Farmers side was a project by artist Wapke Feenstra with Rotterdammers about rural culture. The project was a critique of the supposed contrast between countryside and city, which dominates popular imagery but also our planning and politics.
City and countryside are intertwined in many ways. But the urban perspective dominates. We associate urbanization and urban culture with progress. From that perspective, the countryside and rural culture are always on the periphery and in the shadow of the city. Feenstra problematizes this image with projects on location. This project revolved around the 'Boerenzij' of Rotterdam.
The port city of Rotterdam was built mainly by people from elsewhere, often from the countryside. Feenstra went looking for them, to exchange farming knowledge and to recall memories, and in doing so to make visible the rural mentality that is an inseparable part of the urban space. The exhibition that emerged from this exchange was an invitation to provide our image of city and countryside with new dimensions.
The Farmers Side of Rotterdam
'Boerenzij' is the nickname that Rotterdammers from above the river gave to Rotterdam-Zuid, to indicate that the people there were not real city dwellers. On the south bank, the port of Rotterdam annexed thede century and 20th century more and more polders and villages such as Charlois, Katendrecht and Feijenoord. The inhabitants of this new part of the city were rural migrant workers, first from North Brabant, Zeeland and Southern Europe, later from Morocco, Turkey, Suriname and the Antilles.
These newcomers were silently expected to leave their rural culture and knowledge behind, just as local farmers were expected to make way for the city. Feenstra, who is both a Rotterdammer and a farmer's daughter, knows that the countryside stays with you. She suspected that this also applies to other Rotterdammers. She went in search of the rural knowledge and culture present in the city and ways to make it visible.
Participatory research
With a year-long series of participatory activities, Feenstra invited residents of Rotterdam-Zuid to help her change the perception of the countryside and the city. Bottom-up approaches, with attention and appreciation for everyday and subjective forms of knowledge, were central to this.
With kale dinners, kitchen table conversations and visits to local farms, Feenstra brought people into contact with each other, to exchange farming knowledge and to reminisce about the countryside. With public drawing lessons on the quays and in allotments, she returned to the 'en plein-air' landscape painting that was in vogue in the period in which industry and the port grew, in order to capture the changing urban landscape of today. More than a hundred residents and artists participated.
Microanalysis
In TENT, Feenstra presented a microanalysis of the Boerenzij. In a film, residents of Rotterdam South share their farming knowledge and memories. Together with the archaeological service, Feenstra made an animation about the origin of the soil on the Rotterdam Boerenzij. A wall-filling panorama showed the drawings that the participants made, next to a collection of rural objects that the participants contributed. The whole formed an open invitation to the public to think along about the ways in which rural knowledge and culture are present in the city.
Boerenzij was made possible by the Mondriaan Fund, Cultuur Concreet and the Municipality of Rotterdam. With thanks to all participants.