Futurefarmers

Context

If professionalisation risks creating territorial approaches to specialisms and rifts between different ways of knowing and doing, then multidisciplinary collaborations promise a more holistic approach to sharing ideas and learning. This kind of approach is precisely what climate breakdown demands because climate is not a single-topic issue and climate justice cannot be achieved in only one way and from only one geographic or cultural perspective.

Practice

Since the mid-1990s, the platform Futurefarmers has gathered artists, architects, programmers, farmers, writers, designers, and activists in North America and Europe to work together in exploring climate-related topics. Futurefarmers welcome all sorts of participatory research methods that broaden perspectives and consider ecosystems and human cultures in symbiotic relation. Members support each others’ projects through collaboration or advice. Projects are long-term and prioritise practice and process over objecthood and exhibition.

Projects have included building a communal bakehouse and a seed exchange to raise awareness about food supply chains, seed privatisation, and extinction.¹For example, Seed Journey (2016-17) was a project that travelled by wind-powered sailing ship from Oslo to Istanbul, tracing the path of wheat seeds to their origin as a combined form of phylogeny and social history. A crew of artists, wayfarers, scientists, and writers sailed the ship, carrying exhibition materials and species of seeds that were originally imported to Northern Europe from the Middle East – some of which are now very rare. The ship was a vehicle, a metaphor, for global solidarity against globalisation, its route returning seeds to a region that the Global North has historically exploited. The use of renewable energy for the ship’s wind-powered journey drew attention to the catastrophic ecological footprint of many foods that are flown, cargo-shipped, and driven across the world today. Such projects invite audiences to consider where food comes from, and to publicly criticise the copyrighting of seed species by agricultural giants such as Monsanto. Discussion and education programmes accompany each project to nurture public discourse on climate justice.

Futurefarmers’ strength lies in using imaginative metaphors and activities to nurture local engagement as a planetary kind of responsibility. The platform also exemplifies an important method of collaborative practice in the way it has grown and evolved due to its varied collaborators and the professional or regional focus they bring to projects. An annual artist-in-residency programme brings new members to the platform, growing a network of previous or continuing collaborators. Organised as an organic kind of coalition, with multiple working groups located in different regions, the platform retains a flexibility that is vital for addressing the fluid dynamics of climate breakdown. As Futurefarmer member Lode Vranken explains,

“most of the projects start by just hanging around. We meet people, something starts and it becomes physical. But then because something happens, people get enthusiastic and the projects that started small begin to grow. Possibilities grow as well, and quite often the support then grows in terms of budget and scope.”²‘Futurefarmers’, 14 June 2021 <https://www.the-nomad-magazine.com/futurefarmers-amy-franceschini-and-lode-vranken> [accessed 3 May 2019].

Notes

• 1
  For example, Seed Journey (2016-17) was a project that travelled by wind-powered sailing ship from Oslo to Istanbul, tracing the path of wheat seeds to their origin as a combined form of phylogeny and social history. A crew of artists, wayfarers, scientists, and writers sailed the ship, carrying exhibition materials and species of seeds that were originally imported to Northern Europe from the Middle East – some of which are now very rare. The ship was a vehicle, a metaphor, for global solidarity against globalisation, its route returning seeds to a region that the Global North has historically exploited. The use of renewable energy for the ship’s wind-powered journey drew attention to the catastrophic ecological footprint of many foods that are flown, cargo-shipped, and driven across the world today.
• 2
  ‘Futurefarmers’, 14 June 2021 <https://www.the-nomad-magazine.com/futurefarmers-amy-franceschini-and-lode-vranken> [accessed 3 May 2019].