Koe-en-Landschap NL
The cow in the pasture is a national Dutch cliché. It is an image that has existed in the Netherlands for centuries and does not seem to be subject to change. But nothing is less true. Especially since the last four decades, the appearance of the cow, the cattle feed and, therefore, the landscape around the cow, has changed significantly due to agricultural industrialisation in the Netherlands.
Biodiversity, different soils and how to stay focussed on the agricultural transitions that will build on a sustainable future is what we explore together with stake-holders and the general public.
The Cow and Landscape started its research in 2020 on the island Schiermonnikoog and went in 2023 to Twenthe and Salland, till 2025 De Peel and farms around Eindhoven were involved as well. The project consist of (drawn) herbaria with grasses and herbs, plans of farmyards, animations of the economics, 9 films made on the farms and photographs from personal archives. Recurring questions within the project are: 'what does your best cow look like, past and present', 'what grows in the meadow', 'what can we learn from the past' and 'what will the future of Cow and Landscape farming look like?'.
We also go for Plein Air sessions to the meadows where the cows graze and will run a public program in cooperation with our partners. Involved so far are villages, farmers and museumvisitors - over the public programs we connect to more rural areas that are specialised in dairy farming and the landscapes that feed them.
Cow and Landscape is a project of the Rural School of Economics, and is supported by Vrienden Loterij Fonds and Mondriaan Fund. Our projectpartners are Van Abbemuseum, Rijksmuseum Twenthe, De Melkbrouwerij, De Melktapperij, Erfgoed Bossem, Genneper Hoeve, Op den Hoek, De Hofstad, Kasteelboerderij Waalre, Janmiekeshoeve and the Drawing Center in Diepenheim. We thank all farmers, experts and villagers on Schiermonnikoog and family Visser from the Kampeerboerderij De Branding for hosting us on the island (as this project started in Covid-times).
| Local partners |
|
|---|---|
| Population | 3 800 000 cows on around 1 000 000 ha of meadows |
| Common fruit, vegetables, animals | Cheese, milk, butter - silage and hay - cornfields and grasses |
| Tradition | Most cows give birth every year to be able to give milk |
| Scent | fresh cutted grass and manure |
| Distances from Koe-en-Landschap | Distances |
Re-rooting in the Netherlands
After these few years of visiting Dutch farms and farmers, listening to their stories, digging into Dutch rural soils, and observing cows and their changing bodies, we at Myvillages are deeply reflecting on the concept of re-rooting. We have also been inspired and moved by the 4 soils concept, which informed the SOILS project at Van Abbemuseum.
The Four Soils concept comes from Palestinian scholar Munir Fasheh’s idea of four interconnected soils. Fasheh emphasizes the importance of nurturing the earth soil, communal soil, cultural soil, and spiritual soil, believing that when these are cared for, they, in turn, nurture all life.
Van Abbemuseum director Charles Esche has given Koe en Landschap/ Cow and Landscape a place to emphasize that working locally is meaningful for the Dutch museum. Through the fellowship, Wapke Feenstra has met and engaged with many other SOILS. Migration and the act of starting over are integral to land use, and while the fellowship marked the beginning, the global reflection on (re)rooting is ongoing.
The fact that re-rooting should also receive more attention in the Netherlands is something we will work on with Myvillages from 2025. The network around Koe en Landschap already asks these questions and the number of participants in the Netherlands has now been expanded with the SWYLJE activities (see list of activities). We hope to explore more polders and landscapes in the future and learn from each other in a program that we will develop with Casco Art Institute in Utrecht, Meta Knol and Inez Dekker for 2025-2027.
Media Attention, Reflection, and Progress in SOILS at Van Abbemuseum
The SOILS research, in which Wapke Feenstra participated, had a strong decolonial focus. However, in our view, Dutch newspapers approached the exhibition somewhat superficially, skimming over its depth and complexity. They seemed “lazy” in unpacking the intricate relationships with the soils in the entire exhibition.
In De Volkskrant on June 24, 2024, Marsha Bruinen remarked that the stories of the Brabant farms seemed out of place in the SOILS exhibition. She wrote: “(..) hyper current of course, with the recently adopted nature restoration law and the passionate discussions about it. But how do these stories relate to the historically rooted land conflicts from the previous rooms? (..) “ - find the article here.
Reading this in one of the leading Dutch newspapers is striking. It implies a disconnect, as if the Netherlands has no history of deeply rooted land conflicts or toxic visions that require undoing today. This perspective seems to overlook the fact that the state's authority, along with the power of the nobility and the church to appropriate natural resources and engage in land-grabbing, has significant European including Dutch origins.
Also see Janneke Wesseling for NRC here.
National newspaper reviewers have approached the SOILS exhibition with a consumerist perspective, relying on familiar frameworks or personal tastes rather than engaging deeply with its themes. The critical need to move beyond the concept of a “Central Culture” and foster new relationships with art, soil, and rural culture in the Netherlands appears to be overlooked in these reviews, suggesting a missed opportunity for broader reflection.
The reluctance to look at the rural regions and the rural stratification of each location remains a problem, particularly if the cultural class in the Netherlands persists in believing that looking away is an option. This looking away seems to still dominate the cultural sector.
Fortunately, in Myvillages we see that a growing number of young cultural workers, researchers, and artists seek us out. They want to join us in tackling the urgency of de-urbanizing art and culture.
We are therefore grateful that, on July 31, 2024, Nuraini Juliastuti wrote about SOILS for MetropolisM:
“(..) The soil of the Netherlands is also charged with a strong sense of inclusion and exclusion. Following the legitimate questions raised by Feenstra about the preservation of village and farming cultures, one can also ask how the Soils Project contributes to building solidarity in the Netherlands and beyond. It would mean that the project should show itself to be aware of the different roots that can underlie very different land conflicts. This is undeniably the main challenge for Soils (..)” keep reading here.
***
In Brabant, the farmers also sought out the press themselves and were often in the picture, Like in these examples:
▹ Artist Wapke Feenstra and farmer John Heesakkers on KRAAK
Cow and Landscape – The Brabant Chapter
Exhibited from June to November 2024 as part of the group show and program SOILS at Van Abbemuseum.
What place can Dutch rural and more-than-human life be given within contemporary art amid growing demands for agricultural transition? We believe that good coexistence between humans and the more-than-human requires us to recognize how the economy is rooted in local cultures and (natural) environments.
In the show artist Wapke Feenstra collaborates with five Brabant-based farms: Genneper Hoeve (Eindhoven), De Hofstad (Son en Breugel), Kasteelboerderij (Waalre), Janmiekeshoeve (Mariahout), and Op Den Hoek (De Mortel). Through accessible forms of learning, like drawing, walking, taking photos, foraging and milking, they bring us to other images, possibilities and realities that are already practiced here and now.
How we understand, use and value the rural is determined by what we decide to see and what we are able to recognize. Next to 5 films on Brabant-based farms, the show is also the first screening of “Koe and Landschap” film produced in Schiermonnikoog (an island in the Northern Netherlands). It introduces the conceptual framework Inez Dekker and Wapke Feenstra developed together for this project as they journey through the Netherlands from autumn 2020 to spring 2024.
They write: “In ‘Cow and Landscape,’ we explore what a vision of the future could look like based on the ‘good life’. Unlike concepts such as ‘development’ or ‘wealth’, a ‘good life’ is not institutionalized or measurable. Rather, it is like a moving image that is shaped by different contexts, economic structures, cultures, beings and embodied meanings.”
Portrayals of cows and landscape are a cliche in Dutch art history and in popular advertising images. The current-day modern agricultural sector seems to consist merely of graphs and numbers. Cow and Landscape is an invitation to look the cow in the eye, to get close to her and hear stories about her.
In 2020, Inez Dekker and Wapke Feenstra started going on field trips to different dairy farms in the Netherlands. There, they were told the history of cow families and how powerful economic forces keep remaking the cow’s body. Questions that were helpful to learn to notice the worlds and relationships between cows and farmers are embedded in: “What is a favorite cow?”, “What does the cow of the future look like?” and “Which landscape does that cow occupy?”
Read the full article here:
Working Methods in Cow and Landscape (2023–2024)
The first stage of the project focused on crafting meaningful questions for the participating farms, a process that began in 2020 through research conducted in locations such as Schiermonnikoog and the Groene Hart (see timeline below). Led by Wapke Feenstra, the project was developed in close collaboration with rural sociologist Inez Dekker. The primary languages used were Dutch and Frisian.
Economic Pancakes
Both the cow and the cultural landscape are shaped by those who hold the power to intervene. And that power is diverse. To access these dynamics, we asked farmers to draw an "economic pancake." These drawings illustrated the changing trends in recent history, showing how farms have changed over the decades—from having highly diverse income sources in often mixed-use farms, to focusing solely on milk production, and more recently, to adopting a more socially engaged, short-chain-oriented economies.
This and other bottom-up knowledge was captured visually, often with contributions from multiple generations of family farmers. These insights were shared, drawn, and discussed in co-creation sessions around kitchen tables, ultimately taking shape as representations showcased in exhibitions.
Images from the Farms
Farms (families and cooperatives) were asked how they wanted to share their insights and experiences with the museum audience. This audience is often more urban and, while they are consumers of the farmers' products, their knowledge of the technical and lived realities of farming might be limited.
How should we (farmers) speak so they could understand us? What does the current agricultural transition mean for the Cow and the Landscape on my farm? What has shaped my perceptions and ideas of what is a good cow? What does that cow eat, and how does the feed reach it? Where does the cow graze? What feed is preferred on this farm, and what does the cow choose?
Together, we create a script and decide where to stand to explain things. Farmers film with their phones and look into their family archives. Myvillages visit the yard with scanners, cameras, or drawing pads. This visual exploration has to take place amidst haymaking, silage, calving, and milking.
Drawing to Get to Know the Cow and the Landscape
Drawing together with everyone involved, we visited salt marshes, meadows, and farms as part of the research and production of the project. In total, more than 150 people of all ages participated in plein air sessions. The drawings were scanned and became part of the exhibition on the so-called Cow Sheets—textiles featuring printed collages of drawings. Sixteen sheets and sixteen locations. And because we enjoy it, we’ll occasionally draw cows in landscapes during the exhibition as well.
Ecology and Meadow Plants – Explorations, Wallpapers, Tattoos, and Creative Sessions
What do the cows eat, and what do they leave behind? With Staatsbosbeheer (State Forestry Service) on Schiermonnikoog, ecologists from Twente, biologist Age Opdam, and native plant expert Jeanette Renders, we visited farms to observe and collect meadow plants with farmers.
A meadow plant wallpaper was created for each farm in collaboration with Studio Bureau, with drawings and design by Wapke Feenstra. In the museum gallery, each film features this wallpaper in the background, reflecting the biodiversity of the farms’ meadows.
During the exhibition at Rijksmuseum Twenthe, dried meadow plant drawing sessions were held. At the Van Abbemuseum, some guides were knowledgeable about all the plant names. At the openings, visitors received meadow plant tattoos—an ideal moment to discuss the (lack of) biodiversity.
Activities List
We reached out to 22 farms, ultimately highlighting 9 in greater detail. We visited these farms and the cooperative on Schier to chat, film, scan archives, smell the cows, and explore the pastures. An almost complete selection of activities (about 85% of all organized) can be seen here:
| Local partners |
|
|---|---|
| Population | 3 800 000 cows on around 1 000 000 ha of meadows |
| Common fruit, vegetables, animals | Cheese, milk, butter - silage and hay - cornfields and grasses |
| Tradition | Most cows give birth every year to be able to give milk |
| Scent | fresh cutted grass and manure |
| Distances from Koe-en-Landschap | Distances |