sacred fire pot

Hasselt | 2021-2022
Pour   Z33
Avec Seasonal Neighbourgs


Ode to the punctual in the farming world

The source of our research is a fasci- nation, first for an anti-frost tower in the fields we worked in one year ago which looked like a wind turbine.

It led us to the discovery of more mysterious objects - blankets, stoves, wind tunnels, fans, sparkling systems, fog dragons... All of them share one same and really specific function : taking care of the plant by protecting it from late spring frosts.

Further than a work to reveal these existing systems, they became a way to approach another temporality.

These objects are used during a very short timeframe during the year, if it freezes, always punctual but neces- sarily recurring. The rest of the time either they exist in the landscape but become invisible or they disappear.

The story of these objects brings light to others mechanisms, devices, actions, moments or people, who have, in the agricultural environ- ment, this same back and forth mo- vement, this same punctual character : the anti-hail cannons, the tourists and the flowers, the “palox”, the sea- sonal workers, the agricultural feasts and many more.

Their story is also a way to reflect and question History and the evo- lution of agriculture. Among these anti-frost systems, some are new, others are disappearing, some work alone, others need to be thousands,- some gather, others repel... They are symptomatic of an agriculture that has modernized, of a workforce and a countryside solidarity that has shrunk.

What if History had taken a diffe- rent turn, that of the stove, where we would devote a real cult to it, as a symbol of the punctual ?



photos 1-14 © Jonathan De Maeyer