- Exhibition: March 21 – May 6, 2022
- Reception and Artist Talk Thursday, April 7 at 6pm
- View the catalog
Futurefarmers zoom in on "assembly" by asking:
"Who is part of our assemblage?
Who is the other that co-determines or co-constitutes what is of importance?
What provokes this pre-subjective process of communization?"
With projects such as Flatbread Society, the Futurefarmers collective focuses on concrete practice. They conduct hands-on exploration of how people and things, neighbors and grains effect each other...
Nico Dockx + Pascal Gielen
Futurefarmers: A Soil Procession
Futurefarmers is a group of diverse practitioners aligned through an interest in making work that is relevant to the time and place surrounding us. Founded in 1995, the design studio serves as a platform to support art projects, an artist in residence program and our research interests. We are artists, designers, architects, anthropologists, writers and farmers with a common interest in creating frameworks for exchange that catalyze moments of "not knowing".
While we collaborate with scientists and are interested in scientific inquiry, but we want to ask questions more openly. Through participatory projects, we create spaces and experiences where the logic of a situation disappears - encounters occur that broaden, rather than narrow perspectives, i.e. reductionist science.
We use various media to create work that has the potential to destabilize logics of "certainty". We deconstruct systems such as food policies, public transportation, campus design and rural farming networks to visualize and understand their intrinsic logics. Through this disassembly new narratives emerge that reconfigure the principles that once dominated these systems. Our work often provides a playful entry point and tools for participants to gain insight into deeper fields of inquiry- not only to imagine, but to participate in and initiate change in the places we live.
Futurefarmers work has been exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the New York Museum of Modern Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim, MAXXI in Rome, Italy, Sharjah Biennale, Taipei Biennale, Henie Onstad Museum, Oslo, New York Hall of Sciences and the Walker Art Center.
People
Amy Franceschini
San Francisco, USA
Amy Franceschini is an artist and designer whose work facilitates encounter, exchange and tactile forms of inquiry by calling into question the "certainties" of a given time or place where a work is situated. An overarching theme in her work is a perceived conflict between "humans" and "nature". Her projects reveal the history and currents of contradictions related to this divide by challenging systems of exchange and the tools we use to "hunt" and "gather". Using this as a starting point, she creates relational objects that invoke action and inquiry; not only to imagine, but also to participate in and initiate change in the places we live.
In 1995, Amy founded Futurefarmers, an international group of artists, anthropologists, farmers and architects who work together to propose alternatives to the social, political and environmental organization of space. Their design studio serves as a platform to support art projects, an artist in residence program and their research interests. Futurefarmers use various media to deconstruct systems to visualize and understand their intrinsic logics; food systems, public transportation, education. Through this disassembly they find new narratives and reconfigurations that form alternatives to the principles that once dominated these systems. They have created temporary schools, books, bus tours, and large-scale exhibitions internationally.
Amy received her BFA from San Francisco State University in Photography and her MFA from Stanford University. She has taught in the visual arts graduate programs at California College of the Arts in San Francisco and Stanford University and is currently faculty in the Eco-Social masters program at the Free University in Bolzano, Italy. Amy is a 2009 Guggenheim fellow, a 2019 Rome Prize Fellow and has received grants from the Cultural Innovation Fund, Creative Work Fund and the Graham Foundation.
Michael Swaine
Seattle, USA
Michael Swaine was originally trained as a ceramicist. He works in a variety of materials, methods, and media and has had a long-time focus on collaborative work. Michael has collaborated with Futurefarmers since 1997. Michael's Free Mending Library Project involved him pushing an old fashioned ice cream style cart on wheels with a treadle-operated sewing machine on it through the streets of San Francisco. This project became an on-going, monthly happening that took place in the Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco from 2002-2015. Michael received his B.F.A. from Alfred University in Ceramics and his M.A. in Design from UC Berkeley. Michael is a professor in the 3D4M at the University of Washington, Seattle.
Lode Vranken
Lode Vranken has been the lead architect and philosopher of Futurefarmers since 2008. Lode's fascination with installing situations of renewed socio-spacial dynamics began with a Transpolar Catapult built in Anchorage, Alaska and has manifest in various modalities since then. Lode has been practicing architecture internationally since 1993. He received his masters in a UN Course on Human Settlements + Architectural Philosophy from the KU Leuven, Belgium. He has been teaching since 2005 as a Ned delegate at The Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain and from 1993-94 at the Asian Institute for Technology in Bangkok, Thailand. Lode co-founded the architectural research coalition, De Bouwerij in Belgium that focuses on social living structures, passive housing, and zero 
energy construction. He is also a partner of Dear Pigs in Belgium and member of the The Ghent School for Metaphysics.
Stijn Schiffeleers
Working in many media Stijn reveals the subtleties of life via film, video and interactive installations. His work embodies a sense of play and sensitivity that reminds us to take a closer look at what surrounds us. He has been seen soaring above the streets of San Francisco in a canoe mounted to the top of the Futurefarmers Volvo and most recently in Gent, Belgium. Stijn collaborated with Futurefarmers between 2003 - 2017.
Anya Kamenskaya
Anya Kamenskaya is an ag-centric organizer and green building apprentice. Within Futurefarmers, she manages the Indigenous Farming Project, a tribal food sovereignty initiative in California's Owens Valley and fostered early relations with farmers in Flatbread Society in Oslo, Norway. Since 2009, she has curated educational events, film screenings and social mixers for the advocacy non-profit, the Greenhorns. She is a member of DIG Cooperative, Inc., a design-build firm focused on decentralized urban water infrastructure. She received her B.S. in Agroecology from UC Berkeley.
Dan Allende
Daniel is an artist, builder and inventor. He spent many summers orienteering by canoe in Canada where he went several months at a time without seeing other humans. Dan received his B.F.A. in Interdisciplinary Sculpture at the Maryland Institute College of Art and his M.F.A. (2015) at Carnegie Mellon. Dan collaborated with Futurefarmers between 2009-2015 on the Reverse Ark at the Contemporary Museum, Baltimore, Maryland, 2009, the People's Roulette for the Shenzhen Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture, 2009 and Soil Kitchen, 2011, a temporary public artwork commissioned by the city of Philadelphia.
Updated: May 30, 2023