Myvillages.org

Myvillages.org is founded by three artists who grew up in small rural communities: artists Kathrin Böhm (DE/UK), Wapke Feenstra (NL) and Antje Schiffers (DE). We now live in London, Rotterdam and Berlin respectively. In 2003 we started working as an artistic cooperation.

For years we talked about the farms and villages where we grew up. Participatory artistic practice – which we share in common – presents a utopian approach to community building. We agreed that we knew from experience a lot about small communities and the relationships, sometimes close, that people have in villages.

For our first public event – in Heiligendorf, Antje’s home village – we brought with us food and products from the rural areas where we grew up. Wapke offers a kind of cheese with cloves and mare's milk. Antje offered good German bread and liver pâté made from her uncle's pigs. - The smoked Franconian sausages and schnapps prepared by Kathrin's father also made many friends.

We share where we come from and consider the rural world as a place of cultural production by integrating it into the discussion on contemporary arts. We have several ongoing projects, including a traveling archive called bibliobox and an international village shop. We try to connect to villages and use our network to explore new ones. A method we like to use – in addition to bringing in produce from the village – is called Rural Background Drawing. What does a farm look like in your memory? What was the last thing you did in the countryside? What would you call rural? It must be said that we learn a lot by entering and leaving the campaign and moving from an artistic context to a non-artistic context.

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