Interview: Kultivator at alt_cph

Kultivator is a collective of people living and working in rural Sweden on a farm. They are a family-sisters, husbands, children. They are also artists. Their art practice is centered on art and agriculture. In fact, they even staged a wedding between art and agriculture in 2010. Last weekend the Mythological Quarter attended Copenhagen’s alternative art fair, alt_cph 11: Encounters where we were able to catch up with our friends Malin Lindmark Vrijman and Mathieu Vrijman from Kultivator. We talked with them about the project they presented at alt_cph 11: Encounters, post (r)evolutionary exercises, and the busy summer they have been having.

Kultivator has been working on their farm since the early 2000s, living with cows, chickens, pigs, dogs, and cats while growing food. They work with the local farming community to learn techniques and skills for growing food and taking care of livestock. Both Malin and Mathieu say that the wisdom they garner from working with the slow pace of farm life inspires the cultural work they do. This work includes projects at the farm and off.

For alt_cph 11: Encounters, Kultivator wanted to synthesize some of the wisdom they have gathered over the years, combined with the work they had done this summer, into a series of posters. For the project, Mathieu taught himself how to screenprint and knocked out 300 prints in one day. The black and white posters take images from various Kultivator art projects combined with a short maxim like ‘Help a farmer’; ‘Learn from old people’; ‘Buy nothing’; or ‘Disregard borders.’ The poster’s border is taken from the Arts and Crafts Movement and includes the face of Arts and Crafts founder, William Morris. Malin and Mathieu are inspired by this turn of the century social movement that was against industrialism and focused on the handmade.

Malin and Mathieu were on hand during the fair to hand out packets of posters with wheat-pasting kits so that one could take them out and put them up. The kits included 10 posters,  beautiful sewn paper bags, and little containers of glue.

This summer Kultivator has been working with two artist run spaces, rum46 in Aarhus, DK, and 98 weeks project space in Beirut, Lebanon on a project called The Camp. In 2010, Kultivator, along with rum46, visited Lebanon and worked on a research exchange with the artists and cultural workers there called Goings On. Goings On was about forging international connections between independent cultural practitioners. For The Camp, folks form 98weeks headed up to Scandinavia for discussion, cultural exchange, and living on a converted bus.

Kultivator remade an old city bus with bunk beds and a sitting area for the visitors from Lebanon. The bus traveled form the rum46 space in Aarhus up to the farm in rural Sweden. The Camp participants talked about revolution in the Middle East, farming in Scandinavia, and how art could connect all of these things. The image on the ‘Help a Farmer’ poster in post (r)evolutionary excercises shows Omar Khouri, a comic book artist from Lebanon helping to put in fence posts on the farm in Sweden.

Malin told me that post (r)evolutionary excercises came out of discussions during The Camp retreat. It refers to revolutions both current and past-in Europe and in the Middle East. It also refers to  how living sustainably is both a reality for the group and a learning process for them. She acknowledges that the way they live is a dream for others in different parts of the world.  Malin also says that even though they live closer to the land than most people, they are constantly learning better ways to do and create on the farm. The project represents post and pre-revolutionary thought at the same time.

In addition to the poster project and The Camp, Kultivator also opened a new exhibition in Aarhus this summer called, Imagine Farm. For Imagine Farm,  Kultivator asked school children around the Danish city what they imagined for the future. Using the framework of a farm, they asked students about their ideas on growing food, energy production, and waste management. The farm served as the framework because as a space of literal cultivation, it can also be a metaphor for cultivating ideas. Kultivator made paper-mache sculptures from the students proposals. Paper-mache was chosen because it is light and when the children visited the exhibit they could move things around. Visit the digital version of the exhibit here and move the sculpture proposals around on your browser screen.

The Camp, post (r)evolutionary excercises, and Imagine Farm,  are just a few of the projects coming from Kultivator. We are excited to know them and their work. Their art practice, which privileges long term commitment to a set of ideas and restructuring life around art and ideas, is an inspiration for us, as well. We can’t wait to see what they are working on next. Visit their website to explore years of work and projects,  on art and agriculture, independent cultural work, and wonderful imaginings on a farm.