COMMUNITY PROJECT Koen Vanmechelen

Open University of Difference (OpUnDi), Wasserman Projects, Detroit (US), 2016 CCP, The Future of Hope, Harare (ZW), 2015 CCP, De Hoev, Zonhoven (BE), 2015 La Biomista, Genk (BE), 2015-09-22

Artist Koen Vanmechelen COMMUNITY CHICKEN PROJECT Koen Vanmechelen

Modern poultry flocks have become genetically impoverished due to industrialised farming and are at considerable risk from diseases. The continuous crossbreeding of chicken species in the Cosmopolitan Chicken Project (CCP), which is artistic-philosophical in nature has resulted in the birth of that show a remarkably higher genetic diversity. Their immense gene pool consists of a whopping 13 million single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). The Cosmopolitan Chicken Research Project (CC®P) studies them and revealed the genetic enrichment through crossbreeding. A new project, the Community Chicken Project has to prevent inbreeding by injecting the genetic diversity into other species.

The layout of the plan is like this: every year a rooster of the newest crossbreed will be paired with a regular egg laying chicken. This chicken will absorb the genetic pool of the CCP rooster and produce a vital community chicken who can provide the communities it lives in with healthy eggs. The time is now. The growing popularity of chickens is a fact, but at the same time the food insecurity increases. Even in richer countries the sudden halt of food supplies through calamities, wars, riots or climate change can lead to much misery.

The need for food security and food independency of traditional industrial supply has played a pivotal role in the growing resurgence of small-scale agriculture, from raising homegrown vegetables to homebred animals. The first species to be introduced in this new project will be the Mechelse Cemani, the 19th generation of the CCP. The next generation, will be the typical chicken from Detroit; the Wyandotte. This crossbreeding (CCP20) will be raised at Wasserman Projects, located at the Eastern Market in Detroit. Other experimental labs will be based in , Harare (Zimbabwe), and Havana (Cuba). The animals will bring new diversity and food security to certain urban communities there. The birds in every location will be subject to scientific research.

With this project, Vanmechelen takes the next step in positioning art categorically where it belongs: in the middle of society, engaged with people, always committed. Important is that the communities involved are linked to each other. They are small parts of a plural and diverse society that is being formed. The artist refers to his artwork The Tower of Babel which was first presented at the biennial of Poznan and now houses one of the Community projects. The 13m high tower, reaching for the eternal is a cultural adaptation of its prototype and consists of cages and chicken crossbreeds. The always present tension translates itself in an upward or downward movement. The building blocks of the Tower seem like mirror movements. Every part is connected to other parts, like the communities will be linked through the chickens they adopted. The Tower stands for limited and controlled growth. A watchtower for the urban farming initiatives that accompany the community chicken. COMMUNITY CHICKEN PROJECT Koen Vanmechelen

Top Domesticated Giant, bronze, glass, 55 x 178 x 86 cm, 40 x 174 x 87 cm © Koen Vanmechelen, 2015 Below Breeding center of the Community Chicken Project where the different chicken species are kept in modular cages COMMUNITY CHICKEN PROJECT Koen Vanmechelen

Top The Tower of Babel, oil on panel painting by Pieter Brueghel, Below Tower of Babel, Wood, portraits on nylon by Koen 1563. The Tower of Babel is a story told in the Old Testament Vanmechelen, 2015. In his Tower of Babel Vanmechelen meant to explain the origin of different languages. According presents his own go at a cloud-breaking tower, his world to the story, a united humanity of the generations following famous ‘Cosmopolitan Chicken Project’. It consists of the the Great Flood, speaking a single language and migrating different crossings of national chicken species, surprising from the east, came to the land of Shinar. There they agreed cocktails of different bundles of genetic material. to build a city and tower; seeing this, God confounded their speech so that they could no longer understand each other and scattered them around the world. COMMUNITY CHICKEN PROJECT Koen Vanmechelen

Top local shop at the community project at at De Hoev, Belgium where the self grown vegetables and local products are being sold. Below garden at the community project De Hoev, Belgium with in the back the Tower of Babel COMMUNITY CHICKEN PROJECT Koen Vanmechelen

Top Domesticated Giant, bronze, glass, 55 x 178 x 86 cm, 40 x 174 x 87 cm © Koen Vanmechelen, 2015 Below Eggs produced by the Community Chickens can be distributed to the local communities in the framework of a ‘one egg a day’ policy THE COSMOPOLITAN CHICKEN PROJECT (CCP) DIVERSITY AND DUALISM

Nothing is what it seems. That is but one of the many “I see the chicken as a metaphor for man and - much more surprising - lessons of the Cosmopolitan the egg both as a metaphor for the world and as the Chicken Project (CCP), a worldwide crossbreed- laboratory of the future. The egg is a protected envi- ing program involving national and regional chicken ronment and a source of life. Yet it is also a cage, a breeds that started in 1998 by visual artist Koen Van- restriction from which we have to break free.” History mechelen (b. 1965, Sint-Truiden, Belgium). teaches us that progress is predicated on daring to let go of what we already have. The result of hybridisation Vanmechelen found that each successive genera- is often uncertain. Do we dare expose ourselves to the tion of hybrids was more resilient than its purer-bred unexpected? Vanmechelen certainly does: “Fertilisa- parents. The chickens lived longer, were less suscep- tion, enrichment – they always come from outside. It’s tible to disease, and exhibited less aggressive behav- precisely the unexpected things that are important ior. Also, less unexpectedly, the morphological and to me. I take notice of apparent coincidences.” This phenotypical characteristics were blurred by selective is why the Cosmopolitan Chicken Project is also an breeding. The ultimate result of many generations of answer in progress, a work of art that will never be crossbreeding is a truly Cosmopolitan Chicken, car- complete. How the Cosmopolitan Chicken will turn out rying the genes of all the world’s chicken breeds. The or where the program will end, remain open ques- starting point for all these different breeds once was tions, just as what will come out of the egg is an open the Red Junglefowl - the original chicken. Its many question, every time around. descendant breeds are all man-made endpoints, sometimes literally so, in the sense that they are The diversity that characterises Vanmechelen’s infertile. Vanmechelen wants to end all these breeds work is not confined to the media he uses. The CCP by blending them into a new starting point, providing a involves a symbiosis of art, science, philosophy, poli- chicken-breeding example of the principle of creative tics and ethics. It is Vanmechelen’s way of reflecting destruction. But the CCP does not aim to reconstitute on the existential questions of individual identity and the proto-chicken. It does not want to return to the life, and it touches on contemporary issues regard- past. On the contrary, it symbolises the future. The ing globalisations, racism, genetic modification and CCP is the starting point of a new form of evolution cloning. The project invites the onlooker to join in the that will never end, a perpetuum mobile of genetic debate. diversification and recombination. The Cosmopolitan Chicken Project: approach and Vanmechelen’s oeuvre is as diverse and as hybrid state of progress as the Cosmopolitan Chicken itself: it’s a unique mix of painting, drawing, photography, video, innovative The first generation hybrid, the Mechelse Bresse, 3D techniques, installations and wooden sculptures, resulted from crossbreeding the Belgian Mechelse whose unifying theme is the chicken and the egg. Koekoek - the pride of Flemish chicken farmers - But, as mentioned before: nothing is what it seems. with the top French chicken, the Poulet de Bresse. The core of the project is neither chicken nor egg, but Each successive generation of hybrids comes from crossbreeding and the diversity that comes from it. crossbreeding the previous generation’s hybrid with another pure breed. The Cosmopolitan Chicken holds up a mirror to us. In 2015, the artist’s ongoing creation of a world- Crossbreeding is a practical but also a philosophical hybrid chicken reached, with the Mechelse Sulmtaler, necessity, if not a moral duty. Today’s chicken breeds its eighteenth generation; a royal breed, born in the are failing; to prevent inbreeding and degeneration, castle of Chimay (BE) as a result between the Aus- new blood is needed. “Every organism needs some trian Sulmtaler and the Mechelse Styrian. One year other organism in order to survive,” says Vanmechel- before, this Mechelse Styrian came into existence en, “If there is one secret in life, maybe it’s that every- after a crossing between the Slovenian Styrian and thing is dual. Chicken and egg, cause and effect, good the Mechelse Senegal at the Ars Electronica Festival and bad, construction and destruction: everything in Linz (AT). To date, the hybrid consists of regional exists in relation to the Other. If you pursue this line breeds of chickens in Belgium, France, England, of reasoning, you might even conclude that there’s a U.S.A., , The , Mexico, Thailand, parallel solar system outside our own, ensuring our Brazil, Turkey, Cuba, Italy, Russia, China, Egypt, Sen- continued survival.” egal, Slovenia and Austria. × × ♂ MECHELSE KOEKOEK POULET DE BRESSE ♀ ♀ MECHELSE DENIZLI CUBALAYA ♂ Belgium France CCP Cuba

× × ♀ MECHELSE BRESSE ENGLISH REDCAP ♂ ♂ MECHELSE CUBALAYA ANCONA ♀ CCP England CCP Italy

× × ♀ JERSEY GIANT MECHELSE REDCAP ♂ ♀ MECHELSE ANCONA ♂ U.S.A. CCP Russia CCP

× × ♂ MECHELSE GIANT DRESDNER ♀ ♂ MECHELSE ♀ CCP Germany CCP China

× × ♀ UILEBAARD MECHELSE DRESDNER ♂ ♀ MECHELSEM EEE ♂ The Netherlands CCP Egypt CCP

× × ♂ MECHELSE UILEBAARD LOUISIANA ♀ ♂ MECHELSE POULET DE SENEGAL ♀ CCP Mexico CCP Senegal

× × ♂ MECHELSE LOUISIANA ♀ ♂ STYRIAN MECHELSE SENEGAL ♀ Thailand CCP Slovenia CCP

× × ♂ MECHELSE AURACANA ♀ ♀ MECHELSE STYRIAN SULMTALER ♂ CCP Brazil CCP Austria

× × ♀ DENIZLI HOROZU MECHELSE AURACANA ♂ ♂ AYAM CEMANI MECHELSE SULMTALER ♀ Turkey CCP CCP