What is it about?
This illustrated essay introduces and questions the notion of “rural undercurrents” while describing some of the art projects I have undertaken in the past two decades, including as co-founder of Myvillages (2003). With Myvillages, we have collectively empowered rural and urban communities in different parts of the world to co-create self-representations and share their imaginations and landscapes. Every settlement, my work shows, has entangled rural undercurrents that are part of the land and were created by (rural) migration and the (re)rooting of people. Activating rural undercurrents involves a learning-by-doing curve that awakens an awareness of the cultural layers on which we live our lives.
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Why is it important?
The described concepts that embodied and relationial knowledge can be shared and loaded through art projects and cultural infrastructures. Examples are hands-on co-creations of rural representations, read more about: The Best Place (2007), Former Farmland (2008-ongoing), Boerenzij (2018-2020) and Pushkino Style (2021-ongoing). The projects show that every settlement is characterized by entangled rural undercurrents that can be brought to life through performative interventions such as making landmarks or organizing trans-local knowledge exchanges on the streets, on farms, and in villages. And how the representation of rural undercurrents in exhibitions, books, and films can make them visible in urban-centered art platforms. Yet, the making visible of rural undercurrents and the provision of access for rural people to art platforms is not the end goal; a collective questioning of how we see the rural and how we can repair rural-urban divisions requires a more comprehensive cultural shift. Despite the increasingly strong awareness of the need for decolonization and countering climate change in European contemporary art, the urban gaze on art and culture is still the leading perspective. It is high time to change our cultural narratives and de-urbanize our museums and contemporary art platforms.
Perspectives
It is important that the described art projects unfold the concept of Rural Undercurrents as a way of seeing the landscape and an inquiry into what a more sustainable future for the landscapes can be. Landscape is a cultural construction and is strong connected to how we see the rural. "How we see the rural is how we want to relate to it." is a quote from the Rural School of Economics, set up with KAthrin Böhm in 2019. To shift our perception of the rural, we need to unlearn. To listen to the wind. To read the soil. Perhaps we can unlearn seeing the landscape as a mere framed piece of nature—as depicted in the genre of landscape paintings or consumed through tourism, food production, or mining. Landscape is both projection screen and mirror. How we view it is always a cultural construction. And since we made it, we can remake it.
Wapke Feenstra
Myvillages, Rural School of Economics
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Rural Undercurrents, June 2025, De Gruyter,
DOI: 10.1163/9789004731943_008.
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