Diversity - From CCP to Mouth

DIVERSITY FROM CCP TO MOUTH

KOEN VANMECHELEN

DIVERSITY FROM CCP TO MOUTH

KOEN VANMECHELEN

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INTRODUCTION Vanmechelen-speak | From CCP to MOUTH

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CCP MECC SOTWA LUCY PCC

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Luc Vrielinck, Open letter to Koen Vanmechelen

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DIVERSITY cosmOpolitan gallery, Genk (BE), 2016

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Koen Vanmechelen, Open letter to Luc Vrielinck

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II OPUNDI

COSMOGOLEM CC®P

THE WALKING EGG COMBAT MOUTH

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COLOPHON

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NEW BROOD

INTRODUCTION Vanmechelen-speak | From CCP to MOUTH

Biocultural diversity and identity. The human animal and its relationship to the biological and cultural diversity of the planet. This is what defines the artist Koen Vanmechelen.

With an unquenchable curiosity, Vanmechelen’s areas of interests intertwine many disciplines. He entices us back to the natural polymath that we are as human beings.

NEW BROOD Koen Vanmechelen offers us first and foremost the striking, honest beauty of biocultural diversity. Under the encompassing name of ‘New Brood’ he explores all types of different crossings. Through living natural art, he confronts us with the limitation of monocultures and pushes at the edges of our personal and cultural comfort zones. Consciously Vanmechelen chooses for the technique of crossing.

Crossing starts from a duality, from a meeting with ‘the other’ leading to genetic diversification and evolution. Most famously known for his Cosmopolitan Chicken Project (CCP), Vanmechelen has extended ‘New Brood’ across multiple species and organism, represented in his works Planetary Community Chicken (PCC), LUCY, MECC and SOTWA. The artist’s multidisciplinary visual art originates primarily from his ‘New Brood’ concepts.

OPUNDI Intersecting art, science, sociology and culture, Vanmechelen also creates projects and communities that explore the scientific, social and cultural possibilities discovered through his work. These activities are housed under the ‘Open University of Diversity’, ‘OpUnDi’. Fundamentally, OpUnDi is a think tank and a meeting place, organized in a structure of Foundations that each addresses specific areas of interest. The Foundations are more reflective and supportive in nature, and aim to translate ‘New Brood’ concepts into new socially and culturally relevant projects. Current OpUnDi Foundations include: Cosmopolitan Chicken Research Project (CC®P), with a focus on genetics; MOUTH, reflecting about food, availability of food, and their influence on the organism and its surroundings; the Cosmogolem foundation, with focus on children rights and child abuse; the Walking Egg foundation (TWE), researching issues of fertility in diverse parts of the globe; and the COMBAT foundation, a war remembrance project.

LA BIOMISTA The environment where this vast diversity of work comes together is called ‘La Biomista’. The word ‘la Biomista’ is a new word coined by Koen Vanmechelen, which literally means: ‘the mix of life’. As an encompassing artistic project, La Biomista navigates between and across different disciplines. True to Koen’s believe in humans as natural polymaths, it is a biocultural laboratory, a knowledge center, a disseminator of active, living art and a meeting place of scientific, cultural and philosophical ideas.

With its first location in Genk, Belgium, it has projects planned in Havana, Cuba and Detroit, hybrid cities with a problematic past formed through monolithic policies.

La Biomista Genk was officially launched on December 9, 2015 and is scheduled to open to the public in 2018. The project in Genk hosts three identities: the villa, the studio and the park. The restored villa accommodates Vanmechelen’s first Open University of Diversity (OpUnDi) and the five Foundations: CC®P, MOUTH, Cosmogolem, The Walking Egg and COMBAT. In a second building, designed by the influential Swiss architect Mario Botta, the artist’s studio, the chicken breeding center, the auditorium and the offices will

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be housed. Through a cage with impressive Steller’s sea eagles, the path leads to the park of 24 hectares where the other animals involved in Vanmechelen’s projects are kept.

Koen Vanmechelen says about this project: “I want to create a conflict zone between culture and nature. The foundations will be in the villa, which is about the human. The conflict between culture and nature will take place in my studio, built by the great architect Mario Botta. In the front of the park there will be domesticated animals, the llamas, dromedaries and the chickens, and in the back there will be the wildlife, the eagles and the wolves. The visitors will move slowly from domesticated to wildlife. This is how we should live; the contrast is essential.

We have to give space to wildlife and we have to give space to the humanized, the domesticated. And we meet in the gray zone between.”

The La Biomista site in Genk is situated at the crossroads of the city and the countryside, and at the intersection of industry and community. That position provides the project with the necessary physical and mental space to practice urban farming, and let biological and cultural diversity flourish.

LA B I O MI STA

New B rood

O p UnDi

CCP

CO S MO G O LE M

ME CC

CC® P

S OT WA

T H E WA LKI NG E G G

LUCY

CO MBAT

PCC

MO UT H

Figure — Scheme of interactions between the New Brood domain and the OpUnDi domain

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I NEW B ROOD

CCP M ECC SOTWA LUCY PC C

CCP [1999]

The Cosmopolitan Chicken Project (CCP, 1999) is a global, transdisciplinary and a transtemporal examination of the themes of biocultural diversity and identity. Much more than a mere domesticated animal, the chicken is art in itself. It serves as a metaphor for the human animal and its relationship with the biological and cultural diversity of the planet.

In the CCP, Koen Vanmechelen crossbreeds chicken breeds from different countries. His ultimate goal is the creation of a Cosmopolitan Chicken carrying the genes of all the planet’s chicken breeds.

The native breeds that descended from the original chicken (the Red Jungle Fowl) can be found everywhere on earth. They have been shaped and bred to reflect typical cultural characteristics of their communities. Koen Vanmechelen’s intervention, however, disrupts this phenomenon by crossing the different breeds of chicken from different countries with each other. Many years of crossbreeding have proven that each successive generation of hybrids is stronger, less susceptible to diseases and lives longer.

The CCP officially started in the millennium year 2000, when Koen Vanmechelen presented his first ‘crossing’, the Mechelse Bresse, a hybrid born out of the Belgian species Mechelse Koekoek and the French Poulet de Bresse.

Each successive generation of hybrids comes from crossbreeding the previous generation hybrid with another pure breed. At this very moment, the 20th hybrid species, the Mechelse Wyandotte, is a fact. Twenty different countries have been included in the CCP. To secure the future of the project, the genetic material of all the Mechelse hybrids is stored frozen in liquid nitrogen. The chicken, the egg and the cage are powerful images Vanmechelen uses as metaphors for scientific, political, philosophical and ethical issues. The artist’s work around the CCP is multidisciplinary and includes sculptures, paintings, photography, videos and live installations.

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Installation view, Leaving Paradise, Art Sanya, Hainan (CN), 2013

Installation view, Mechelse Sulmtaler - CCP18, This is Not a Chicken, Het Domein, Sittard (NL), 2015

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MECC [2014]

In this project called Mushrooms, Egg, Chicken, Camelids, Koen Vanmechelen explores the boundaries dividing different species.

Real crossings are not possible, but maybe substances from one organism can migrate to another organism of another species. MECC is an innovative art/research project, supported

by IWT (Agency for Innovation by Science and Technology) in which researchers in molecular virology from Ghent University and Flanders Institute for Biotechnology collaborate with the artist to explore possible interactions between mammals (camelid), birds (chicken) and mushrooms.

The project aims to show that in some way we are all related and interconnected, part of the same universe. Man is also part of a planetary superorganism. He is bioculturally connected to all other species, some of which can be of vital importance for our survival. The art is finding the appropriate intermediary agents that form the bridge between the species; here chickens and mushrooms.

From a scientific point of view, the possible transfer of immunologic substances and resistance will be studied. Dromedary antibodies promise to be a powerful weapon against viruses, but their merits cannot be fully delivered to humans yet. In studying the chickens, the focus lies on the Mx gene, which provides natural protection against various viruses, including bird flu. The Mx gene of monoculture chickens, however, barely demonstrates any antiviral activity. This might be linked to the limited genetic diversity of various artificial chicken breeds. The hypothesis is that the greatly increased genetic diversity of the Cosmopolitan Chicken can reinforce the antiviral activity of the Mx gene.

Installation view, AWAKENER/LIFEBANK, Biennial of Venice (IT), 2015

Installation view, AWAKENER, Wilford X, Temse (BE), 2016 This is Not a Chicken, Het Domein, Sittard (NL), 2015

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SOTWA [2014]

SOTWA – meaning umbilical cord – developed in 2014 after meeting the Maasai. With SOTWA, Koen Vanmechelen explores the benefit of crossbreeding between cattle stock in Africa, where climate change increasingly threatens tribes traditional cattle herding.

By adopting a Kenyan cow and donating it to the Maasai tribe in Tanzania, fresh blood and DNA were injected to the herd, strengthening the resilience of the herd through crossbreeding and thus offering it a more viable chance for the future.

SOTWA, 117 × 136 × 36 cm, plexi, neon, cow skin, rope, print on tag, wood, 2016

Meeting with the Maasai, Arusha (TZ), 2014 as part of the ‘Arena de Evolución Library of Collected Knowledge’ project for the Biennial of Cuba, 2015

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LUCY [2016]

LUCY - PEEL PETUUM MOBILE is a collaboration between Koen Vanmechelen and Heyde Hoeve, a collaboration of four pig farmers in Holland that differentiate through their focus on transparency and sustainability in food production. With LUCY, a bio-diverse pig is created. A new pig that tells the story of the search for a better, more sustainable economic system. After the recent focus on monoculture in farming, the project argues that crossbreeding is essential and the only solution for sustainable production.

LUCY is the result of the crossing between the industrial Duroc and the Mangalica, a hardy type of Hungarian pig. Through an open stable, visitors are offered a unique view in the essential part of the process: the beginning.

The title of the project LUCY - PEEL PETUUM MOBILE embodies all these elements. The primal sow LUCY (first female), Peel (the location of HeydeHoeve) and Petuum (huge amount of data on diversity) serve as a reference to an infinite process of crossing, a perpetual motion in time and space.

The concept contributes to the wider debate on intensive animal farming. It shows the farm per definition as a generator of diversity and sustainability. The multitude of different animals and techniques makes the farm a mini diversity Hub.

Mangalica pig in the photo studio, 2016

Working on the scale model of LUCY PEEL PETUUM MOBILE, 2016

LUCY - PEEL PETUUM MOBILE, 200 Ă— 150 Ă— 90 cm, canvas, print on plexi, neon, horns, pig skin, 2016

Passports of the parent couple for the crossing between the Duroc and Mangalica pig, 2016

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PCC [2016]

The Planetary Community Chicken (PCC) is both a result and a counter to the CCP. With the PCC, Vanmechelen creates chickens for the communities of our planet. Through his work, he tables questions on the monocultural approach of centralized industrial farming and makes us reflect on the importance of local, small scale community farming in sustainable food provision. The project re-enforces Vanmechelen’s strong beliefs in diversity and places his art categorically where it belongs: in the middle of society, engaged with people, always committed.

Modern poultry flocks have become genetically impoverished due to industrial farming and have become more susceptible to diseases, stress and physiological problems.

The Planetary Community Chicken Project, couples the genetic information of the industrial chicken species to chicken species of the Cosmopolitan Chicken Project (CCP).

In counter direction to the CCP, with the PCC, a new migration process is started, not unsimilar to the Red Jungle Fowl so many years ago, this time strengthened through the benefits of biocultural diversity.

The layout for the project is like this: every year a rooster of the new CCP crossbreed is paired with a regular egg laying chicken from the industry. This chicken absorbs the genetic pool of the CCP rooster and produces a vital community chicken that can provide its host community with eggs.

The name of each Planetary Community Chicken generation consists of CC and the year of its creation. The first is called CC2016, meaning Carbon Copy 2016. Every Planetary Community Chicken species will find its own community somewhere on the globe. Starting from a fixed point, the chickens will be sent out and dispersed to other communities around the planet.

The first species to be introduced in this new project will be the Mechelse Cemani, the 19th generation of the CCP. This will be crossed with the ISA Brown from Hendrix Genetics and will form the CC2016 generation.

This project is a metaphor for a new migration and a vehicle to bring art into active communities. The PCC will move from the community gardens, to urban surroundings and

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further on to agrarian centers and universities.

Leaving the academic walls, it will then travel in its new form to agrarian and urban communities again.

The reintegration of the PCC in cities and communities brings us questions and debates on the value of diversity in both food production and migration to our backyards and shopping streets.

The next PCC generation will be crossed with a chicken breed in Detroit, the Wyandotte.

This cross breeding (CC2017) will be raised in the Wasserman Projects, located at the Eastern Market in Detroit.

Other experimental labs will be based in Genk (Belgium), Novosibirsk (Russia), Harare (Zimbabwe) and Havana (Cuba).

The Planetary Community Chicken presented in Koen Vanmechelen’s ‘Broeders van de Wereld’ installation at the central square of Sint-Truiden (BE), 2016

The Planetary Community Chicken at Corda Campus, Hasselt (BE), 2016

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Luc Vrielinck, Open letter to Koen Vanmechelen March 12, 2016 – 23:56 Dear Koen, I saw your work Diversity (2015) at the cosmOpolitan gallery and I wanted to share that experience with you. None of my friends and colleagues has seen the work, which makes it difficult to talk with them. And even if they have seen it, you would still be the best person to talk to, about how my encounter with the work unfolded.

The gallery space The room was full. You coughed and were ready to take the floor. People were standing along the walls and amidst the works of art, whispering. I found some space next to a pillar. The chitchat faded as you welcomed us and led us through the landscape of human culture, domesticating birds at the intersection of the jungle and the village square. I leaned against the pillar, peering between people’s heads and shoulders and swaying left and right.

Before continuing, I should mention that, in general, I have little patience for listening to speeches in art exhibitions. I especially dislike long talks that describe an overview or a time line. I find their purpose to control my timeline rather frustrating. As a surgeon working with tweezers and a scalpel, I have a different relationship to time. I can devote hours doing surgery, the time involved is dictated by medical necessity. Speeches, however, seem to make that choice to me – I have to listen to them from the beginning to the end. The experience becomes even more frustrating when I don’t know how long the speech will take. I usually listen for a few minutes and then wander away, without knowing at which point of the story I entered and at which point I left. It was thus a bit disappointing to walk into the space and to discover that you were taking the word for an unidentified duration. I started listening, not sure how long I would be able to stay - did I have some other appointment?

The chickens A few moments into your speech, chickens appeared. Their usefulness lay in softening the harshness of finding food. They produced eggs and meat and gradually they dissolved into our human culture. The person standing in front of me – a very tall man by my standards – moved, blocking my view. I tilted to the right to regain my view. A nearby woman glared at me. As you continued your speech, Koen, I realized that I had not turned off my cell phone. Then I saw it was not working. The battery was exhausted. Nobody could call me.

The Cosmogolem Gradually the Cosmogolems revealed themselves: several of them were standing on a table; in a square incubator another was being born, the incubator making buzzing sounds, green laser beams flashing back and forth. The base plate initially covered by a liquid sank down while at the intersection of the laser light solid matter is created out of liquid. I heard the sounds of the carrier sliding back and forth, and saw the green color of the laser beams flickering, and enjoyed the whispering of the people watching the strange growth happening. The sounds and the environment merged, becoming something else. We stopped being merely watchers and began being involved in this beautiful humanitarian project.

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I have to say – and it is rather embarrassing – that it was moving. Not in a sentimental way, but moving in that something somehow moved – in the sound, the light, the watchers, in space, in me.

The Walking Egg As your speech continued, your voice suddenly weakened. In an attempt to reach out to – the other – we saw paws and claws made of reinforced steel. On top of it sat a transparent bowl made of glass, a silent inquiry on how we could survive, how we would be remembered. You stopped for a while. Returning to silence felt odd. It was technically the same silence we began with – when you took the mike – coughed and just before you started to talk. Nobody in the audience moved or whispered. The man in front of me and the woman nearby seemed hypnotized. I had somehow found a perfect balance and was no longer swaying. Surrounded by delicate silence and stillness, we were almost in a different place, or any place in the world.

A syringe The chicken was perfectly immobilized when a fine needle punctured a vein in the wing of the chicken and a small blood sample was drawn. The samples were studied by bend over researchers in white coats. Questions abounded: how did the crossings relate to the pure breed chickens? Was there a difference or not?

Their family tree told us how they developed, however, the crossbred chickens looked suspiciously like normal chickens. Their genetic sequence filled all pages of a book consisting of the letters AGUC. Maybe all the people of the world are not so different from each other after all...

At this moment, Koen, you will understand I was listening very carefully; you were coming close to my domain. Crossbreeding wins, but only after a struggle.

Combat Then you talked about clay, taken from the battleground, where soldiers were buried many years ago. Their corpses dissolved and disappeared into the ground, a helmet and a strap can occasionally be found. The battlefield was still visible as being the bomb craters and the trenches, the gaping wounds softened by meadows and trees. The clay was put in the ovens, 4 to 5 generations after the war, and fired into little sculptures, to finally be given back to the battlefield, all six hundred thousand of them.

Now, Koen, the tall man standing in front of me was swaying back and forth, clearly he was also touched by this undertaking, maybe he was thinking of his relatives involved in the war. He started to mumble to the person next to him.

La Biomista Gradually the talk expanded and with diversity as a guide, eagles, wolves, dromedaries and mushrooms appeared. You understood that every organism was looking for another to survive.

Just as in a slow motion movie, they got intertwined and gave rise to your new studio in Zwartberg, Genk, located at the intersection of the city, a natural park, and an industrial area. This complex space would evolve and would be your breeding ground for the years to come. I guess the space would only be waiting to be reproduced in other parts of the world.

When your speech ended, people started to applause, and quickly the buzz took over, and the crowd dispersed to have a close look at the different items on view.

Koen, I wanted to ask: like the sound of the rooster early in the morning floats over the village and fields, your quest Koen, leads you to unexpected journeys. To make an exhaustive artistic journey in an attempt to achieve a fantastic idea – mix all chickens in the world – is an absurd and admirable pursuit indeed, whether it will ever occur or not. Where will all that diversity lead you? Not that it matters (or am I misunderstanding?)

Another question: were the visitors and scientists different when they woke up after being immersed in your projects? I imagine they would be.

Before I end, I have the following request: if you reuse your instrument called diversity for another project and need some performers, please look around you.

They will present themselves. Although probably they will not grasp all details at once, let them run into the field, and I am confident, one day they will sing, eventually.

I’m looking forward to hearing from you, Luc

Mouth Now your talk went about how you can give something back to society.

Insights of your artistic research pervade science, economy and industry.

Suddenly it was realized that commercial chicken breeding is serious business, with inbreeding, genetic engineering, food, light and substance control. The resulting industrialized chicken could only be raised in controlled environments.

If this is not the case, the chickens probably would not survive. Now you got the idea to inject new ‘blood’ into those chickens, combining your ‘wildly’ 19-times crossbred chicken with the pure inbred and genetically ‘optimized’ industrial chicken.

And as a gift, you would send the new crossbred chicken back to the communities all over the planet, where the chickens belong.

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DIVERSITY cosmOpolitan gallery, Genk (BE), 2016

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La Biomista, 30,5 × 21,5 × 1,5 cm Leather bound book, 2015

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Pedigree – C.C.P., 250 × 300 cm Print on wall, 2016

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Cosmogolem, 25 × 30 × 30 cm Plexi box, 3D print, silver, print on wood, 2016

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COMBAT, 65 × 53 × 4 cm Litho on paper with wooden frame, 2014

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COMBAT, 14 × 11 × 11 cm Clay, dogtag, 2014

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Planetary Community Chicken, 60 × 60 × 5 cm (diptych) Lambda print on plexi glass, 2016

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Energy = Mass – CC®P, 120 × 120 × 17 cm (diptych) Print on plexi, stainless steel, neon, 2016

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Installation view, DIVERSITY, 2016

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Arena de Evolución - Library of Collected Knowledge, 30,5 × 21,5 × 1,5 cm Leather bound book, 2015

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Library of Collected Knowledge - Arena de Evolución, 200 × 160 × 20 cm Bookshelf, lamp, books on Immunity, Ecology & Climate, Fertility, Diversity and Ethics collected during the Arena de Evolución project for the Biennial of Havana

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Cubalaya - C.C.P., 62 × 50 × 41 cm Taxidermy Cubalaya – CCP11, aluminium tag, wood, 2015

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Breaking the Cage - C.C.P., 40 × 30 × 30 cm Plexi incubator, egg (epoxy), 2013

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The Walking Egg, 77 × 165 × 55 cm Glass, steel, 1998

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No title, 160 × 200 × 10 cm Mixed media (neon, llama wool, canvas, Indian powders, eggyolk, feathers (CCP), grain, pencil, chalk), 2014

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La Biomista, 120 x 400 x 400 cm Scale mode in wood, iron and 3D print, landscape, trees, 2016

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Installation view, DIVERSITY, 2016

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La Biomista, 3,5 × 400 × 30 cm 3D print animals, wooden shelf, 2016

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No title, 200 × 160 × 5 cm Mixed media (canvas, Indian powders, eggyolk, feathers (CCP and peacock), grain, pencil, chalk), 2014

Koen Vanmechelen, Open letter to Luc Vrielinck April 22, 2016 – 16:13

Dear Luc,

Many thanks for your beautiful letter. It is a great pleasure to hear that you have delved through the different layers of my speech. I very much sense the delicate line between the speaker and his audience. After all, each work of art, standing or hanging, is also subject to this principle, and the evaluation of it can be hard.

It may surprise you, but I discard myself from the public to avoid falling into the trap of populism, and lacking distinction regarding age, gender, class and status. The audience thus becomes the speaker and rearranges the space between speaker and audience into a place where answers can unexpectedly grow. The spectator becomes an essential, active link in a new story; that is such an evolutionary and delicate process. To put it in your terms, they present themselves as a participant in the entire process of creation. I love this kind of performance because it leads me to a specific kind of knowledge.

And I consider this to be the greatest form of knowledge; the knowledge we do not realize we have. It is hidden deep in our collective memory, and it gains a new dimension in a confrontation with another and with the other. Exactly this is what the Cosmopolitan Chicken Project causes in me. It ‘breaks’ my references and places me far across the borders, in places I could never reach by myself. I call this passion.

In this manner, the Cosmopolitan Chicken Project is finding its way into society, being a quest for a new definition of our identity. In a world where the blending of the biological and the cultural is more prominent than ever, we are in desperate need of another framework. The growth pains which this entails are enormous. The flow of communication became much faster than our physical bodies. It transformed us forever into journalists and publishers of each other’s life. This evolution has remarkable consequences. The critical conversation, of which our physical body is part, has almost disappeared. However, our genetics from both the ‘inside’ and the ‘outside’ are still essential prerequisites for an intelligible conversation.

This brings me to your last question. The Cosmopolitan Chicken Project is a project that triggered the process from the individual to the current and the universal; from CCP to OPUNDI to LA BIOMISTA, to use my framework. This exciting process is in constant interaction with the world, which forms the context of these projects.

Every scientist, philosopher, and artist who studied this process recognizes its growth. The switch from mono- to multi-thinking is an irreversible movement in our new society. The Cosmopolitan Chicken Project serves as a catalyst for this development.

Once the incubation has started, it generates new life and creates new forms of life. It conceives opportunities to think and to reach further growth. It does actually not change people, but it simulates the latent presence of an unborn idea. It cracks the shell and gives freedom to explore and discover. By doing so, it stands for global diversity and the creation of a new identity, which in essence means as much as loving one another.

Ciao and see you soon, my friend, Koen

II OPUNDI

The domain of OpUnDi: the Foundations

Just as ‘New Brood’ encompasses all types of the different crossbreeds, the ‘Open University of Diversity’ (OpUnDi, 2012) cumulates the different Foundations that originate from Koen’s work. But it is more: The Open University of Diversity is Koen Vanmechelen’s intellectual platform and forum, with the objective to create an inclusive community of innovative minds and thinkers around the topic of biocultural diversity, the central theme of Koen’s oeuvre. OpUnDi has become a think tank and a meeting place for cross-pollination. Scientists, philosophers, artists and other experts from different domains are invited to make the OpUnDi community stronger and more diverse. Debates, symposia, conferences and expert meetings are organized and informed by the works of art that will be on permanent display. OpUnDi serves as an intellectual space where art and sciences can intersect.

As such, OpUnDi does not have a fixed location. It will always be on the move. Its opening was announced during the 54th Venice Biennial in the library of the Palazzo Loredan, the historic seat of the Institute of the Sciences, Letters and Art. The official opening in Belgium was held at the beginning of 2012. Since then OpUnDi has not only found a home in La Biomista in Genk, it also branched out to Detroit and Havana and is constantly searching for new platform opportunities in the rest of the world.

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CO SM OGO LEM CC® P TH E WALKI NG EGG COM BAT M O UTH

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COSMOGOLEM [2004]

Koen Vanmechelen says about this project: “Then there is the Cosmogolem project, which is involved with children’s rights. We go to developing countries and show children that they can express themselves through poetry, stories, dance and visual arts. We teach them a language so that others will listen to them. This is very important. I have gone to 33 countries already; this project inspires so much hope.”

The Golem is a large wooden structure of about 4 meters high. It is a symbol for a helper and a savior for all the children in the world. He brings relief to children in need. Although he is always silent, this giant statue makes children talk. The Cosmogolem gives children an identity and a voice. Through a hatch in the wooden giant, the children can deposit their dreams, hopes and desires. The Cosmogolem functions as an entry for and in the world.

But the sculpture is not only a helper and a savior, because the Cosmogolem is always on the move, from India to Nicaragua, from Tanzania to Belgium, he also brings cultures together. Just like the Cosmopolitan Chicken Project.

The Cosmogolem never stops looking for places where it can land and bring hope to children in need. At this moment, Cosmogolems have been erected in Pakistan, Belgium, India, Holland and Chili. ‘Up With People’ has taken the Cosmogolem on a world tour. Many other fulfillers of dreams are on their way, e.g. in Nicaragua and Kenya. The Golem is always made with the help of children and under supervision of the artist. Sometimes it is sent from one country to another, sometimes it is made in situ.

The Golem image Koen has used, refers to the legend of the ‘Homunculus’ in the 16th century in Prague. It was made in clay by Rabbi Jehudau Löw, to protect the Jews living in the ghetto. It became alive by putting a sheet of paper between its teeth.

Koen recalls: “I made a big wooden geometric sculpture when I was 18. Looking at it in my studio, I thought it looked like a Golem, a giant. Later, I learned that the Golem stands for big evolutions.”

The word Golem does also have an archetypical meaning: embryo or formless substance. The Golem can thus be formed; it

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can grow and develop, just like an embryo.

The NGO Cosmogolem coordinates this project and has two honorary members: human rights activist and nominee for the Nobel Price for Peace, Jeanne Devos (Mumbai, India), who adopted the project-in-process in 2016, and child and adolescent psychiatrist Peter Adriaenssens (Catholic University of Leuven).

Cosmogolem in Ciudad Darío, Nicaragua, 2012 Cosmogolem at the National Domestic Workers Federation in Mumbai, India, 2008

Cosmogolem, Stichting Lezen, Antwerpen, Belgium, 2003 - 2007

Sister Jeanne Devos with the Cosmogolem in Mumbai, India, 2008

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CC®P [2008]

The Cosmopolitan Chicken Research project (CC®P) was created in 2008 and is the first Foundation set up to explore the scientific possibilities that can be discovered through Koen’s work.

From a scientific perspective, the CCP provides a unique and unprecedented research opportunity. Purposely selected and closely monitored, the art project has brought together genetic material across national and geographic boundaries and (thus far) created nineteen new hybrid chicken species. The genetic material of all the hybrids holds a wealth of information. Once analyzed using modern genetic technologies, the genetic information can be used to identify, compare and correlate the different genes not only in phenotypical appearance, but also to fertility, immune response, resilience, metabolism, ageing and life span of the different species.

Under the title CC®P, the artist exposes his work to this thorough genetic research. The project aims to catalogue and to investigate the genetic information of the crossbred chicken (CCP) and is led by Prof. Dr. Cassiman (Emeritus Human Genetics Professor, Catholic University of Leuven). The CC®P studies the genetic diversity of the different hybrids produced by Koen Vanmechelen’s unique crossings and through this, bridges the divide between art and science.

Koen’s new hybrids will share a great many characteristics with all their different crossbred ‘parents’, thus carrying a cosmopolitan genome, as opposed to the primeval chicken – the ‘Red Jungle Fowl’ (Gallus gallus). It is believed that this primeval chicken – whose habitat lies at the foot of the Himalayas – is the source of all presently existing races, through a process of domestication (i.e. natural selection and inbreeding) during the last 7000 years. It is thought that examining the genomes of both the parents and hybrids of the CCP, scientific research can illustrate how migration and exchange of genetic material give rise to a cosmopolitan genome, and translate into various phenotypes.

The preliminary CC®P data have already shown a tremendous increase of both bio availability and possible variations of the genome for transcription and translation that

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resulted from the crossing of different chickens, but also suggested possible beneficial effects on fertility and life span of the chickens.

It is then just a small step to our human genome. Not so distant in its genome structure and migration patterns, parallels can be drawn to the human race. The CCP process also takes place in the world’s human population.

Genomes are being merged by individuals from different regional groups, not simultaneously throughout the entire population. Even though every individual originates from the same root, mankind has a great deal of genetic diversity – mostly individually. As such, the genetic research on CCP has the potential to provide further insight into the human genetic evolution patterns.

Blood samples of the CC®P Research, 2009 Evolution of a Hybrid – CC®P, 100 × 144 × 20 cm Selective Laser Sintering (polyamide), plexi, neon Exo-Evolution, ZKM, Karlsruhe (DE), 2015

Blood sampling by researchers of the CC®P foundation, 2015 Installation view, Nato a Venezia, Biennial of Venice (IT), 2011

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THE WALKING EGG [2010]

The Walking Egg (TWE) is a non-profit organization founded in 2010 by four members: Annie Vereecken, Rudi Campo, Willem Ombelet and Koen Vanmechelen. Its central focus is fertility and reproduction, approached through the intersection of art and science, two ever-examining disciplines. The Walking Egg collaborates with the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE) and the World Health Organization (WHO). The symbol of this project is a transparent egg on chicken legs.

The TWE is more than a noble idea. It leaves the ivory tower of science and the laboratory of art. It wants to inject fertility in sterility; it advocates the right to reproduction in developing countries by 2020. It’s about every woman’s right to have an offspring.

In 1997, the international meeting for ‘Andrology in the Nineties’, held in Genk, Belgium, attracted more than 700 clinicians and scientists from over 40 different countries, all of whom specialized in infertility. It also resulted in the meeting of artist Koen Vanmechelen and fertility specialist Willem Ombelet. Although they came from two very different domains, both domains developed from a sense of amazement and a desire to understand human identity. The contact between the scientist and the artist resulted in an enigmatic glass egg with the legs of a chicken: ‘The Walking Egg’ sculpture and was the start of two years of debate and collaboration.

This artistic-scientific cross-fertilization was first documented in six issues of ‘The Walking Egg magazine’, a unique blend of science, art and philosophy and an international journal distributed to infertility specialists worldwide.

In December 2007, a scientific-artistic project was set up in Arusha, Tanzania, in the shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro, an environment where climatological and hygienic conditions are not the most favorable. The project brings focus to infertility and childlessness in developing countries, in cooperation with the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE) Special Task Force on ‘Developing countries and infertility’.

In 2013, a scientific text was published and the Walking Egg Project was presented1. Dr. W. Ombelet said: “In the Walking Egg Project

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we strive to raise awareness surrounding childlessness in resource-poor countries and to make infertility care in all its aspects, including assisted reproductive technologies, available and accessible for a much larger part of the world population.”

The start-up of the first Walking Egg Fertility Centre in Ghana was launched in April 2015.

Energy, Communication and Life, light box Permanent installation, ZOL, Genk (BE), 2005 Congress 25 years of IVF in Limburg, Open University of Diversity, Hasselt (BE), 2013

The Walking Egg, 77 × 165 × 55 cm Glass, steel, 1998

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Ombelet W. The Walking Egg Project: Universal access to infertility care – from dream to reality.

Facts Views Vis Obgyn. 2013; 5(2) 161-175.

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COMBAT [2014]

Remembering, helping, reflecting and connecting. That is the aim of COMBAT, the NGO coordinating ComingWorldRememberMe (CWRM), a project commemorating the 100th anniversary of the start of the First World War. The ultimate goal of CWRM is the production of 600,000 small clay statues, one for every person killed on Belgian soil during WW1, by the end of 2018, the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World War. The statues are made by the public, aided by international workshops. At the end of the project, they will all be part of a land art installation near the Palingbeek in Ypres, former no man’s land.

Koen Vanmechelen says: “We are the others and the earlier generations. Without knowing them and their story, our world remains directed fiction. We need people who break the scale, who test the DNA and the stories in that DNA. We need to create a new, transparent mirror that does justice to the past and offers perspective in the future. Until the egg is transparent, it must be broken and weighted, time and time again...”

The story of the final land art installation, which will be created in Ypres in 2018, originates in the crossing of a basic idea of curator Jan Moeyaert with the very heart and soul of the oeuvre of artist Koen Vanmechelen.

This crossbreed gave rise to the story of the art installation ‘ComingWorldRememberMe’ for ‘Gone West’, the remembrance and commemoration period for the WW1 centenary.

CWRM, COMBAT, Nieuwpoort (BE), 2015

Installation view, COMBAT@CWRM Nieuwpoort (BE), 2014

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MOUTH [2016]

The MOUTH Foundation can be summarized as: food and philanthropy.

Philanthropy means etymologically “the love of humanity”; in the sense of “caring”, “nourishing”, “developing and enhancing” what it means to be human: improving the quality of life or the development potential of humans and communities. A conventional modern definition is “private initiatives, for public good, focusing on quality of life,” which combines an original humanistic tradition with a social scientific aspect developed in the 20th century.

Closely linked to the ‘New Brood’ projects, the MOUTH Foundation aims to form a nerve center for the study of biodiversity in food and food production. It offers the possibilities for related scientific research and for projects investigating possible social, economic and ecological impact of bio cultural diversity.

Starting from the Planetary Community Chicken (PCC) project, the Foundation supports research into the nutritional benefits and opportunities of the new crossings, and drives the reintegration of the PCC back to the communities of the world.

The Planetary Community Chicken, Central Square, Sint-Truiden (BE), 2016 Luc Vrielinck and Koen Vanmechelen at the research lab

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LLama’s and chickens at the Open University of Diversity, studio Koen Vanmechelen, Meeuwen (BE)

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COLOPHON

This book is published by the cosmOpolitan gallery, Genk (BE) on the occasion of KOE N VANME CHE LE N DIV E RS I T Y 12 MA RCH – 31 D E CE M B E R, 2016

Publisher

cosmOpolitan gallery Texts

Luc Vrielinck

Koen Vanmechelen

Yannick Nijs Editor

Petra Remans Photographs

Florian Voggeneder (p. 3)

Koen Vanmechelen (p. 14, 76, 78)

Bert Janssen (p. 15, 16, 86-87)

Alex Deyaert (p. 16, 20, 21, 25,76, 77,

79, 80, 81, 85)

Alain Six (p. 16)

Stoffel Hias (p. 16, 17, 19, 22, 47, 67, 78, 79)

Sebastiano Pellion (p. 17)

Eliza Deacon (p. 18)

Goele Schoofs (p. 20, 23, 82, 85)

Mine Dalemans (p. 23)

Kristof Vrancken (p. 31-45, 48-66, 68)

Vzw kunst (p. 82, 83) Graphic design

Geoffrey Brusatto Printed by

Cassochrome, Waregem All artworks and photographs are copyrighted by Koen Vanmechelen unless otherwise stated www.cosmopolitangallery.be www.koenvanmechelen.com 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. Š cosmOpolitan gallery, 2016, Genk.

ISBN 9789082547405