No Title No Status
Idiots (Floris Bakker en Afke Golsteijn)
(2007)
Working with dead animals soon raises questions. We kill and eat animals, like pigs, cows, pigeons, spiders or crickets, depending on where you were brought up. Nowadays, people in the Netherlands tend to be far removed the process of fattening and slaughtering animals for food; it is outsourced and scaled up. When I talked to the artists in their studio during the farmers’ strikes, they readily spoke out: “These days some farmers are even listed on the Quote 500 (a list of the Netherlands’ wealthiest residents), farmers who have over 5000 cows. That’s where it’s going wrong and it’s also where the misunderstandings come from. Farmers and cows: a pleasant idea on the face of things. Small in scale, at one with the landscape, open fields and agricultural land. But the balance has been lost, resulting in too many animals, too little commitment, and too much nitrogen. And misunderstandings about how the animals are treated, and too much pressure on those concerned.”
Afke and Floris: “What we need is a next step, a change in mindset, and a different relationship with nature.”