and saw a space that could be measured, divided up, tamed and contained using precise computational formulas. A fine expression of this view of land are palatial gardens, such as those established at Honselaarsdijk Palace, once located outside The Hague. 3 The strict geometric design exudes order, clarity, and predictability, and such gardens served as a basis for the extremely efficient use of land across the Dutch countryside.

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The grid European colonists in America who lay claim to the “new” and in their eyes uncultivated land, also embraced the geometric grid. In the late 18th century, founding father Thomas Jefferson conceived the Jefferson Grid, a system whereby US surveyors could divvy up land in the vast Western territories into even squares of precisely one mile by one mile.

But because the earth is round, the lines of a flat grid got closer together in the north. The grid had to be corrected on the ground, with the result that every twenty miles, the perfect grid of roads would shift: the grid corrections. Artist Gerco de Ruijter became fascinated by this artificial, human-imposed pattern in the landscape and tracked down thousands of such corrections using Google Earth. 4 Systematically dividing up land using a grid is something we also see in the creation of colonial plantations, as the 18th-century map of Dutch Suriname by Alexander de Lavaux shows. 5 But also in mainland Holland, the first large piece of land drained for agriculture (De Beemster, which dates back to 1612) was divided up and allocated along gridlines. 6

Gerco de Ruijter Vianen 1961 Grid Correction #245, #351, #441, 2018 archival inkjet print. courtesy the artist

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Jan Hendrik Weissenbruch The Hague 1824 - 1903 The Hague Mills along a waterway, c. 1875-1900 oil on panel. Collection Rijksmuseum Twenthe

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Ger Dekkers Borne 1929 - 2010 Zwolle Reed-Land and Ditch, Flevoland, 1978 photographs. Collection City of Enschede

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The useful landscape We can see the draining of De Beemster polder as the start of a process that would continue for centuries: making the low-lying land of the Netherlands usable.

Ponds and swamps were drained, canals were dug, and meandering creeks and rivers were channeled into straight waterways. In the course of the 19th century, rugged landscapes of heath and sandy dunes were cleared on a grand scale. People used everything at their disposal to transform the land into productive and fertile farmland.

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Manmade nature Artists then, as now, were fascinated by this new land, shaped by human hands. Painters from the Hague School movement in the late 1800s rendered without embellishment the straight lines of a drained polder landscape often considered dull. They managed, however, to capture so strikingly the mood and sense of those vast flatlands dotted with windmills, the many waterways, and those gray cloudscapes, that even today their paintings still determine what is viewed as typical Dutch. 7 A century later, photographer Ger Dekkers trained his lens on this artificial Dutch countryside, with its dikes and polders and neatly planted rows of trees. His photos reveal the strong lines and patterns found in manmade nature. 8 But there were also concerns. As early as 1930, a group of prominent citizens in Twente called attention to the fact that the natural landscape was threatening to disappear. In the 1920s and 30s, land reclamation had truly taken off, in part due to technological advances and ever-more-powerful machines. A group which included the directors of the Rijksmuseum Twenthe and the Oudheidkamer Twente published a pamphlet that called for preserving the ecological and esthetic value of the Twente landscape. 9

Pamphlet for Grondbezitters en bewoners van het oosten des lands (“Landowners and residents of the eastern part of the country”), 1930 lithograph. Collection Oudheidkamer Twente

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Art Orienté Objet En Cas d’empoisonnement (In case of poisoning), 1993 Text: Neem niets in en zeker geen melk (“Don’t take anything, and certainly not milk”) mixed media. Collection Verbeke Foundation

Aelbert Cuyp Dordrecht 1620 - 1691 Dordrecht Landscape in the evening sun, with three cows and reclining boy, second half of the 17th century

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oil on canvas. Collection Rijksmuseum Twenthe, loan from the Riessen Oudheidkamer in Rijssen

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Jacob van Strij Dordrecht 1756 - 1815 Dordrecht Pastoral landscape with livestock, n.d. oil on panel. Collection Rijksmuseum Twenthe

Anastasia Eggers Moscow 1987 Ottonie von Roeder Hannover 1991 Cow&Co, 2017

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video still. courtesy the artists

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Production cattle It wasn’t only land that had to be made more useful and productive, but livestock, too, as the story of Lonneker Jan attests. In the early 1900s, Lonneker Jan was one of the most famed breeding bulls in the Netherlands. 10 Born in the province of Friesland in 1908, Jan fetched a record price when he was sold to a group of cattle farmers from the Twents town of Lonneker. With the help of local textile barons, the group had raised enough money to buy a good breeding bull. Thanks to Lonneker Jan, Twente could make the switch to the more productive black and white breed of cattle. The bull’s progeny were described as the “best production cattle.”

In the 1990s, new strides were made in the pursuit of better, more productive animals using genetic manipulation. The stuffed cow En Cas d’empoisonnement (“in case of poisoning”) by the French artist duo Art Orienté Objet belongs to the first generation of genetically manipulated cattle. 11 The piece dates from 1993, a time when little was known about the effects of consuming such animals. Hence the warning on the cow’s hide: Don’t take anything, and certainly not milk.

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Rural idyll Treating animals as if they are purely instrumental contradicts prevailing conceptions of Dutch agrarian life. As early as the 17th century, a cow in a pasture was portrayed as peaceful idyll, as paintings

by Aelbert Cuyp and Jacob van Strij attest. 12 and 13 Both painters specialized in cows, a genre that grew popular in the mid-1800s. An increased interest in cow paintings mirrored the rise of cattle farming.

Cheese and butter were key exports at the time, and a well-fed cow came to symbolize the prosperity of the Netherlands. Cuyp and his successor Van Strij presented man, animal, and landscape as a harmonious entity, bathed in soft evening light. It’s an image that still resonates today.

Buy a carton of milk at the grocery store in Holland, and you’ll likely see a happy cow in green pastures on the packaging. This image often bears little resemblance to reality, and designers Anastasia Eggers and Ottonie von Roeder believe it says something about how far removed consumers are from how their food is produced. That’s why the two came up with the speculative project Cow&Co. 14 At Cow&Co, the cows have taken charge and opted to trade in their pasture for a city park. There, the cows have started their own business: using online services, they stay in direct contact with customers who come collect their milk.

The breeding bull Lonneker Jan 1906-1917 skeleton. Collection De Museumfabriek, Enschede

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Andreas Gursky Leipzig 1955 Les Mées, 2016 c-print, diasec. courtesy the artist and Sprüth Magers

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Basse Stittgen Hannover 1990 Blood Related, 2017 - ongoing record playing a cow’s heartbeat and urn of discarded cow blood. courtesy the artist

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Carlijn Kingma Zutphen 1991 The Chronicle of Gaia, 2019 Rotring pen on paper. courtesy the artist Carlijn Kingma researched this piece with the help of Martin Lok, then of the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture, Nature, and Food Quality, Wouter van Dieren of the Club of Rome, and Partizan Publik. The artist drew inspiration from the ideas of David Van Reybrouck, Bruno Latour, and Yuval Noah Harari.

Rebecca Schedler Symbiopunk, 2021

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mixed media. courtesy the artist

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Distant relation Designer Basse Stittgen also explores in his work the distance between people and the animals we eat. This distance is due in part to the fact that turning cows into meat is a process that remains invisible for most of us. With his ongoing project Blood Related, Stittgen wants to make these invisible stories into tangible experiences. 15 Blood Related centers around the blood of slaughtered cattle, some 6.6 billion liters of which is disposed of each year as slaughterhouse waste. Stittgen developed a method for transforming cows’ blood into a plastic-like material, from which he then fashioned a record that plays the sound of a cow’s heartbeat.

can best be seen as a single organism, where people, other living things, and their inorganic environment are all connected. Together, they keep conditions on the planet in balance.

That means that we must again make ourselves part of the natural cycles of life. Rebecca Schedler shows what that means in concrete terms with her bioreactor Symbiopunk. 18 The reactor turns human excrement into fertile humus that can be used to fertilize fields. Or should we put more distance between ourselves and nature, and then leave well enough alone? That’s a prospect Liam Young explores in his video Planet City. 19 What if everyone on earth were to cluster together in one giant, high-tech city, where we’ve embraced sustainable technologies as the answer? The rest of the land can then be given back to nature.

What now?

And here the question arises of What now? Do we need to restore our connection with nature and reduce our distance to food? Or should we continue along the path of large-scale production and make even more effective use of the land? Are we heading for a world where mountain pastures are full of solar panels and not a single cow, as Andreas Gursky documents? 16 And will we pack the landscape with greenhouses, where food for global markets gets produced with the utmost efficiency? Or must we again come to see ourselves as part of Gaia, the living earth, as Carlijn Kingma contends in The Chronicle of Gaia? 17 According to the Gaia theory, the earth

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The power of imagination Whatever the future brings, it will be determined to some degree by people. Our actions matter.

But to set out for the future, we must first be able to picture that future. And that’s where artists come in.

With their vast imaginative powers, artists can show us other ways of looking at the world, creating untold new possibilities. That’s what Rijksmuseum Twenthe has in mind for the Who does the countryside belong to? project. We hope to spark a conversation about the past, present and future of the country.

Liam Young Brisbane 1979 Planet City, 2021 video (16 min). courtesy the artist.

Directed by Liam Young. Concept, Liam Young. Alexey Marfin, VFX Supervisor. Costumes by Ane Crabtree. Score by Forest Swords and EMEL.

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#1 Terra Libera

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Extractivism

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The global economy thrives on the raw materials we extract from the earth such as oil, gas, and coal. These are our natural resources, which we eagerly consume, but whose extraction leaves deep marks on the landscape. These marks are inescapable to those who are connected to the place of extraction. But far more often this connection is lacking, as we make use of land elsewhere. For instance, the negative consequences of gas extraction in Groningen were not really perceived by many Dutch people for a long time. It isn’t a leap to say it’s not as though we stop and consider on a daily basis the damage that is done with the extraction of cobalt in Africa, only to power our mobile phones.

The exhibition Extractivism is about the extraction of raw materials and its consequences. What does this mean for the landscape and the natural environment, and for the people who live there? After all, not only is the story of the extraction of natural resources a history of the destruction of ecosystems, but also a history of colonial inequality and social disruption that continues to this day. Is facing this history and its consequences the first step toward establishing a new connectedness with the land? But does that solve the problem? Will it be possible to make other choices in a system based on the monetization of natural resources? And what about all those rare earth elements that are now so badly needed for the windmills and batteries that are supposed to make the world more sustainable?

The way we use natural resources has consequences for people, landscapes, economies and (geo)political relations.

In Extractivism, twelve (inter)national artists and collectives reflect on this complex interconnectedness.

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#2 Extractivism

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Photofestival Enschede

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#3 Photofestival Enschede

Natascha Libbert - Undermined

Natascha Libbert Lily’s Water, 2019

Natascha Libbert Gunther’s Pond, 2018

archival inkjet print. courtesy Leiden University Medical Center

archival inkjet print. courtesy the artist

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Perhaps you know the feeling of opting to scroll past news about the latest flood or forest fire or devastating environmental disaster. We’re well aware the climate is changing, and the earth is being depleted by things humans are doing. But sometimes it’s a relief to look away, so as not to get overwhelmed by the unfathomable scale of what’s happening.

Stunning beauty with a dark undercurrent

Not so Natascha Libbert (1973). For her ongoing project Undermined, Libbert travels around the world to photograph places where human activity has left deep scars in the landscape. She chooses to face this beast head-on. And her photographs force us, the public, to do the same. Or perhaps they don’t so much force us as entice us, because Libbert’s works hold great aesthetic appeal. Stunning beauty with a dark undercurrent.

Copper mines and greenhouses

Undermined took Libbert to destinations including Florida, Spain, and Cyprus. In Florida, she witnessed controlled burns, or forest fires deliberately set to improve the soil and prevent bigger, out-of-control wildfires. In the south of Spain, she captured the destructive effects to both people and the earth caused by an endless sea of greenhouses there, the mar de plástico. And in Cyprus, she encountered long-abandoned copper mines whose traces still mar the landscape today.

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#3 Photofestival Enschede

Toon Koehorst - Substrate

Toon Koehorst Nursery De Plaats, Honselersdijk, 2022

Toon Koehorst The Master Growers, Honselersdijk, 2022

C-Print

Giclée Print

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A farmer’s greatest asset is fertile soil. Without it, there can be no crops and no food. In the 21st century, the connection between farmers and the soil is often still seen as a symbiotic relationship, where the farmer is one with nature. But Dutch agriculture today is incredibly mechanized, and farmers have come to rely on advanced machines and computer technology. Fascinated by this growing role for tech in farming, Toon Koehorst (1981) portrays the production systems operating on Dutch soil for his photo series Substrate.

The Silicon Valley of agriculture

Koehorst’s focus in the series is on the various component parts of agriculture. He observed that hothouse plants are no longer grown in regular soil but in an artificial substrate like rockwool, to which precise doses of nutrients are added, resulting in unprecedented yields. The Netherlands is an international leader when it comes to such innovations and is known for good reason as the Silicon Valley of agriculture.

A substrate mindset

This substrate mindset is far removed from any romantic notions about being connected to the land. The soil is occupied territory; the farmer, an industrial manufacturer. And yet cultivating a sense of connection with the land and nature makes up a great deal of a farmer’s identity. With his Substrate series, Koehorst shows the discrepancy between our ideas about being a farmer and the highly technical realities of operating an actual farm. At the same time, his sharp and at times surreal photographs honor the ingenuity of Dutch industrial agriculture.

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To Twente in company of artistic researchers: times and tidings of the landscape

Peter Sonderen Peter Sonderen (PhD) is Lecturer of Theory in the Arts at ArtEZ University of the Arts. This essay was written in collaboration with Joop Hoogeveen, researcher at the Theory in the Arts research group.

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Research through or in the arts: artistic research For quite some time, we in the Theory in the Arts research group at ArtEZ have conducted research into the relationships between art and ecology. We define ‘ecology’ in a broad sense, but we mainly zoom in on relationships between things that are often seen as contradictions, and not as related or connected, such as the relationship between city and countryside. We also study what role artists can play in researching these relationships.

That requires some explanation, because research in and through the arts – what we call ‘artistic research’ – is not a familiar concept to most. For the past three decades, international art education has paid increasing attention to research by artists, and conducting (artistic) research has become a fixture of many art study programmes. Many foreign universities offer art programmes, but that is not the case in the Netherlands, where most art education is offered at the university of applied sciences level.

With the introduction of the Bachelor-Master structure in the late 1990s, universities of applied sciences were also given a research mandate, and that includes art education as well. Since then, art study programmes have included research education. We often refer to it as artistic research, or more broadly, research through or in the arts.

Artistic research vs. preliminary research Conducting research as an artist implies that the artistic work itself is seen and used as research. But haven’t artists always conducted research for their work? Certainly. But the difference is that artistic research is a form of research where the artist explicitly poses and formulates research questions or problems, investigates them using applicable theory and artistic practice, and brings the results up for discussion. The latter element is an important difference, because the artist-researcher explicitly presents the process of the work and research, and opens them up to a critical review. That is not always the case in ‘ordinary’ artistic practice, and a better term for the research an artist conducts to create a work of art is perhaps ‘preliminary research’. In other words: research is only considered to be artistic research if the method, approach and intentions are open to public discussion and criticism. That means the artistic process is no longer a closed and inaccessible ‘black box’ – which is perfectly permissible in standard artistic practice – but is intentionally opened to the knowledge and experience of others.

Artistic research develops its own methods and methodology for this purpose. The result is that the research process becomes just as important as the artistic production. To that end, public events were organised during the research for Who does the countryside belong to?, including the seminar at the museum on 12 May 2023, where those in attendance could respond to the artists’ proposals.

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Essay

Detail installation Cow and Landscape by Wapke Feenstra46

Scientific research vs. artistic research.

The concept of ‘research’ is often understood to have something to do with science, even among artists and art students. Are they expected to behave like scientists and produce scientific works like articles, dissertations, experiments and so forth? Is that justified?

And do researching artists do that as well? The answer is a wholehearted ‘yes and no’. Yes, because some artists consider writing a scientific article to be an adequate artistic practice, and no, because many artists develop completely different forms of research and use their artistic work as a research tool and resource. The research is displayed in special exhibitions (‘exposiums’), in documentary forms and in all sorts of other artistic forms and texts.

The changing results and components of artistic research shines a new light on standard scientific research, and occasionally challenges it by illustrating the conventional and occasionally blinkered perspective on the world. Scientific expertise is often inflexible and compartmentalised, and seldom interacts with other fields of knowledge. Artists, in contrast, connect many issues together in their research that other fields wouldn’t consider relevant, because they fall outside the scope of the field. Artistic research is therefore often, but not always, supra-disciplinary and brings things together that would otherwise remain isolated and/or dispersed. That kind of boundary-breaking research requires creativity, and especially artistic creativity. So let us examine the tangible artistic research practices on display at Rijksmuseum Twenthe.

New connections: Twente over time Rijksmuseum Twenthe and the ArtEZ Theory in the Arts research group selected four artists to conduct artistic research into the rural area of Twente, in the east of the Netherlands. Their studies display a clear multi-faceted approach. They were asked to use artistic research to study the dilemmas manifested in the landscape: to search for the places where divergent interests cause friction, with the landscape itself as a result. The results of the research displayed in the exhibition (or outside the museum, as with some of the works and performances by Budhaditya Chattopadhyay) show the different types of friction they discovered in the landscape of Twente. They all show how the landscape’s current state contains multiple layers of time, which are often invisible to the eye, but which still manifest themselves to us and exert an influence on our experience of our surroundings.

The artists spent a considerable time conducting the research, and sought the input of real-world experts and stakeholders like farmers and landscape managers, as well as scientific specialists. Their on-site research made both human and non-human aspects of the landscape part of the research project. In some cases local communities even had a voice in the research, for example in the projects by Wapke Feenstra and Jonas Staal. The artists’ approach can be summarised with the single word: relationality.

In every project, the nature of the connections is key: the artists observe, unveil and/or create connections. How are we connected with the landscape? And which ‘agents’ are at work there?

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The artistic researchers In her recent work, Tanja Engelberts has largely focused on what remains when extraction from the earth comes to an end, such as deactivated oil platforms, coal mines and gas fields. In Twente, she focused on another aspect that ties in to that: the course of time. The exhibition features a large video projection of an active pumpjack. The movement is agonisingly slow, and endlessly repetitive. When we understand that the pumpjack is still operating today, and has been doing so unceasingly for 70 years or more, we begin to get a grasp on the nature of time. The relentless progress of time is also featured in the loop of images of geological core samples. These columns of rock are stored in measured segments at research institutes, but in the video they are reunited and descend back in time into the shaft from where they were excavated.

Material from disparate eras return to the earth in a seamless sequence of images. Through her research into what remains after extraction, Engelberts attempts to make palpable the perception of different forms of time.

The work by Budhaditya Chattopadhyay opens an entirely different register. His focus lies in opening the landscape of Twente and the surrounding regions to the ear. What is it we hear, exactly?

And what does our ‘auditory landscape’ look like? Chattophadhyay’s research in carefully selected locations allows us to listen closely to what a landscape has to say. Through an almost tangible textile visualisation, we also get an idea of the interrelationships, and we can experience the differences and similarities in the sonic side of the landscape. The artist is not intimately familiar with the region, so he relied on local guides as sonic dowsing rods to lead us to the unique sounds that he believes make a specific place what it is. From the harbour in Enschede to De Doorbraak; an artificial stream near Almelo. The sound of the water wears its own path through the land. He also wrote verse inspired by the nine different landscapes. Each new place engendered different connections.

The research by Wapke Feenstra takes us back in time in a more literal fashion, to answer the question of how cattle and landscape changed one another over the ages. Three generations of farmers take us through the various connections between cow and landscape. How much ‘agency’ does the cow have, and how much the landscape? How do they intertwine, and how do they change together over time? Through old family photos of cattle, the farm, and the land, we come closer to the process of time and experience how the seemingly timeless landscape is merely a snapshot of a moment between transformations. The landscape is transitory, and only the topmost of many layers of time. The land is far from stable, but rather fluid and reactive. The cow, too, is always different, and no longer the stable factor that it may have been in Potter’s time. We might look for his cow today, but in vain.

Finally, in the artistic research by Jonas Staal we return to the past and focus on the future of the landscape. Although the work may seem less related to Twente, and more about the future country of the Netherlands, the fact that Twente is at a higher elevation is a vital factor. Through the renowned New Babylon

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project by Cobra-painter Constant Nieuwenhuys, Staal investigates whether the artist’s utopian philosophy is still feasible. Constant placed humanity on pedestals in the landscape. But Staal goes much further in his New New Babylon by using the remains of our (potentially flooded) industry and blocks of flats as the foundation for an entire culture of living on supporting pylons. The earth is elevated above the water that has inundated us, and which provides us with sustenance. We see nothing but water below (or connected to) a new Babylon, with no humans in sight. The earth has become water. The fluid video images leave no room for debate. From the relative height of Twente, we look down on the New New Babylon.

The solid ground we would expect from the landscape, or project upon it, appears more fluid than we once thought. The landscape is the ever-changing result of many temporal powers and interests. The work of these artistic researchers portrays the relational characteristics of the landscape in images, movement and sound, facilitating different perceptions of our own ‘terroir’.

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Artistic research Tanja Engelberts Mine

video installation with poem and drill head Collection Rijksmuseum Twenthe. Purchased with the support of the Mondriaan Fund, 2023

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Deventer 1987

An abandoned gas field in De Lutte led to a search through the mining history of Twente. Traces of salt and gas production are linked to wastewater injections from oil extraction in Schoonebeek.

In these landscapes slow processes have taken effect; glacial movement has shaped the landscape; oil, gas and salt extraction have triggered developments whose consequences only manifest themselves after many years.

Tanja Engelberts went in search of the traces left by the fossil industry in the landscape of Twente by visiting specific locations, doing archival research and conducting interviews with various stakeholders, including residents of the area and scientists.

The result is an installation that connects the constant extraction of fossil fuels, a sense of geological time and domestic traditions of the region. The following pages feature some of the poems Tanja wrote during her stay in the region.

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Exploration All these meters of soil, sand, salt, clay, halite, anhydrite, porous rock, pressured gas, black stripes of coals, orange iron tinted layers, all stacked in wooden boxes, shelfed in a warehouse in an industrial estate near a highway.

Violence Energy Power, Millions of years in the palm of your hand, a palm closing, crushing, soft sand trickling on the floor.

One day One day, they emerged on top of a field, near the cemetery, between the bushes, next to the school building, in backyards, in front of the bakery, behind the tree lines surrounding the village.

A soft screeching filled the village air, a faint hum vibrating from the area.

Up, down, up, down, up down, up, down, eighty years of exploitation, thick oil moving through pipes, passed backyards, farms, fields, bushes.

A domestic scene A kitchen in Schoonebeek, two woman on their knees.

Fine sand moving through hands, sand trickling on the floor, each movement creating a pattern, repetitive, slowly moving through the space, tender shapes form a rhythm, abstract shapes, ornaments emerging, the ear of corn shaped by a jet of sand, rosettes, leaves and flowers, a meadow on the kitchen floor, hard tyles, the sand mimicking the glaciers that once shaped this land, hesitant feet enter the floor, during the day patterns dissolve, fine sand swept up by a broom, no evidence left, except for some small sand particles, the floor polished by the feet that move through the kitchen.

Still van de video Glaciaal tapijt, 12 min, loop, 1080p, kleu,r met speciale dank aan Roelie Seinen van de Zandstrooiboerderij Schoonebeek.

Artistic research Budhaditya Chattopadhyay

Birbhum (IN)

Landing: Rituals for Situated Sonic Reverence

Installation consisting of 9 soundscapes, carpet and print with map of Overijssel, VR video, booklet with 9 texts.

Collection Rijksmuseum Twenthe. Purchased with the support of the Mondriaan Fund, 2023 Artist and author: Budhaditya Chattopadhyay; research assistant: Janneke van der Putten; location support and photographic documentation: Ella Walsh; video documentation: Bidisha Das; graphic design: Beral Design by Brenda Alamilla; coding support: Yann Patrick Martins

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Through his work, Budhaditya Chattopadhyay explores what the land has to tell us. He does this by listening to the landscape and recording environmental sounds. Through these so-called field recordings he wants to explore the historical, social and geological layers of a landscape.

In the framework of Who does the countryside belong to? Chattopadhyay explored various places in the rural area of Twente. He did this through field walks where he listened to environmental sounds and people’s stories. Based on this research, he selected nine locations where he made sound recordings and then composed then composed soundscapes.

Together with nine texts, a map of the province of Overijssel and a VR film, the soundscapes form the installation Landing: Rituals for situated Sonic Reverence.

During the process of writing and composing, Chattopadhyay was be guided by the mood a particular place evoked in him, in order to let the land speak through him. This attitude, in which he explicitly opens himself up to the land, is also a contrast to how the land is viewed in many places, namely, as something to be used or owned.

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Landing: Rituals for Situated Sonic Reverence Budhaditya Chattopadhyay

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1. Sounds from the land The sonic environment of a land site is entangled with its social, historical, cultural, as well as habitation of more than human lifeforms, which may not necessarily be linear processes but a multilayered, multi-linear or plurivocal developments open to multiple influences and peripheral interventions. These innate elements require critical listening and investigation not only to understand the ontological complexities enmeshed with the atmospheric layers, but also to speculate their historical constituents and contribution to or influences from the processes of manifold social formations. Such an inclusive idea of sonorous land nurtures a sense of plurality and multiplicity embedded in a site engaging sociality in intuitive and affective ways.

Here the term ‘site’ denotes a source of actual sonic attributes, which are collected as material during onsite recordings and, as art critic and curator Miwon Kwon argues, are ‘based in a phenomenological or experiential understanding of the site, defined primarily as an agglomeration of the actual physical attributes of a particular location’ (Kwon 2002: 3). The wide and often indiscreet use of the term ‘site-specificity’ is problematic in the arts, as Kwon points out. Following these suggestions, the term ‘site-aware’ can be considered as it links the listener back to the site where materials were originally collected. Locative sound is then a ‘signifier and the Site as that which is signified’ (Alloway 1981: 42). Within the context of media arts, scholar Joanna Demers defines site more specifically in relation to field recording and underscores sounds’ ability to reveal manifold layers of specific sites, from physical to metaphorical, generic to historical: ‘Site […] entails not only the environments in which sound propagates but also those that listeners physically and metaphorically occupy’ (2010). Brandon LaBelle and Claudia Martinho’s edited book Site of Sound (2011) delves into this complexity.

This capacity of sound to uncover the sitely layers help sketch the site-aware narratives with an aesthetic perspective. Sound then becomes an imaginative portal to address contemporary issues surrounding land, its ownership, sacred rights of nature, and anthropogenic exploitation.

My work facilitates a fertile intersection between artistic practice and research, often through conflict and mélange of arts and sciences, arts and technology, doing and thinking, concept and content. I have been aiming, since last 15 years to develop an affective, context-aware, and historically grounded interaction with land and site, often via auto-ethnographic field recordings and comprovisations (improvisational performative compositions). In this developing body of work, a few conceptual entry points were related to the complex entanglements between the land site and media, anthropogenic processes of mediation to turn land into spectacles via extraction, sited environment into human-made atmospheres. My work is driven by social and environment commitments and climate activism. Among a number of methodologies, critical are psychogeography and sonic auto-ethnography. In my book The Auditory Setting, I have studied generic sites and their sonic mediation. In The Nomadic Listener, I have been tracing psycho-geographic interventions.

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2. Situating the sonic practice Drawing on the relational entanglement between land and sound, my contribution Landing: Rituals for Situated Sonic Reverence employs a participatory and land-based field work. The aim was to gather environmental sounds by auto-ethnographic field recording and site-aware writing to engage with land sites and unpack the ontological complexities of the sonorous lands. In intended to develop awareness for the agency of land and its more-than-human entanglements to underscore why human-centric ‘owning’ of land needs to shift to ‘owing’ to land, to address the contemporary urgent crisis of environment and ecology. In this deliberate shifting of perspective, I draw from the indigenous practices of land worship in South Asia, which I experienced while growing up. Situating my practice in the East of Netherlands, I ask the question: how is it possible to unpack the complex and evolving relationship between site and sound, and how this relationship unfolds in the specific site of Enschede, the Overijssel and greater Twente-region and surrounding rural areas in the eastern part of Netherlands?

How are the trajectories of social formations, industrial development, exploitation, and the marginalization of the more-than-human lifeforms, impacts on the land as a site of reverence? In this project, the question of the ownership of land is addressed by a sonic intervention from a nomadic artistic position. In this artistic research, Enschede and surrounding regions of Twente constitute the sites to examine ‘physical conditions of a particular location as integral to the production presentation, and reception of art’ (Kwon 2002). With these research questions, in the artistic intervention Landing, the focus was placed on certain generic sites in the greater Twente-region and the surrounding rural areas in the eastern part of Netherlands for critical listening from a sonic auto-ethnographic approach to fieldwork. Ethnography has its own tradition of field recording, as do other disciplines such as ornithology, anthropology, and archival research. Although aware of these and other disciplines in which field recordings are used, this project concentrated on sonic auto-ethnography based on ‘location study’, to gather multitude of sonic perspectives from a specific site considering the sites as the portals for delving deeper into history of the regions, generational memories around the land and geographical transformations.

Scan the QR code to listen to60the micro-comprovisations.

3. From owning to the act of owing The project explored the methods of listening walks and field recordings, particularly when working in rural and semi-rural locations and the communities inhabiting the land. The focus was both on the artistic, creative and innovative aspects of integrating new technologies into the practice of field recording (sound, text, image) via intensive listening-walks through the regions, and the social and ethical issues that often are addressed and uncovered in this grounded practice. The project addressed peripheral questions around main questions above: can we owe a land rather than owning it? What rights to land and its sonic resources might individuals and communities have? How does a sound-walk and field recording help excavate a place and its many layers: social, anthropological, more than human. How should one negotiate between the public and private spheres? These were some of the questions that the project addressed, in the context of gathering materials through a series of listening-walks traversing specific sites and envisaging how new technologies can both open context-aware inquiries in land and help develop nomadic sound artworks as portals for retentive, respectful and reverence-based engagement with land while revealing new ethical challenges.

The artistic methodology of the project was based on self-attunement as artistic research, in order to sensitize the ears towards specific historical and social resonances of the regions. This specific mode of inter-subjective and auto-ethnographic intervention led to locating specific sites or areas as portals to delve into for unpacking their socio-political-historiographical trajectories. Listening to these sites in such expanded ways led to underscore their transcendental potential and resonating qualities as felt in the act of listening and sonic drifting as creative practice. Traces of these personalized interactions manifested in recording of the specific location in sound and site-specific writings, attempting to attune to the sonic fluctuations of movement and the passing of events. These sounds and texts conjure meditations on the minutiae of life, interwoven with my own reflections on being there and traversing through these regions as a nomadic listener. A series of micro-comprovisations were developed from these sonic interactions, along with a series of poetic texts from the situated writings. These sounds and texts, and an embroidered quilt formed site-specific public interventions to bring sensate audience inside a tender map of an autonomous assemblage of context-aware interactions found in the act of listening through the region without any fixed direction but following its sounds, analogous to a sonic drifter. In the form of an auto-ethnographic field research, I aimed to examine the transformative auditory situations of the region. The poetic archeology gave a hearing to unheard of nooks and crannies in public spaces. This approach may provide a way of engaging with the land from nomadic positionally: free, at least momentarily, from any state-imposed identity, keeping the listening movement itinerant and outside any surveillance radar. This artistic research was shared with the public as a portal of listening traces, retrievable and audible through QR codes at public spaces. In its psychogeographic approach of drifting, and poetic contemplation, the project questions the model of cartography that quantifies land into (visual/digital) objects. Instead, it suggests an alternative, sound-based navigation, in which inter-subjective engagement with land by a poetic mode of self-attunement is central.

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Artistic research Wapke Feenstra (Myvillages)

Hennaarderadeel 1959

Cow and Landscape

Installation consisting of three videos, tractor tire, wallpaper with illustrations of plants, photographs and various objects.

Collection Rijksmuseum Twenthe. Purchased with the support of the Mondriaan Fund, 2023 Cow and Landscape is an ongoing project by the Rural School of Economics, which, after Twente, will be continued in De Peel, Het Groene Hart and on Schiermonnikoog. Thanks to Van Abbemuseum, VriendenLoterij Fonds, Mondriaan Fund and Drawing Centre Diepenheim.

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A cow standing in a pasture is a national cliché. It’s an image that has been around in the Netherlands for centuries and doesn’t seem to be subject to change. But nothing could be further from the truth. Certainly in recent decades the appearance of the cow, and with it the landscape surrounding it, has changed greatly. As part of Who does the countryside belong to?, artist Wapke Feenstra, in collaboration with three farms from Twente and Salland, will explore what these changes look like and what values are at the root of these changes.

The explorations displayed in this room were cocreation with De Melkbrouwerij, De Melktapperij, Erfgoed Bossem and other participants. They include herbaria with grasses and herbs, drawn maps of farmyards and photographs from personal archives. Recurring questions within the project include “what does your best cow look like, past and present?”, “what grows in the meadow?”, “what can we learn from the past?” and “what could the future of farming look like?”

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ERFGOED BOSSEM in LATTROP Ten years ago we made a conscious decision to change: we wanted to be closer to the meat production. That means keeping our own cows, raising our own calves, producing our own feed, and manuring our own land – so the cycle is complete. And Brandrode cattle are ideal as grazers in nature reserves as they can withstand tough conditions. By ‘tough’ we mean less fertilized soil.

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DE MELKBROUWERIJ in LETTELE Over the past decade we have switched to organic farming and returned to the Meuse-Rhine-Yssel breed, which has been traditionally adapted to the sandy soils we have here.

These are dual-purpose cows that can convert relatively low-quality feed into milk and beef. Sometimes they produce less milk, but they remain very healthy. An MRY cow can fend for itself very well.

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DE MELKTAPPERIJ in HAAKSBERGEN A lot is asked of us farmers: we have to tend the soil, protect biodiversity, and keep tabs on the water and air quality. That set me thinking, because the only way we generate value from our farm is by selling our end-product – milk – to the cooperative dairy. How can we ensure that all our work, including the

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Artistic research Jonas Staal Zwolle 1981

New New Babylon: Study for a Crisis-Utopia

2 channel video installation Collection Rijksmuseum Twenthe. Purchased with the support of the Mondriaan Fund, 2023 The experts featured in New New Babylon are Wieteke Willemen (Professor of Spatial Dynamics of Ecosystem Services at the University of Twente), Trudy Nieuwenhuys-van der Horst and Kim van der Horst (Fondation Constant), Sanne Beld (farmer at Met Natuur Mee), Jessica Hammarlund Bergmann (City Architect Enschede), Extinction Rebellion Enschede, Thouraya Chaabane (Humanitas Twente).

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Artist and researcher Jonas Staal actually does envisage a role for artists when it comes to thinking about and imagining the future. In the context of Who does the countryside belong to? he developed the project New New Babylon, in which he, together with various experts from Twente, investigates what a new, future society based on coexistence with the earth might look like.

The starting point for New New Babylon is Dutch artist Constant Nieuwenhuys’ utopian project New Babylon (1959-1974).

For fifteen years Constant worked on models, paintings, drawings and texts depicting a network of “sectors” that would be built on stilts around the world. In Constant’s vision, man would no longer live on earth, but above it. Also, New Babylon would operate as a collective house without private property or national borders.

In his video work, Staal explores the extent to which New Babylon might provide an answer to today’s crises. Is living above the earth a way to free it from heavy industry and extraction, and to protect ourselves from rising sea levels? And are national borders criminal when soon millions will have to flee because of the climate crisis?

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#1 Terra Libera #2 Extractivism #3 Photofestival Enschede

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#1 Terra Libera

Dutch Christian Rural Youths Alarm Fase 3, 1973

Diego Valadés Mexico 1533 - ca. 1582 Italië Rhetorica Christiana. The Great Chain of Being, 1579

poster. Collection International Institute of Social History

engraving. courtesy the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München, 4 Hom. 2211

Raimundus Lullus De ascensu et descensu intellectus The ladder of ascent and descent, 1512

Pont-Audemer (F)

Pierre Le Lorrain (Abbé de Vallemont) Pont-Audemer (F) 1649 - 1721 Curiositez de la nature et de l’art sur la vegetation Curiosities of nature and art about vegetation, 1705

woodcut. Collection The Göttingen State and University Library

print. Collection KB, National Library of the Netherlands, The Hague, KW 1121 F 46

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#1 Terra Libera

Daniël Stoopendaal A msterdam 1672 - 1726 A msterdam Overview of Slot Zeist from an imaginary high position, from the north-east, c. 1670-80

Adriaan de Lelie Tilburg 1755 - 1820 A msterdam Egbert van Drielst Groningen 1745 - 1818 A msterdam A family in Elswout park near Overveen, presumably 1799

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oil on canvas. Collection Rijksmuseum Twenthe

Overview of the garden and the park on both sides of the Slotlaan in Zeist, c. 1670-80 etching. The Utrecht Archives

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rt

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e

h o r u s ca rri e s t h e w

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ticipation. L

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it s

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m one lea

bour. T

he truck crushes a lonely snail. Their fesh meets the

s rs, just like ke

e n c o u n te r g e n e r

s.

age is thrown into this constellation. The sharp sounds of the

rg e c a r g o sb

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RITUALS FOR SITUATED SONIC REVERENCE

ng ini

tl

sur b k re he dead into the un lake. T own of a tree tr hr e s ar

g

a

e

as I

p pr o val of cohabiting and co

In this moment of s

ooker – onl

rs ne ’ disa

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ch

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getables. The

rg e of

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tly bark to voice their ow

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rt b

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s

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fr e er

ur att

th e

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k

me o fo ope is the na

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et a

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to le

hope. P

su

the b ee

d land m re as

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here, one needs

e l l . I n s i d t he h o u be

s

ropriat

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s of t

ological app chn d for the te sse pre

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made water way. The haught y co

al r loc ng

urce s eso

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s it

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es s i

illing mach dr

a t hl

as

th

he

to its lonely h a e

do

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or airp

ve ied land he propeller re n the ground; only its inaudible engines and t ever lands o en hen the soil resists lan ot d grasp on e land, even w her. The p actice their ownership an th pr ly entitled to

ch in w es a r e re n rs i a tr

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nt

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nger gets rusty, just l

w ationship, waiting till no end. To go some

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f th

s

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h

ll o

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it in the ep rg

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TWENTE AIRPORT

ce oss embra the m

g

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ish with brown

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m

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s at the dark ct

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An empty chair su it h ou w tt e ll in ey g me where th

the

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tation. T

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ow summ

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lo o

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ic’s tra nd s. The heavy traf

t ra

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#1 Terra Libera

Daniel van Breen Middelburg 1599 - 1665 A msterdam Map of the diked lands of the Beemster in the year MDCXLIV, 1644

Jan Hendrik Weissenbruch Den Haag 1824 - 1903 Den Haag Mills along a waterway, c. 1875-1900 oil on panel. Collection Rijksmuseum Twenthe

copper engraving. Collection Inter-Antiquariaat Mefferdt & De Jonge, Amsterdam

Ger Dekkers Borne 1929 - 2010 Zwolle Reed-Land and Ditch, Flevoland, 1978

Charles Lim Yi Yong Singapore 1973 Sea State 9: Proclamation: Drag, Drop, Pour, 2017

5 photographs. Collection City of Enschede

single channel high definition video (3 x). courtesy the artist

79

#1 Terra Libera

Anton Koster Terneuzen 1859 - 1937 Haarlem Worker in tulip field, Overveen, n.d.

Andreas Gursky Leipzig 1955 Untitled XIX, 2015

oil on canvas. Collection Simonis & Buunk, Ede

inkjet print. courtesy Sprüth Magers and the artist

Abraham Begeyn Leiden 1637 - 1697 Berlin Abraham Bloteling A msterdam 1640 - 1690 A msterdam aerial view of Honselaarsdijk Palace, c. 1684-1690

Alexander de Lavaux Berlin ca. 1704 - unk nown Map of Suriname, 1737 - 1757 etching and engraving, hand-colored. Collection Rijksmuseum Amsterdam

colored print. Royal Collections, The Hague

80

#1 Terra Libera

Gerco de Ruijter Vianen 1961 Grid Correction #245, 2018

Gerco de Ruijter Vianen 1961 Grid Correction #351, 2018

archival inkjet print. courtesy the artist

archival inkjet print. courtesy the artist

Gerco de Ruijter Vianen 1961 Grid Correction #441, 2018

Carlijn Kingma Zutphen 1991 The Chronicle of Gaia, 2019

archival inkjet print. courtesy the artist

Rotring pen on paper. courtesy the artist Carlijn Kingma researched this piece with the help of Martin Lok, then of the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture, Nature, and Food Quality, Wouter van Dieren of the Club of Rome, and Partizan Publik. The artist drew inspiration from the ideas of David Van Reybrouck, Bruno Latour, and Yuval Noah Harari.

81

Hanneke Francken R ijnsburg 1976 Synthesis - micro (6 x), 2021-2022

Wapke Feenstra (Myvillages) Hennaarderadeel 1959 Cow and Landscape, 2023

pencil on museum board. courtesy the artist

Installation consisting of three videos, tractor tire, wallpaper with illustrations of plants, photographs and various objects Collection Rijksmuseum Twenthe. Purchased with the support of the Mondriaan Fund, 2023

The breeding bull Lonneker Jan 1906-1917

Art Orienté Objet En Cas d’empoisonnement In case of poisoning, 1993

skeleton. Collectie De Museumfabriek, Enschede

Text: Neem niets in en zeker geen melk (“Don’t take anything, and certainly not milk”) mixed media. Collection Verbeke Foundation

82

#1 Terra Libera

Anastasia Eggers Moscow 1987 Ottonie von Roeder Hannover 1991 Cow&Co, 2017

Basse Stittgen Hannover 1990 Blood Related, 2017 - ongoing

6 prints on aluminum and video (2:14 min). courtesy the artists

record playing a cow’s heartbeat and urn of discarded cow blood. courtesy the artist

Basse Stittgen Hannover 1990 Juan Arturo Garcia Mexico 1988 Rendering Invisibilities, 2021

Pamphlet for Grondbezitters en bewoners van het oosten des lands (“Landowners and residents of the eastern part of the country”), 1930

video (9:00 min). courtesy the artist. Commissioned by Het Nieuwe Instituut

lithograph. Collection Oudheidkamer Twente

83

#1 Terra Libera

Aelbert Cuyp Dordrecht 1620 - 1691 Dordrecht Landscape in the evening sun, with three cows and reclining boy, second half of the 17th century

Jacob van Strij Dordrecht 1756 - 1815 Dordrecht Pastoral landscape with livestock, n.d. oil on panel. Collection Rijksmuseum Twenthe

oil on canvas. Collection Rijksmuseum Twenthe, loan from the Riessen Oudheidkamer in Rijssen

Willem Maris The Hague 1844 - 1910 London Landscape with cows, n.d.

Hendrik Coetzee Stellenbosch (South A frica) 1984 Foodprint, 2021

oil on canvas. Collection Rijksmuseum Twenthe

collage of old landscape paintings (2 x). courtesy the artist

84

#1 Terra Libera

Sandipan Nath en Samar N. Khan Silchar (IN) 1991 / 1995 Machines for Self Care, 2023

Andreas Gursky Leipzig 1955 Les Mées, 2016

video (8.11 min). courtesy the artists

c-print, diasec. courtesy the artist and Sprüth Magers

Gerard Ortín Castellví Barcelona 1988 Agrilogistics, 2022

Christiaan Zwanikken Bussum 1967 Nose Patrol, 2015-2016

video installation (21 min). courtesy the artist. Adaption of the installation made at La Capella Barcelona in collaboration with GOIG - Miquel Mariné and Pol Esteve Castelló

mixed media, including essential oils of rose and lavender. Collection Rijksmuseum Twenthe. Purchased with the support of the Mondriaan Fund, 2021

85

#1 Terra Libera

Rebecca Schedler Symbiopunk, 2021

Koen Vanmechelen Sint-Truiden (B) 1965 Cosmopolitan Chicken Project, 2023

mixed media. courtesy the artist

taxidermic chickens, wood, led lights, steel cables. courtesy the artist

Jonas Staal Zwolle 1981 New New Babylon: Study for a Crisis-Utopia, 2023

Liam Young Brisbane 1979 Planet City, 2021

2 channel video installation Collection Rijksmuseum Twenthe. Purchased with the support of the Mondriaan Fund, 2023

video (16 min). courtesy the artist Directed by Liam Young. Concept, Liam Young. Alexey Marfin, VFX Supervisor.

Costumes by Ane Crabtree. Score by Forest Swords and EMEL.

86

#2 Extractivism

Krištof Kintera Prague 1973 Postnaturalia, 2016

Esther Kokmeijer Brantgum 1977 Terra Nullius — Ownership and Pioneering on Ice, 2013 – ongoing

mixed media. courtesy the artist

collection of maps of Antarctica with correction tape. courtesy the artist

Marjolijn Dijkman Groningen 1978 Earthing Discharge #1, 2019

Marjolijn Dijkman Groningen 1978 Earthing Discharge #2, 2019

sodumene with lithium from Manono, DRC, electricity / c-print on paper courtesy the artist and NOME Gallery

sodumene with lithium from Manono, DRC, electricity / c-print on paper courtesy the artist and NOME Gallery

87

#2 Extractivism

Marjolijn Dijkman Groningen 1978 Earthing Discharge #3, 2019

Marjolijn Dijkman Groningen 1978 Depth of Discharge, 2021

sodumene with lithium from Manono, DRC, electricity / c-print on paper courtesy the artist and NOME Gallery

video (27:40 min). courtesy the artist and NOME Gallery

Lo-Def Film Factory South A frika The Subterranean Imprint Archive, 2021

Candice Lin Concord (USA) 1979 The Roots of Industry, 2016

video installation, e-waste. courtesy the artists

etching. Collection Rijksmuseum Twenthe. Purchased with the support of the Mondriaan Fund, 2023

88

#2 Extractivism

Troika United K ingdom Terminal Beach, 2020

Troika United K ingdom Evolutionary Composite, 2021

motion capture animation (4:00 min). courtesy the artists. Sound in collaboration with Dr Nigel Meredith, British Antarctic Survey

silicon wafer, knapped flint (3 x). courtesy the artists i.c.w. Dr. James Dilley

Leon de Bruijne Zaandam 1992 Turmoil, 2021

Naomi Rincón-Gallardo USA 1979 Sangre Pesada (Heavy Blood), 2018

oil drums, wheels, steel, mechanical parts, sand and video (3:21 min). courtesy the artist

HD video (18:45 min). courtesy the artist

89

#2 Extractivism

Edward Burtynsky Canada 1955 Salt Pan #21, Little Rann of Kutch, Gujarat, India, 2016

Edward Burtynsky Canada 1955 Phosphor Tailing #6, Near Lakeland, Florida, USA, 2012

archival pigment print. courtesy Galerie Springer Berlin

archival pigment print. courtesy Galerie Springer Berlin

Edward Burtynsky Canada 1955 Log Booms #1, Vancouver Island, British Columbia, 2016

Edward Burtynsky Canada 1955 Coal Mine #1, North Rhine, Westphalia, Germany, 2015

archival pigment print. courtesy Galerie Springer Berlin

archival pigment print. courtesy private collection

90

#2 Extractivism

Jennifer Baichwal, Nicholas de Pencier, Edward Burtynsky Lignite Coal Mine, Bagger Excavator (bucket detail) Hambach, Germany, 2018

Otobong Nkanga Nigeria 1974 Revelations, 2020 woven textile, inkjet prints. Collection Bonnefanten

HD video (video still). courtesy Mercury Films & Studio Burtynsky, Toronto, Canada

Knowbotiq Switzerland Swiss Psychotropic Gold_Molecular Refinery, 2022

Tanja Engelberts Deventer 1987 Mine, 2023 video installation. Collection Rijksmuseum Twenthe. Purchased with the support of the Mondriaan Fund, 2023

video, prints. courtesy the artists

91

#3 Photofestival Enschede

Natascha Libbert The Hague 1973

The House is on Fire, 2019 archival inkjet print courtesy the artist

Plastic Pallas, 2019

Lily’s Water, 2019

Bushfire, 2019

Untitled, 2018

archival inkjet print courtesy the artist

Mitsero’s Red, 2016 archival inkjet print courtesy the artist

archival inkjet print courtesy Leiden University Medical Center

archival inkjet print courtesy the artist

archival inkjet print courtesy the artist

92

#3 Photofestival Enschede

Untitled, 2019

Untitled, 2019

Gunther’s Pond, 2018

The Lock, 2016

archival inkjet print courtesy the artist

archival inkjet print courtesy the artist

archival inkjet print courtesy the artist

archival inkjet print courtesy the artist

Cactus Pricked II, 2019 archival inkjet print courtesy the artist

93

#3 Photofestival Enschede

Toon Koehorst Oldenzaal 1981

Nursery De Plaats, Honselersdijk, 2022 C-Print

Nursery PandA, Honselersdijk, 2022 Giclée Print

Nursery Ten Have Plant, Honselersdijk, 2022 Giclée Print

Cattle farm Havermans, Moerdijk, 2018 Giclée Print

Cattle farm Havermans, Moerdijk 2018 Giclée Print

Cattle farm Havermans, Moerdijk 2018 Giclée Print

94

Floating Farm, Rotterdam 2023 Giclée Print

#3 Photofestival Enschede

Nursery Ter Laak, Wateringen 2018

The Master Growers, Honselersdijk 2022

The Master Growers, Honselersdijk 2022

Sprongenloet, Honselersdijk 2022

Fachjan Project Plants, Honselersdijk 2022

Barreveldslaan, Honselersdijk 2022

Ten Have Plant, Honselersdijk 2022

Eggplant nursery PandA, Honselersdijk 2022

Nursery Triomaas, ‘s-Gravenzande 2017

The Green East, Raalte 2023

Nursery Sprongenloet, Honselersdijk

Baumschule, St. Ode

Giclée Print

Giclée Print

Giclée Print

Giclée Print

Giclée Print

Giclée Print

Giclée Print

2022 C-Print

95

Giclée Print

Giclée Print

Giclée Print

2019 Giclée Print

Colophon This publication accompanies the manifestation Who does the countryside belong to? which takes place at Rijksmuseum Twenthe from September 8, 2023 to January 28, 2024. The manifestation consists of three exhibitions (Terra Libera, Extractivism, Photofestival Enschede), an extensive public program and artistic research.

Concept development and organization by Josien Beltman and Julia Wolters, in collaboration with Annelien Dam and Jeroen van Pelt. PR and communication by Britt Tanck and Wilma Tempelman.

Exhibition construction by Michiel Bruckwilder, Jos Grundel and Ingeborg Smit. With thanks to Caroline Breunesse and Nikki Olde Monnikhof.

To accompany the manifestation Who does the countryside belong to? a podcast series was created in collaboration with art journalist Luuk Heezen. All 8 episodes can be listened to via Spotify.

Concept development and guidance artistic research in collaboration with Peter Sonderen and Joop Hoogeveen (Professorship Theory in the Arts, ArtEZ University of the Arts) Graphic and spatial design exhibitions: Koehorst in ‘t Veld Graphic design publication: Koehorst in ‘t Veld Spreads Wapke Feenstra: Graphic design by Wapke Feenstra in collaboration with Studio Bureau, Rotterdam; plant illustrations by Wapke Feenstra.

Translation Dutch-English of foreword and essay To Twente in company of artistic researchers: Robert Smith Translation Dutch-English of introduction, essay Terra Libera, texts Photofestival Enschede: Erica Moore Translation Dutch-English of text Extractivism: Isadora Goudsblom Translation Dutch-English of spreads Wapke Feenstra: Kathleen McMillan

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Acknowledgements A large number of people and organizations were involved in the realization of the manifestation Who does the countryside belong to?. They advised and inspired us in the run-up to the event, cooperated in one of the many activities, contributed to the artistic research or otherwise supported the project:

Photo credits pp. 4-5, 10-11, 21, 24 (fig. 15), 26-27, 30-35, 39, 46, 51, 63, 74-75, 82 (Feenstra, Lonneker Jan) 83, (Stittgen), 86 (Schedler, Vanmechelen), 88 (Kintera, Kokmeijer, Lo-Def Film Factory), 89 (De Bruijne), 98-99: © Lotte Stekelenburg pp. 8, 36-37, 57, 69: © Lars Smook pp. 22-23, 80 (Gursky), 85 (Gursky): © Andreas Gursky c/o Pictoright Amsterdam 2023. Courtesy Sprüth Magers pp. 52-55: © Tanja Engelberts (video stills) pp. 64-67: © Wapke Feenstra (photos); Annetje Brandsma and Rick Huis in ’t Veld (video stills) pp. 70-73: © Jonas Staal (video stills) p. 85 (Zwanikken): © Cheryl Schurgers p. 91 (Baichwal etc.): © Courtesy Mercury Films & Studio of Edward Burtynsky p. 91 (Nkanga): © Øystein Thorvaldsen

AKI Academy of Art & Design, Arita Baaijens, Sanne Beld, Imke de Boer, Annejet Brandsma, Koen Bril, Thouraya Chaabane, Inez Dekker, Drawing Centre Diepenheim, Clemens Driessen, Droste’s Twente, Erfgoed Bossem, Extinction Rebellion, Photofestival Enschede / Galerie Objektief, Bart and Tom Grobben, Katja Gruijters, Jessica Hammarlund Bergmann, Luuk Heezen, Herenboeren Usseler Es, Regine Hilhorst, Josien in ’t Hof, Joop Hoogeveen, Martijn Horst, Rick and Arjuna Huis in ’t Veld, Hanna Jansen, Luc Jehee, Thijs Kemperink, Toon Koehorst & Jannetje in ’t Veld, Heleen and Rogier Lansink, Harry Nijhuis, NWO/NWA, Landschap Overijssel, Landgoed Het Lankheet, Trudy Nieuwenhuys-van der Horst & Kim van der Horst, Arnoud Odding, Jade Ooms, Pakhuis Oost, Vanessa Oostijen, Province of Overijssel, Janneke van der Putten, Nel Schellekens, Just Schimmelpenninck, Peter Sonderen, Foundation Rückriem, De Twentsche Courant Tubantia, Alina and Henk Udink, University of Twente, Hans Verbeek, Vrouwen van Nu, Wieteke Willemen, Jessica Winter, Auke van der Woud.

© 2023 Rijksmuseum Twenthe and the authors The publisher has endeavored to regulate the rights of the illustrations according to legal provisions. Those who nevertheless feel that they are entitled to assert rights may still contact the publisher.

The copyright of works by artists affiliated with a cisac-organization is arranged with Pictoright Amsterdam. © c/o Pictoright.

Lenders Bonnefanten, Maastricht Galerie Springer Berlin KB, National Library of the Netherlands, The Hague Leiden University Medical Center Inter-Antiquariaat Mefferdt & De Jonge, Amsterdam Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek, Göttingen Oudheidkamer Twente Rijksmuseum Amsterdam Royal Collections, The Hague Simonis & Buunk, Ede Sprüth Magers, Berlin Verbeke Foundation Teylers Museum, Haarlem The Utrecht Archives

The manifestation Who does the countryside belong to? and this accompanying publication were realized with the support of:

Artists Our thanks go to all the artists who made their work available for this project. Special thanks go to Budhaditya Chattopadhyay, Tanja Engelberts, Wapke Feenstra, Jonas Staal, Toon Koehorst and Natascha Libbert.

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#2 Extractivism

#1 Terra Libera

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