Darwin's Dream - Koen Vanmechelen by Koen Vanmechelen

KOEN VANMECHELEN DARWIN’S DREAM

Curated by James Putnam and Jill Silverman Van Coenegrachts THE CRYPT GALLERY — ST PANCRAS CHURCH 15 NOV - 14 DEC, 2014 LONDON (UK)

DARWIN’S DREAM

A WORD FROM THE CURATORS

EXHIBITION PLAN

LIST OF WORKS

THE COSMOPOLITAN CHICKEN PROJECT 18 generations of cross-breeds

WHERE IT STARTED by Jill Silverman van Coenegrachts

A CONVERSATION between Koen Vanmechelen and curator/writer James Putnam

KOEN VANMECHELEN: Art and science

THE COSMOPOLITAN CHICKEN Work in progress

Captions

Colophon

DARWIN’S DREAM

A WORD FROM THE CURATORS James Putnam & Jill Silverman van Coenegrachts

9 This first solo London exhibition by Koen Vanmechelen brings his recent work together with his ongoing Cosmopolitan Chicken Project (CCP) that was first shown at the Lisson Gallery in a legendery group show A Shot in the Head, the summer of 2000. Although Vanmechelen uses chickens in his work it is not really about chickens at all but about the notion of diversity. His work follows in the great Belgian tradition of artists like René Magritte and Marcel Broodthaers who use images and objects as metaphors. Vanmechelen’s work poses fundamental questions about humanity, our identity as a species and the society we’ve created. His ongoing Cosmopolitan Chicken Project began with crossing the purebred Belgian and French chickens then every subsequent generation is crossed with a purebred chicken from a different race coming from another part of the world. He currently has 18 new breeds from different crossbred “parents”, who carry this singular “cosmopolitan” genetic material. This work goes on to illustrate how we evolve on the planet through increasing migration and exchange of genetic material that results in a cosmopolitan genome thereby progressively erasing the obvious outward racial differences caused by domestication and geographic distribution. Chickens and human beings share a common ancestor approximately 300 million years ago, evolving into the lineages that gave rise to dinosaurs, birds and reptiles on one hand, and mammals on the other. Chickens were first domesticated thousands of years ago from the jungle fowl that still runs wild in most of Southeast Asia. This discovery was first proposed by Darwin and has since been verified by DNA research. There is archaeological evidence that many of the first civilizations kept chickens and the ancient Egyptians devised a method of incubating their eggs. Darwin’s Dream proposes that chickens who have accompanied man across the globe in a complex and interconnected relationship involving the food chain and

domestication -- might in fact be dedomesticated and be free to roam wild again like their jungle fowl ancestors. Darwin’s research into the domestication of chickens and his examination of breed characteristics helped him to develop his ideas about evolution. Domestication of wild animals or artificial selection is a good model for the study of evolutionary processes and Darwin researched the effects of cross breeding on various animals including poultry and even bred pigeons himself. By artificially selecting features crossing birds with particular characteristics to generate different offspring, he gathered valuable information for his theory of evolution by natural selection. In 1867 before he published The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication he referred to his theory of Pangenesis, the basic principal of heredity and genetics, as a ‘mad dream’ *Darwin’s letter (5649) to Asa Gray 16/10/1867 Animals have been inspiring artists since the first cave paintings of deer and bison. But although many contemporary artists use live and taxidermy animals in their artworks they rarely have much to say about animals per se and man’s important relationship with them. Vanmechelen’s work is focused on the interaction between animals and humans and addresses the universal cycle of nature. In this way he shares a kindred spirit with Joseph Beuys whose famous performance with a coyote in the New York gallery of Rene Bloch, I Like America and America Likes Me (1974) expresses the idea of shamanism and the sacred bond between animals and humans. Beuys created both the idea of performance/ installation using animals be they hares, or fish, or his famous Titus/Iphigenia (1969 Experimenta III, Frankfurt), a performance which used the horse as an allegorical vehicle for alchemical transformation -- the logical result of this thinking can be seen in his works where he invented a political party for animals and direct democracy as Beuys considered the animal world no less coherent and in need of representation than our own.

DARWIN’S DREAM

10 The animal has frequently been used allegorically in art, as a human projection but in Vanmechelenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s its presence in the work suggests a substantial sense of human-animal shared destiny that emerge where through this symbolic partnership, man can acquire answers to adaptive needs. This work alludes to pertinent ethical issues of our society like diversity, multiculturalism, globalization and is opposed to eugenics and genetic engineering. Vanmechelenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s installations and the research that precedes these works aptly illustrates that art can go beyond the production of marketable images and objects possessing the power to make a difference and effect significant changes for the future of mankind.

EXHIBITION PLAN

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12 18

MAIN ENTRANCE

LIST OF WORKS 1

Modified Spaces – C.C.P., 2014 Installation with jungle plants, plant lamps, wood, potting soil, dimensions variable

Cosmopolitan Chicken Project, 2014 Prints (lambda) on plexi glass, 120 x 160 x 3 cm

De-Domestication – C.C.P., 2014 Neon lighting, 215 x 24,5 cm

Under Pressure – C.C.P., 2012 Plexi glass suitcase, testing tubes, labels, feathers of the CCP, 26 x 16 x 18 cm

Darwin’s Dream – C.C.P., 2014 Neon lighting, 209 x 22 cm

Cosmopolitan Chicken Project, 2014 Taxidermic chickens (CCP), wood, dimensions variable

Cross Over – English Redcap - C.C.P., 2002 Taxidermic chicken (English Redcap), steel stand with glass, 90 x 101,5 x 60 cm

Cosmopolitan Chicken Project, 2000 Framed photographic print, 77 x 113,5 cm Courtesy: Lisson Gallery

Pyramid of Time/Pyramid of Brain – C.C.P., Drawing on paper, chalk, pencil, print on transparency film, wooden frame, 85,5 x 67 x 3 cm Private Collection, Kruibeke (BE)

In-Captivity – C.C.P., 2014 Glass panels, glass eggs, steel frame, 100 x 150 x 20 cm

Cosmopolitan Renaissance – C.C.P., 2014 Digital print on marble, 42 x 52 x 1 cm

Meat, Meet, Me – C.C.P., 1999 Video, dimensions variable

Virtual Fighter – C.C.P., 2014 UV print on gold leaf, wood, steel, 25 x 36 x 2,5 cm

15 14

Virtual Fighter – C.C.P., 2005 Polyamide (Selective Laser Sintering), gold

Coming World – C.C.P., 2014 Glass eggs, branches, stainless steel, 150 x 150 x 50 cm

Turbulence – C.C.P., 2014 Aluminum Frame Textile LED Light Box, 90 x 120 x 3,8 cm

Domesticated Giant – C.C.P., 2013 Carrara marble, taxidermic chick (CCP), gold leaf, 53 x 120 x 38 cm Courtesy: Guy Pieters Gallery

Cyborn – C.C.P., 2013 Ceramic egg, breeding lamp, 45 x 35 x 35 cm

Conversation – C.C.P., 2000 Video, dimensions variable

All artworks are copyright Koen Vanmechelen

DARWIN’S DREAM

1999 — 2014

♂ MECHELSE KOEKOEK Belgium

POULET DE BRESSE ♀ France

♀ MECHELSE BRESSE CCP

♀ JERSEY GIANT U.S.A.

ENGLISH REDCAP ♂ England

MECHELSE REDCAP ♂ CCP

♂ MECHELSE GIANT CCP

♀ UILEBAARD The Netherlands

♀ MECHELSE LOUISIANA CCP

♂ MECHELSE UILEBAARD CCP

DRESDNER ♀ Germany

AURACANA ♀ Brazil

MECHELSE AURACANA ♂ CCP

♂ MECHELSE CCP

♂

♀ MECHELSE DENIZLI CCP

♀ ANCONA Italy

LOUISIANA ♀ Mexico

Thailand

♂ MECHELSE CCP

♀ DENIZLI HOROZU Turkey

MECHELSE DRESDNER ♂ CCP

China

♂ MECHELSE CCP

♀ POULET DE SENEGAL Senegal

CUBALAYA ♂ Cuba

♀

Egypt

MECHELSE

♀ MECHELSE SENEGAL CCP

CCP

♂

MECHELSE CUBALAYA ♂ CCP

♂ MECHELSE ANCONA CCP

× Russia

♀

♂ SULMTALER Austria

♀

MECHELSE STYRIAN ♀ CCP

STYRIAN ♂ Slovenia

THE COSMOPOLITAN CHICKEN PROJECT 18 generations of cross-breeds 1999 - 2014

First Generation blue. In de ban van de ring, Provinciaal Museum, Hasselt (BE), 1999.

MECHELSE KOEKOEK — BE CCP #1

POULET DE BRESSE — FR CCP #1

MECHELSE BRESSE CCP #2

MECHELSE REDCAP CCP #3

MECHELSE GIANT CCP #4

MECHELSE DRESDNER CCP #5

MECHELSE UILEBAARD CCP #6

MECHELSE LOUISIANA CCP #7

WHERE IT STARTED: The Cosmopolitan Chicken Project by Jill Silverman van Coenegrachts

37 Something very curious happens when you look inside a museum and see a large space covered by a thick dirt floor with a dozen fat white chickens walking around pecking the ground, eating and drinking, from time to time looking out the window, or finding their way down wide enclosed plastic shoot taking them into the garden where they can see a large handsome grey brown and mottled rooster in his cage, surveying the sweep of the museums’ grounds which are enclosed by eighteenth century brick building. This was the very first installation of the Cosmopolitan Chicken Project (CCP) in 1999 as part of a group show in the Provinciaal Museum of Hasselt, in a group show called In de Ban van de Ring curated by Annemie Van Laethem. The exhibition was varied -- I was installing a series of sculptures made by Richard Deacon and Thomas Schütte as a collaboration called Them and Us in the small rooms of the Begijnhof, as well as video sculptures of Tony Oursler -- it was the period where Oursler had video images of distorted faces trapped by furniture, caught in corners of suitcases unable to get out, crying desperately in an endless loop -- among other artists in this exhibition were works by land artist, Peter Hutchinson, and fellow Belgians Marie-Jo Lafontaine not far from large wax sculptures of a young Berlinde de Bruyckere. The outright humour these busy chickens brought into this serious art setting was sparkling. As the opening approached, it became a sport to see how often the white chickens (who I had learned were all female, and French Poulet de Bresse) could jump onto the plastic gang-plank and try to see, talk to and just generally attract the attention of the Belgian rooster (the Mechelse Koekoek). It was clear to me reading the sign in front of the roosters’ cage that this was “A CROSS-BREEDING PROJECT” which also made me laugh, thinking about other kinds of installation work that might help me decipher what I was seeing (I of course thought about Walter de Maria’s Earth Room, (1977) in New York, and the many tiers of display cases and

museum cabinets of Mark Dion’s artefacts from foraging along the banks of rivers and collecting animal specimens, and again of Joseph Beuys’ love of his political party for animals). I spent time looking carefully at this three room installation by the unknown Belgian artist with great interest. The room with the dirt floor and chickens had a black and white film filling the far wall, just behind the seven level nesting bar for the hens at night, it showed a long haired man eating pieces of cooked chicken, looking into the camera, pulling bits off the bone and eating with relish. It amused me that the chickens were uninterested in the film. Then in the adjoining room were documentation mounted on the wall in the style of On Kawara, or Hanne Darboven, charts, graphs, head shots of chickens with what looked like passport information just below, the texts on the wall had a regularity about them that smelled like a new kind of minimalism, mixed up with the technological constructions -- incubators, pens with red heat lamps, small televisions with related video works playing. In the hours before the opening, I spent time taking in the breadth of this installation, and trying to see where its origins lay, and how it was so fresh and lively, even daring. It was something familiar but I realized in its complexity that it was a complete vision of something totally new. The afternoon itself was punctuated by a momentous discourse delivered by the late Jan Hoet. It was a hot summer day, and he stood under the shadow of one very large Chestnut tree, with the audience seated around him on the grass, there were a good hundred listening to him for over an hour. Hoet was well known for this style of preaching, no one moved, and it seemed that day as if art history was being made quietly in a small town in Limburg. It felt like one of the parables in the New Testament with Jesus teaching the converted, though I didn’t understand the nuances of the Flemish conversation, later Jan Hoet made a point of saying to me, “You know Jill, this young Belgian is the most important artist we have

DARWIN’S DREAM

First Generation blue. In de ban van de ring, Provinciaal Museum, Hasselt (BE), 1999.

40 since Broodthaersâ&#x20AC;?. The seed of this idea had already rooted in my mind during the days I witnessed the completion of his installation. My first conversation with Koen is retold as part of the speech that I made last year in Hasselt (you can find it on youtube or the Darwinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Dream website), and how I brought the project a year later to London so that the offspring of this first crossing could mate with the British female Redcaps is also part of this talk. The summer of 2000 the second stage of the Cosmopolitan Chicken Project filled the first floor gallery of the Lisson Galleryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s building overlooking Bell Street. The exhibition was called A Shot In The Head, and the mix was referred to as the Mechelse Redcap. All the elements of the installation from Hasselt were present in a smaller space, this time the hens and the rooster were sharing their pens in the gallery, instead of dirt flooring they had sawdust, the sounds of their voices and the smell of real animals reminded everyone that nature has a very strong presence even in an art gallery. I am not sure how the gallery in New York smelled when Beuys and the Coyote cohabited together for his performance, or how it sounded the muffled or loud communication between them. The four diagrams of the future ideas for the Cosmopolitan Chicken Project filled the wall opposite the pens. It was impossible to know in the summer of 2000, that everything this young artist wanted to achieve, that he meticulously drew on these breeding charts, would eighteen generations later come to be. The noble title of this first chart is Gallus Domesticus Mechels Cosmopolitan sounded more like something you might find in an early Latin text of Virgil, than in contemporary art. The physical differences in the birds who followed man, or had been put into burlap sacks and taken with man from the Himalayas to North America, and all the continents in between -- were presented presented like a display chart -- the way Marcel Broodthaers transposed cows into types of automobiles, for example, in Les Animaux de la ferme, 1974. What is so striking here is the resemblances, how like the

41 human populations of one part of the world or another these chickens looked. The Chinese Silky has feathers that look like threads of silk, the French hen is the colour of the French flag, the Jersey Giant is as mighty as the state of New Jersey, and so on. And as I repeat to everyone, this is not about chickens, it is about all of us and the crazy society we make in our diverse ways. The world has moved hard and fast since the birth of the CCP project. There are for the last few years, international groups of scientists working parallel to his art work, because in this intuitive questioning of things Vanmechelen has come from the sides in a lateral form of address to the heart of some of the very large and very difficult issues facing the world today; be they issues of immunity and fertility, or the way such things affects the global food supply; his art repeatedly questions the accepted perspective that has come through evolution and the free market. In one way, his capacity to inquire about what has happened, and have us look again at what could happen if, is the fundamental principle that drives his artworks forward; in addition to these glorious installations, he continues to make paintings, drawings, video works, installations with taxidermy participants in the CCP project. He has written texts, delivered TED lectures, addressed Unesco, while his installations appear in biennales, and international exhibitions on a regular basis. His art speaks to the importance and universal presence of diversity in all species, and it looks at the edges of this topic where political and economic questions come into play, of discussions about the migratory movement of peoples, of the way in which diversity may affect immunity and fertility, of how domestication over centuries and millennium can be seen to affect the genetic behaviour chromosomes inside the different species; how on some level nature is the filament that connects all living things regardless of species. We come to understand on a sub atomic level where the similarities lie, Vanmechelen and his intuition take us from this micro understanding, to

the widest macro view imaginable; only art can pose such questions in a way that will get our attention, and only such an artist can maintain both his innocence and curiosity to demand we look at these intricate and difficult subjects with courage.

The Cosmopolitan Chicken. Mechelse Redcap, A shot in the Head, Lisson gallery, London (UK), 2000

MECHELSE FIGHTER CCP #8

MECHELSE AURACANA CCP #9

MECHELSE DENIZLI HOROZU CCP #10

MECHELSE CUBALAYA CCP #11

MECHELSE ANCONA CCP #12

MECHELSE CCP #13

A CONVERSATION between Koen Vanmechelen and curator/writer James Putnam Hasselt, August 6th, 2014

55 JP – Everyone must ask you this, but tell me why did you choose the chicken as being central to your art practice and what’s so unique about the chicken compared to other animals? KV – First of all, the chicken is the most domesticated animal in the world. I say this, because it’s based on numbers. So we have 65 billion chickens in the world and 300 billion eggs every moment of the day. I think this is very remarkable and what’s more, the chicken is the most transformed animal there is and that’s the basis of my work. You know in every country you find a chicken that tells something about that country. A good example is the Poulet de Bresse from France that is red on the head, has a white body and blue legs, like the French flag. JP – That’s the chicken the French claim has the finest flavor, but I didn’t realize it’s also been bred as a sort of national mascot, an embodiment of their tricolour flag. KV – And in China the Silky has fluffy plumage, which is symbolic of the country’s silk production. The Americans breed the world’s biggest chicken and so I can go on. This is a cultural aspect and I think that it’s probably the only animal where they went that far. There’s always been a very strong relationship between humans and chickens because it’s a very easy animal that adapts to every kind of temperature. When it comes into a new environment it immediately acclimatizes, even on the North Pole there are chickens. It’s a very easy animal to travel with and there are studies where it’s possible to draw the world map on the migrations of humans through analyzing the DNA of chicken bones because humans were taking chickens with them. So I think there’s enough reasons to say that the chicken is a very good metaphor for our society and for our lives, and working with that material gives significant insights.

JP – I suspect you are frequently asked that famous question: which came first, the chicken or the egg? KV – For me it’s important that you have the two things, it’s about duality – I see the chicken as a metaphor for life and the egg as a metaphor for the world. So if you point it out in that way, you talk about the eternal egg, the cosmic, the material that’s floating around and the shell that has to come around it, it’s like energy and mass. JP – Let’s go back to your first interest or inspiration about chickens when you were five years old. Was this the typical fascination children have for nature and their instinctive love of animals? KV – I have a feeling that there are many kids who are breeding chickens – I was curious what nature is and also that when you put an egg in an incubator and heat it to 37.6 degrees after 21 days you have a chick. Can you imagine what kind of magic this is to a child? So I was looking at this when I was 5 years old because I had an incubator in my room. JP – Hang on a minute how come you had an incubator in your room? KV – My father had a little bird and the local baker brought two little chicks, a hen and a rooster and I raised them and then my uncle who is an ornithologist gave me a little incubator. So people around me provided me with all the stuff and I got excited about it. So for me it’s still in my brain the struggle of a chick that comes out of the egg. The contradiction that two thirds of the egg becomes a chicken and one third becomes air and the chicken has to break through a very thin layer inside and take the air and break the shell so that air is helping the chicken to escape from the shell that protects it. That contradiction inspired me later on to think about the space shuttle how when it goes into space it has to break through earth’s atmosphere, but if it breaks in the wrong place it burns completely. This kind of metaphor I saw also in the egg and it’s still in my mind.

DARWIN’S DREAM

57 JP – Can you tell me a bit about your formative development as an artist? I’m aware that you didn’t go to art school. KV – I’m self-taught that’s true, but the creative ingredients were always there. My father is also a self-taught artist and my mother is a fashion designer and I was always good at art in school so my parents saw that there was some kind of talent there. My father was always saying that having a vision is most important. I think, just like everybody who is starting to make art, you go in a certain tradition and I was making big cages like I still do now for exhibitions and I started making sculptures based on their material and forms. I was making animals, mainly birds and it looked like they were walking around with their own cages. But when I was working on it and I did it for many years, all of a sudden I started to realize I had a strong philosophy in my mind that when we talk about cages we think about escaping. I started asking myself questions about it like: when are we free? And then I came to the conclusion that we can only be free when you break a cage, and making an art piece itself can be a kind of liberation.

Cosmopolitan Park, Open University of Diversity, Studio Koen Vanmechelen, Meeuwen (BE), 2014

JP – So you were already committed to being an artist and you’d had some success with selling those early wooden ‘bird’ sculptures but at what point did you discover that your chosen medium should be the chicken itself by making chicken-breeding central to your art practice. Was this a gradual transition or can you recall a specific moment of revelation? KV – Because my birds were looking like animals that were walking with these cages, I started to think about the chickens in my garden. I had a recollection that when I was 12 years old I asked my father how it was possible that you put something you like in a cage? Why do we do this? At that moment and although that was a question of a child if you take it further it becomes the question of domestication why are we controlling something? And controlling something that you like, that’s even worse! So with this kind of reflection,

I saw the chicken in my garden and was thinking to myself and then I realized that the art pieces that I was making are not the real art pieces – the real art piece is the chicken, because this chicken is already in a kind of cage from a thought of somebody. If a chicken is bred like a Poulet de Bresse that’s just like a cage because it’s controlled by a thought of a human being. So that was like a moment of ‘whoa!’ - a kind of ‘big bang’ moment that I felt both physically and mentally and I realized the only way to liberate a chicken from its structure is through crossbreeding. So that’s when the idea of my Cosmopolitan Chicken Project was born. JP – Do you see a division in your artistic vision and your mission as someone who is discovering amazing things in the field of genetics? Where is the difference and where do your priorities lie? You’re getting a growing reputation as an important international artist but there’s also a sincere belief that you want to continue doing what you’re doing for the good of mankind. So is there a split mission or is one fuelling the other? KV – Yes one is fuelling the other, but now you’re making a lot of questions in one - which is okay - but now I have to try and combine my answers. I think it was extremely important for me to make all these wooden sculptures to get the right philosophy by going back to see it on another level. That was the bridge in between that I needed, in order to make the real art piece. I also see it in a line, so if you were making a retrospective exhibition entitled ‘Who is Koen Vanmechelen?’ you would see this kind of evolution from the kid who thinks he’s making art until he discovers his language - a radial change from a wooden sculpture to a living subject. It was very definite because I realized at that moment that there was no way back. I couldn’t go back to making wooden sculptures. You take that road and I had a vision that it has to deal with art and science and sociology and philosophy. I knew that at the beginning, because I saw the big idea. Most people are struggling

DARWIN’S DREAM

58 with identity, with the position they have – who am I? What is my present and what is my future? It’s all in there. The moment that you’re dealing with a living animal as a metaphor you’re talking about mankind. You’re not just talking about that animal – you take it as a metaphor and from there you take it further. And to make that metaphor stronger, you need all these different professions to fill in. What I started to do immediately was make debates and conversations with people in different fields. This activity grew over time to develop into many foundations that are working for society and they take their inspiration from the Cosmopolitan Chicken Project. They are extremely important for my work since they can fertilize my project to go further and take deeper steps into the subject. JP – Were you influenced by other artists who have started in a figurative way and progressed to something more conceptual? KV – I have several influences and you’re probably going to be a bit surprised if you know what they are. When I started with the wooden sculpture at the age of sixteen, I was influenced by Belgian expressionist artist Constant Permeke. I wasn’t part of any local scene, and I absolutely didn’t know what was going on in the wider contemporary art world. And then the story of the Cosmopolitan Chicken happened and I discovered that I have some affinity with the work of Picasso. He emerged in a period of repression under the Franco regime that was always dictating what you have to do. In reaction to this, Picasso maintained how important it is as an artist to construct yourself. So he was taking the reality - cutting it into pieces - and constructing a totally different image. That means he was completely ‘out of the box’ and this for me is such a social move. Today I’m living in Belgium, a country that is liberated where we can more or less construct ourselves, this liberation is already done but now we are facing other problems that we have to reconstruct ourselves and the Cosmopolitan Chicken

59 is in a way a form of reconstruction. All the parts are divided and we have to bring them together to make something new and if you do that you make tremendous diversity. So the point of crossing means that from all elements that you bring together, you generate a vast genetic pool. In my opinion this is a kind of evolution like a DNA – this is how society functions. With this in mind, I had a reflection on the work of Damien Hirst. A lot of art historians will never agree with what I’m saying, but I believe a parallel can be made between the work of Hirst and Picasso. By taking a cow and cutting it in pieces, Hirst was somehow doing the same thing as Picasso, but he was picking up on the reality coming from photography and all the new digital media. JP – I think art historians would agree that the most profound work Hirst has done relates to the cycle of life. KV – My work is also about life and death but instead of cutting up the chicken I started to reconstruct it, bringing all the pieces together in order to make something new. The celebrated Belgian curator Jan Hoet once said, “This guy (meaning me) is an upside down romantic”. That means the real romantic says life is wonderful and day-by-day he becomes gradually disappointed and eventually kills himself because there is no view anymore, because it is a romantic image. The upside down romantic - and I think he was right to call me that - is the one who started off very critical in life but everyday discovers how beautiful it is and how fantastic things can be. JP – Are you sure that art is the best medium to convey your ideas because as we know the contemporary art world has a tendency to be very elitist. Don’t you sometimes feel you’re putting all your energies into an endeavour that is basically only going to communicate with a very small and select audience? KV – That’s why I take my work further than that. But first let me finish responding to your specific question about which

artists influenced me. Of course Joseph Beuys has an important role in this for me especially his performance in a New York gallery where he had conversation with the coyote (“I Like America and America Likes Me”, 1974). He didn’t want to see anything of America other than the coyote that for the Native Americans represented the power to move between the physical and the spiritual world. So he was talking to the coyote to discover this bridge and to convey the idea to the typical American that the coyote is not just a wild dog that kills sheep or cattle, but is an intelligent being. By having this conversation with the coyote, Beuys was basically saying that mankind should respect nature. But my answer to your question ‘if art is the best medium to express this kind of thought’, is ‘yes’. Because one of the things we are struggling with in life and in science is how do we give image to diversity. I think making a portrait of all the chickens that you breed gives a very strong image to diversity. So I can create that image and this is my medium, but I know that this is not enough. That’s why I start to give lectures. I start to search for this kind of podium where you are talking to a wider audience like scientists, sociologists, biologists and all kinds of philosophers. JP – Do you consider your lectures could be regarded as a form of performance art? KV – Yes but at the same time it’s a very serious performance. I think a lot of people who step out of the room after my lecture, start to think about what’s going on there. Nevertheless, I also like to feel there is some humour apart from their very serious side. JP – I can appreciate how the presentation and installation of your work is a crucial factor where every aspect is carefully considered. Is this very instinctive for you, or do you feel you’ve gotten better at it with practice - do you look at something you did ten years ago and then think you could do it a lot better now?

KV – Of course everybody experiences this, but the problem with my project is that it is a process. So the further you go into it, the more complex it becomes and the more difficult it is to go to the basic thing you’re saying. And the danger is, you can’t see the wood from the trees. But I think I’ve become much better now, because the images I’m using become stronger each time. After doing this kind of work for twenty years you can see the diversity of the 3,000 chickens that are born into the project and when you hang images of them on one wall, you see the incredible diversity and then you realize that this is a reality. Last year I had an installation at Musées des Beaux-Arts Brussels where we started from the genetics to create an image on the chromosome that was dealing with immunity. Because I started this genetic research eight years ago and began this crossbreeding twenty years ago, the project is growing stronger and stronger and since it’s linked to all these different professions it now reaches a very big audience. JP – You’re different from many other artists because as you’ve become more successful you channel it back into what is essentially your research. KV – Yes my philosophy is another one, I will always invest all my money in the project because I believe you have to invest first in society, before society invests in you. Since my work deals with society it’s like a kind of mirror image, society will eventually return my investment. JP – So do you think you’re attracting different kinds of collectors than those interested in the more predictable art market trends? KV – I realize I now have more than 3,000 collectors from all over the world who own one of my works, which is quite rare as artists usually only have a few major collectors. I see my work as a form of crowd funding that is going deep into society.

DARWIN’S DREAM

Open University of Diversity, Studio Koen Vanmechelen, Hasselt (BE), 2013

62 JP – Are you satisfied that your work is communicating to ordinary people that visit your exhibitions. And do you think in general they really grasp what it’s all about? KV – It takes a bit of time for everybody, but surprisingly sometimes those you think wouldn’t comprehend it, get it immediately. In one way or another, I think at a basic level everybody instinctively understands it. One of the gallery owners that sells my work, he deals with a lot of major artists and he told me that he never experienced such as dramatic contrast in people’s reaction to my work - they either fall in love with it or they hate it and become extremely angry! JP – Many contemporary artists are desperate to find an identity, so are you pleased when people walk into an exhibition and immediately recognize your work because the chicken has become like your trademark? KV – I’m not offended when people refer to me as ‘the chicken man’ because there is already an image in their brain, which is better than not having any identity and where nobody recognizes what you’re doing. JP – So are there examples where the chicken doesn’t appear as the main motif in your work? Are there occasions when people would see your work in an exhibition and would never guess that it’s by you? KV – Well it depends on how much time that I have to show my work to the world because I’m dealing with bio-cultural diversity and I have a lot of other projects with lamas or with eagles or all the things that are based in this foundation. They are still all related in one way or another to the chicken and the egg, but they need developing and require a strong podium to show what is actually going on. But if I talk about another project with the lama and the chicken the outcome is first of all the crossing between those two elements that is most important. Because my work isn’t actually about chickens, it’s about crossing.

63 JP – Let’s finish our conversation by discussing the main focus of this London show which is de-domestication. You’ve called it ‘Darwin’s Dream’ can you clarify what reference this title has to Darwin? KV – The title is absolutely not scientific, it is more of a question like could this be Darwin’s dream? Because first of all I started the selection of the chickens that were chosen and bred in different environments from which they were living in. So my project starts from the domestication and from thereon progresses into de-domestication. By crossing you don’t pay attention anymore to how fat they are, how many eggs they lay – you go into another kind of freedom. So it’s in a way returning to the wild, but the real returning doesn’t exist because the environment changes dramatically. So in a way this project is dealing with the environment as well – we are the environment or the ones who change the logic of this animal- we are making this animal by giving it a cultural attention. I’m an artist who’s taking all these things into consideration and says ‘let’s liberate it from its cage’. So we crossbreed – that means that environment is a very actual thing in this whole process – the question here is: could this be Darwin’s dream? Could this be an evolution on the thoughts that Darwin had? JP – I’m aware that Darwin researched the effects of cross breeding on various animals including poultry and even bred pigeons himself. He regarded the domestication of wild animals as a good model for the study of evolutionary processes. Have you read his celebrated ‘Origin of the Species’? KV – No, I never read books by the way. I don’t say that I’m doing this on purpose but first of all I’m dyslectic. My knowledge has come from the things that I see and I hear and that I take in. When I give university lectures a lot of people think I’m a living library and I’m studying all the time. Some might think I’m rather dumb or not that smart, because I never read books but I like to keep my mind free on thoughts. Jean-

Jacques Cassiman, who is a very important scientist on human genetics, said the interesting thing about Koen Vanmechelen is that he is not following the protocol that we know, but he’s following his own protocol and this is where new surprises can come from and where we can find new ways of developing because all the other ways we already know. JP – How do you think the various works in your London exhibition will convey effectively the idea of de-domestication? KV – In the London show we will focus on the variety of the works and material and what the notion of crossing two chickens with each other can generate. From there we can go a step further, because what we will actually show is the beginning of where the chicken comes from and then step into a world of an artist who has been busy crossbreeding them for twenty years to create a kind of Pinakothek, or picture gallery, that is full of diversity. If you look to every species, you see the mirror of our society. We will raise all these questions that are related to diversity and the genetic memory. JP – Do you plan to experiment with dedomestication in your future art practice and research program? KV - I will enlarge the space of captivity to go slowly into de-domestication. You liberate a chicken from its cage, crossbreed it and bring it to a larger cage, and so on. The logic of my whole project is going back to the wild in another form than it exists. But what’s more significant, is that we humans are actually the most domesticated animals. We domesticate ourselves but we don’t know where our position is and where we belong. So if in the future we can say that our identity is diversity we are liberated from a metaphorical cage completely.

DARWIN’S DREAM

MECHELSE CCP #14

MECHELSE CCP #15

MECHELSE SENEGAL CCP #16

MECHELSE STYRIAN CCP #17

KOEN VANMECHELEN: Art and science by Rik Pinxten, Univ. of Ghent, 2011

73 This is the second time I am given the opportunity as a scientist to present an idea on Koen Vanmechelen and his chicken project. I am very pleased to do this for two reasons. - First he is an artist who consistently aims to bridge the gap between science and art. I think he is right on this point. Both science and art are wonderful and indeed powerful forms of human invention and creativity. Personally, I think that this may probably be the ultimate, although gradual, distinction between humans and other animals: by means of the faculty of fantasy and imagination we add a dimension to the determinacy of nature. We do this mainly in the action fields of knowledge and art. Koen Vanmechelen went along this path like no other artist and invites both forms of human creativity to collaborate. - Secondly, Koen Vanmechelen belongs to a new group of artists who engage themselves in their era and their world. Without landing in a programmatic art form Vanmechelen develops a clear societal perspective in his work. He thus places himself in the small but strong group of contemporary artists who criticise the academism of some and the boundless involvement in conceptualism and discursive processes of others. Some artists of today keep on arguing, developing metapositions and so-called philosophical views. One wonders what remains to be seen then. Artists like Vanmechelen, Jan Fabre and Luc Tuymans, just like Lucian Freud and others, produce important artworks, and confront us at the same time with the world and the human impact on it. I recognize in Vanmechelen this aspect, and I applaud it. It is important to say that his is not a political or ideological position in the old sense, but rather a deep and open questioning and critique of our culture. From there he develops a quest both in scientific and artistic ways. What is my kinship with Vanmechelen? I think that our combination of creativity and engagement is similar: I cannot study people and cultures as if they were pure abstractions. Or worse, as if they were pure objects, existing as curiosities outside of

my reality. People are also, and for more than 90%, exactly like me. It is a form of alienation to deny that sameness and to exclude this equality from oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s research. This entails that, whenever I study the great sameness and the small differences among people and traditions, I have to make clear to my audience and to the media that it is an absolute priority to learn to deal with these small differences. The next step then is to point to choices: either I enlarge the small differences and state that humans differ so much from one another that living together is virtually impossible. Mentally the 10% difference is then blown up to a 100% difference. Or I indicate how these small differences allow for conviviality through making agreements and recognizing differences as relative. Personally I chose the latter position. But my point is first and foremost that I have to point out these alternatives for action as a researcher in my research horizon, and not shy away from it in so-called objectivity. As a cultural anthropologist I study this question of sameness and difference, and as a humanist I speak up for a position in action. Through globalisation the uniformity of ways of life and of consumption goods increases rapidly. The impact of humans on earth in general has become a dominant theme, touching us all. Koen Vanmechelen must have had a similar experience with his work, I think. Chickens are a bird species, which was domesticated early on. They came to live with human beings and allowed us to eat their eggs. Moreover, chickens became the primary sacrificial animal: everywhere in the world chickens are sacrifices to yield a better life for man, a better crop, the healing of a sick person, the exorcism of evil, and what not. In our society chickens were caught in another development: chickens, with almost all nature, were put purely and solely at the service of human interests and needs. The chicken became an industrial product, produced in factories. Like any other product the most profitable and the least costly variant was selected out in what is known as a costbenefit analysis. A living being and even a species was thus reduced to a marketing

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74 issue. The races of chickens that did not meet the best cost-benefit standards were not allowed to breed anymore. This process subdues values of diversity and quality to the dominant principle of market economy. We do the same thing with human beings though: we consider our little group of westerners as a super-race and reorganize the world in such a way the others have to survive in less comfortable conditions. They are coerced by means of economic structures and often even by police and military rule to survive in poor contexts. We then call them primitive, or underdeveloped or ‘endemically poor’. Koen Vanmechelen is conscious of these less nice aspects of our western world view, and of the way racism and other forms of exclusion are installed and continued. While I write, and speak about this I indicate how human creativity can go one step further towards recognition and a civilized treatment of differences, Koen Vanmechelen works in a different way. He invites us urgently to treat these fundamental questions of difference by means of the symbol of the most vulnerable and inoffensive domesticated animals in our midst, namely the chicken. He launches the symbolic project of the primal chicken, under the heading ‘The Cosmopolitan Chicken’. He involves our scientists, especially geneticists, in this project. It is not his aim, I guess, to actually generate such a primal chicken, even if that would be a realistic option. Rather, the artist invites us to reflect on our awkward way of dealing with the small differences. How come we can only deal with difference by eliminating it? Why do we lack room in our intelligence, in our heart and in our fantasy to appreciate differences as a richness, and an enlargement of our world of experience? What could be more beautiful and attractive than variation, and the enjoyment of of the little peculiarities which make us all individuals and at the same time linked with each other in the shared fate of living on planet earth? This is how I interpret Vanmechelen’s project of The Cosmopolitan Chicken: it is a challenge to human beings to learn to love difference and to become conscious of its importance for human creativity, and hence for human

75 survival in nature as a profoundly diverse reality. As human beings we diminish our own value by eliminating the diversity within species in view of mere economic profits. We diminish our human dignity and decency by having other human beings live in humiliating conditions, simply because they are culturally different from us. This is not a political message in the narrow, ideological sense, which I read in Vanmechelen’s work of art. It is an honest and deeply felt human commitment, a deep humanistic engagement with humanity which is lost in its mere focus on direct profit and interests, thus disregarding a wider horizon. How great do we see ourselves as brokers of nature and humanity? How much do we think to control and manipulate and where do we find the pretention to safeguard the predator position of the rich North vis-à-vis the rest of the world? What arrogance and what narrow-mindedness do we carry in this culture of ours. And all this because we have booked some results in the material and the technological realms during the past three centuries. What happens with the spiritual dimensions of humankind? What with the sense of life and death? What with beauty and goodness? Are all these themes obsolete because we were able to manipulate some of nature through technological means? What is the value of the whole project of western culture when we would see ourselves as a mere local by-product in evolutionary processes spanning millions of years? If we prove able to consume within the span of 100 years all fossil energy which has been built up over a period of millions of years, then why do we call this progress instead of pillage? Or even stupidity? The blindness in this seems generic and the economic values put to sleep by stressing that this is the right way to live on this earth. In this broad frame I understand Vanmechelen’s project on The Cosmopolitan Chicken, and his idea on the primal chicken. This is an engagement which resembles more that of the brilliant Jan Van Eyck when he forged a synthesis between Humanism and Christianity in his artistic search for

sense than mere political analysis, which the media try to lure us into. These are the important themes and the essential choices for humanity of today and tomorrow, and in that sense these themes and choices are the concern of great artists who interpret human interest in earth and humanity. The originality with which Vanmechelen takes us along in this dimension of existence has him stand beyond the rumours and cries of the market phenomenon. And that is excellent. Let us all try to participate in this noble quest and have us put our modest but stern creativity at the service of a civilization where humanity and nature share the Earth in a relationship of respectful conviviality.

DARWIN’S DREAM

THE COSMOPOLITAN CHICKEN Work in progress

Koen Vanmechelen is taking his great breeding project ‘The Cosmopolitan Chicken’ all over the globe. It is an innovative answer-in-progress to one of the most basic human questions: what is our identity as a species and as an individual? Or else: what is life? by Filip Luyckx, 2007

Mechelse Orloff -13th generation – C.C.P., Against Exclusions, The 3rd Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, Moscow (RU), 2009

79 As a small boy already, the artist was deeply fascinated by chickens. Their plumage, their mating behaviour, their laying and hatching of eggs left a lasting mark on his young imagination. The cackling farmyard bird has many anthropoid characteristics: they are bipeds that make fruitless attempts to fly, they invoke the sun and the moon, and they are rather preoccupied with reproduction. These early birds, which originally lived in the wild at the foot of the Himalayas, gradually managed to secure their place at man’s side. During the Neolithic revolution, our ancestors started to domesticate them and they could be found all over the World. This internationalisation avant-la-lettre was carried to such extremes that most cultures no longer knew any wild specimens. Communication problems between the different continents created lots of different local breeds. Because of their double function of food provider and pet, chickens were within the reach of the common man. During wartime, workingclass families experienced first-hand what a difference a few chickens could make to their diet. In the nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth, popular-education programmes, imbued with nationalism, extolled the qualities of indigenous chicken breeds, as one more reason for chauvinism besides Idolatry of great artists and sportsmen. At the Brussels World Exhibition of 1958, Belgium glowed with national pride with its ‘Mechelse Koekoek’. Vanmechelen builds on an age-old heritage of domestication processes. His considerably accelerated breeding programme, though, has the deliberate aim of producing a Super Bastard: a cosmopolitan hybrid of typical national breeds. When the artist talks about gene art, he implies that his working material consists of live animals. Crossbreeding This could be compared to the traditional painter, who drew his pigments from vegetal and mineral sources in order to imitate the forms of the world. Vanmechelen does no more than consciously bring together different cocks and hens to crossbreed them. Direct genetic interventions are

absolutely out of the question. Once Vanmechelen has put two breeds together, he allows nature to run its course. He does, however, intervene with artificial methods to hatch the eggs. The eggs are incubated for eighteen days at a temperature of 38° C and a humidity of 40%. Thereafter they are moved to a hatching machine for three days, where the humidity amounts to 80%. The eggs in the hatching machine need to be turned every day to remain viable. Here, man takes over the instinctive task of the connoisseur. During those 21 days, the yolk turns into a chick. Meanwhile, in a membrane between the yolk and the egg-white, an air chamber is formed which fills one third of the egg. The egg-white which serves as food gradually runs out. This is the crucial moment when the chick has to break out of its shell. As the air supply is also limited, speed is essential. A strong shell offers protection, but can also mean an early death of the newcomer. The newlyhatched chicks are kept in brooding boxes under heat lamps for three weeks. The initial temperature of 32° C is gradually decreased to 20° C. At that point, the little chickens are moved into bigger indoor pens, where they have more room. Thereafter they are kept indoor, at room temperature, for another three weeks or so, before they are allowed into the chicken run. From then on they are exposed to all kinds of weather throughout the year, Vanmechelen wants his animals to stand on their own feet as quickly as possible. The life of his crossbreeds is entirely identical to the life of all other chickens, except for the fact that they end up in the artistic circuit instead of the economic breeding system. The artist has no intention whatsoever of boosting the laying or meat capacity of his chickens. His only interest being his artistic project: he wants to cross a typical indigenous chicken breed of each country with that of another country, which should eventually produce a Super Bastard who symbolically unites the whole world. Inbreeding The distinct breeding characteristics will hardly matter in the end. Vanmechelen does not intend to wipe out current chicken

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80 breeds and replace them by one uniform hybrid. On the contrary, what he wants to achieve is precisely a multiplication of breeds. Each crossbreeding process results in a new bastard breed which is partly used in The Cosmopolitan Chicken Project, but which will also live as a separate entity. It is common knowledge that bastards have a tougher constitution than pure-breds. To avoid inbreeding, the artist sets out several independent breeding lines in each stage of the project. This means that similar experiments take place in parallel circuits, which are destined to cross each other sooner or later. This obviously produces a surplus of both original pure-breds and crossbreeds. All these spare chickens can count on the same animal-friendly treatment. Some may end up in the casserole, but that is also the fate of many free-range chickens on a farmyard. Vanmechelen sticks to clear ethical principles. Noone with a scientific or economic goal would ever start and keep up a project like this. The Super Bastard is a metaphor of human evolution, both cultural and genetic. Mixing yields new breeds, who turn out to be just as resilient as the old ones. We often do not realise that today’s breeds are the result of centuries of crossbreeding. Nevertheless there are few genetic differences amongst all these breeds. The artist is very careful not to identify his Super Bastard with an idealised image. Maybe the end result will be a hideous creature, who could in turn carry the seeds of a miraculous evolution. His project dissociates itself from experiments aimed at upgrading animals or refining the human race. Attempts to produce offspring from the genetic material of Nobel Prize winners and super-models have all been disappointing. Intelligent beauty may beget ugly stupidity, and vice versa. Not to forget that every culture and age has different ideals. Moreover, such preconceived ideals ignore the fact that society must function as an organic entity, in which ordinary people turn out to be just as essential as Nobel Prize winners and supermodels. Real progress lies precisely in showing respect for ordinary people and the ordinary chicken, in all its diversity. All Vanmechelen aims to do, is to

81 assist the natural mating process. He gives free rein to the unpredictability of nature. The artist never knows beforehand which type of chicken his breeding will shield. But how can we interpret this chicken-breeding project in the context of contemporary art? Being the son of a sculptor, Vanmechelen began knocking together cages at an early age. Later, the poultry theme found its way into his sculptures and glass art. It was not an evident decision for him to consider live chickens as art, but it was the logical result of a lingering passion. Apart from the ultimate goal, we should not underestimate the dynamics involved in the process. A project as The Cosmopolitan Chicken requires considerable energy and organisational talent. It will take years to produce the cosmopolitan chicken. Each crossbreeding unites two or more countries, yielding a distinct variety with its own atypical characteristics. And each variety, it is accompanied by an unconventional exhibition that introduces a live art process to a museum or a gallery. Participation in this project requires a great deal of commitment on account of the institution involved, as the eggs need to be turned every day and the chicks need feeding. The breeding process will have to rely on many volunteers. In fact, it is already doing so. Although the works of art only have a limited life, both the intermediary breeds and the Super Bastard will be able to reproduce endlessly. This art will therefore always appear in a living shape and relies on the commitment of the holder. The work continues to evolve without the artist. This calls to mind Joseph Beuys who integrated evolving Material in his installations. But in the case of Vanmechelen, it concerns live beings, animals who share some characteristics with man, and who require constant care. His materials are not explicitly aesthetic in themselves. His art depends on our ability to attribute an aesthetic value to the crossbreeds. Every now and then, an exceptional specimen will see the light, and perhaps even a blue chicken. Each presentation of the work in a new country will spark off an ethtical debate and set people thinking about miscegenation, globalisation, animal welfare, and genetic manipulation in

humans and animals. This kind of art may capture the interest of a broad public. In the same manner that all chickens in the project are accorded equal respect, all the sections of the population can participate in the ethical debate. This debate will be held worldwide, which is imperative these days, as the questions involved require global answers. It was no coincidence that the “Bresse de Malines”, the cross between the Belgian “Malines Cuckoo“ and the French “Poulet de Bresse”, was presented in the border village of Watou. Of course the bastard has characteristics of both its parents, but a cross between the same pair of birds can produce offspring with very different features and colouring. The ‘Malines Cuckoo’ is a greyand-white speckled chicken while the ‘Poulet de Bresse’ is a white variety’. The resulting ‘Bresse de Malines’, however has turned out to be black. In London, the French-Belgian bastard was subsequently crossbred with the ‘Red Cap’. This English breed is threatened with extinction due to inbreeding, but now at least some of its genetic material will survive in the crossbreeding process. Shortly, the French-Belgian-English bastard will be mated with a breed from another country. The critics of this artist should realise one thing: there is no more stopping this project.

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Captions

COVER AND BACK 3

6-7

11, 82-83 16-17

Turbulence – C.C.P., 2014 Aluminum Frame Textile LED Light Box, 90 x 120 x 3,8 cm CC®P - The Cosmopolitan Chicken Portrait Koen Vanmechelen Golden Nica Hybrid Art, Cyberarts Festival, OK Center for Contemporary Art, Linz (AT), 2013 Cosmopolitan Chicken Project, Dear Charles, Cahier 1 Brieven aan Darwin, Unie Vrijzinnige Vereniging (BE), 2009 The Crypt Gallery - St Pancras Church, London (UK) Pedigree – Cosmopolitan Chicken Project, Print (lambda) on plexi glass, 160 x 120 x 3 cm Mechelse Sulmtaler – CCP18, Château de Chimay, Chimay (BE), 2014 First Generation blue. In de ban van de ring, Provinciaal Museum, Hasselt (BE), 1999

20-27, 42-47, 64-67

Cosmopolitan Chicken Project, 2014 Prints (lambda) on plexi glass, 120 x 160 x 3 cm Darwin’s Dream, The Crypt Gallery St Pancras Church, London (UK), 2014

28-35, 48-53, 68-71

Passports - Cosmopolitan Chicken Project, 2014 Prints (lambda) on plexi glass, 21 x 26 x 1 cm

38-39 41

First Generation blue. In de ban van de ring, Provinciaal Museum, Hasselt (BE), 1999 The Cosmopolitan Chicken. Mechelse Redcap, A shot in the Head, Lisson gallery, London (UK), 2000

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86 56

The Cosmopolitan Chicken Project Taxidermic chicken, steel, wood, dimensions variable Open University of Diversity, Studio Koen Vanmechelen, Meeuwen (BE), 2014 Darwin’s Dream, The Crypt Gallery St Pancras Church, London (UK), 2014

Cosmopolitan Park, Open University of Diversity, Studio Koen Vanmechelen, Meeuwen (BE), 2014

60-61

Speech Jill Silverman van Coenegrachts at the Golden Nica Celebration Party, Open University of Diversity, Studio Koen Vanmechelen, Hasselt (BE), 2013

77-78

Mechelse Orloff -13th generation – C.C.P., Against Exclusions, The 3rd Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, Moscow (RU), 2009

Photographs are copyright by the artist unless otherwise stated

DARWIN’S DREAM

Colophon

This book is published on the occasion of KOEN VANMECHELEN DARWIN’S DREAM THE CRYPT GALLERY- ST PANCRAS CHURCH 15 NOV - 14 DEC, 2014 LONDON (UK) Curated and edited by James Putnam and Jill Silverman van Coenegrachts Publisher Koen Vanmechelen Managing Editor Goele Schoofs Chief Editor Peter Dupont Koen Vanmechelen Studio Goele Schoofs – Process Manager Renate Neven – Process Assistant Stoffel Hias – Production Assistant Communication and Public Relations: Pelham Communications Jasmine Pelham – Managing and Creative Director Toby Kidd – Senior Account Director/ Director of Digital Kara Reaney – Account Director Alexia Menikou – Account Manager Rachel Guthrie – Account Executive Darwin’s Dream Exhibition Team Lauren Jones – Project Manager Charlie Behrens – Design Isabeau Vermassen – Guy Pieters Gallery Paul Mean – Electrician Aude de Liedekerke – Jungle Kerry Ryan – Neons The invigilators Anne Noble-Partridge – The Crypt Reverned Anne Stevens – St Pancras Church

Groucho Club: Neda Tootoonchi Black’s: Yakira Kellman Music: James Lavelle & Dave Collishaw Thanks to Nicholas Logsdail and Lisson Gallery for generously loaning works and to Guy Pieters for his kind support of this exhibition. Photography Florian Voggeneder (p. 3) Koen Vanmechelen (p. 11) Alex Deyaert (p. 19, 20-27, 38-39, 42-47, 64-67) Dave Morgan (p. 41) Cary Markerink (p. 56) Mark Machiels (p. 60-61) Art Foundation Moscow Biennale (p. 77) Stoffel Hias (p. 78) Goele Schoofs (p. 82-83) Graphic design Geoffrey Brusatto Website www.koenvanmechelen.com www.darwinsdream.co.uk All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright.

ISBN 9789090286679

Curated by James Putnam and Jill Silverman Van Coenegrachts THE CRYPT GALLERY — ST PANCRAS CHURCH 15 NOV - 14 DEC, 2014 LONDON (UK)