CO M M U N I T Y C HIC K EN PROJEC T
Koen Vanmechelen
Open University of Difference (OpUnDi), Wasserman Projects, Detroit (US), 2016
CCP, The Future of Hope, Harare (ZW), 2015
CCP, De Hoev, Zonhoven (BE), 2015
La Biomista, Genk (BE), 2015-09-22
Artist
Koen Vanmechelen
COMMUNITY CHICKEN PROJECT
Koen Vanmechelen
Modern poultry flocks have become genetically
impoverished due to industrialised farming and are
at considerable risk from diseases. The continuous
crossbreeding of chicken species in the Cosmopolitan
Chicken Project (CCP), which is artistic-philosophical
in nature has resulted in the birth of chickens that
show a remarkably higher genetic diversity. Their
immense gene pool consists of a whopping 13 million
single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). The
Cosmopolitan Chicken Research Project (CC®P)
studies them and revealed the genetic enrichment
through crossbreeding. A new project, the Community
Chicken Project has to prevent inbreeding by injecting
the genetic diversity into other species.
The layout of the plan is like this: every year a
rooster of the newest crossbreed will be paired with a
regular egg laying chicken. This chicken will absorb
the genetic pool of the CCP rooster and produce
a vital community chicken who can provide the
communities it lives in with healthy eggs. The time is
now. The growing popularity of chickens is a fact, but
at the same time the food insecurity increases. Even
in richer countries the sudden halt of food supplies
through calamities, wars, riots or climate change can
lead to much misery.
The need for food security and food independency
of traditional industrial supply has played a pivotal role
in the growing resurgence of small-scale agriculture,
from raising homegrown vegetables to homebred
animals. The first species to be introduced in this
new project will be the Mechelse Cemani, the 19th
generation of the CCP. The next generation, will be
the typical chicken from Detroit; the Wyandotte. This
crossbreeding (CCP20) will be raised at Wasserman
Projects, located at the Eastern Market in Detroit.
Other experimental labs will be based in Belgium,
Harare (Zimbabwe), and Havana (Cuba). The animals
will bring new diversity and food security to certain
urban communities there. The birds in every location
will be subject to scientific research.
With this project, Vanmechelen takes the next
step in positioning art categorically where it belongs:
in the middle of society, engaged with people, always
committed. Important is that the communities
involved are linked to each other. They are small parts
of a plural and diverse society that is being formed.
The artist refers to his artwork The Tower of Babel
which was first presented at the biennial of Poznan
and now houses one of the Community projects.
The 13m high tower, reaching for the eternal is a
cultural adaptation of its prototype and consists of
cages and chicken crossbreeds. The always present
tension translates itself in an upward or downward
movement. The building blocks of the Tower seem like
mirror movements. Every part is connected to other
parts, like the communities will be linked through the
chickens they adopted. The Tower stands for limited
and controlled growth. A watchtower for the urban
farming initiatives that accompany the community
chicken.
COMMUNITY CHICKEN PROJECT
Koen Vanmechelen
Top
Below Domesticated Giant, bronze, glass, 55 x 178 x 86 cm,
40 x 174 x 87 cm © Koen Vanmechelen, 2015
Breeding center of the Community Chicken Project where
the different chicken species are kept in modular cages
COMMUNITY CHICKEN PROJECT
Koen Vanmechelen
Top
The Tower of Babel, oil on panel painting by Pieter Brueghel,
1563. The Tower of Babel is a story told in the Old Testament
meant to explain the origin of different languages. According
to the story, a united humanity of the generations following
the Great Flood, speaking a single language and migrating
from the east, came to the land of Shinar. There they agreed
to build a city and tower; seeing this, God confounded their
speech so that they could no longer understand each other
and scattered them around the world.
Below Tower of Babel, Wood, portraits on nylon by Koen
Vanmechelen, 2015. In his Tower of Babel Vanmechelen
presents his own go at a cloud-breaking tower, his world
famous ‘Cosmopolitan Chicken Project’. It consists of the
different crossings of national chicken species, surprising
cocktails of different bundles of genetic material.
COMMUNITY CHICKEN PROJECT
Koen Vanmechelen
Top
Below local shop at the community project at at De Hoev, Belgium
where the self grown vegetables and local products are
being sold.
garden at the community project De Hoev, Belgium with in
the back the Tower of Babel
COMMUNITY CHICKEN PROJECT
Koen Vanmechelen
Top
Below Domesticated Giant, bronze, glass, 55 x 178 x 86 cm,
40 x 174 x 87 cm © Koen Vanmechelen, 2015
Eggs produced by the Community Chickens can be
distributed to the local communities in the framework of a
‘one egg a day’ policy
THE COSMOPOLITAN CHICKEN PROJECT (CCP)
DIVERSITY AND DUALISM
Nothing is what it seems. That is but one of the many
- much more surprising - lessons of the Cosmopolitan
Chicken Project (CCP), a worldwide crossbreeding program involving national and regional chicken
breeds that started in 1998 by visual artist Koen Vanmechelen (b. 1965, Sint-Truiden, Belgium).
Vanmechelen found that each successive generation of hybrids was more resilient than its purer-bred
parents. The chickens lived longer, were less susceptible to disease, and exhibited less aggressive behavior. Also, less unexpectedly, the morphological and
phenotypical characteristics were blurred by selective
breeding. The ultimate result of many generations of
crossbreeding is a truly Cosmopolitan Chicken, carrying the genes of all the world’s chicken breeds. The
starting point for all these different breeds once was
the Red Junglefowl - the original chicken. Its many
descendant breeds are all man-made endpoints,
sometimes literally so, in the sense that they are
infertile. Vanmechelen wants to end all these breeds
by blending them into a new starting point, providing a
chicken-breeding example of the principle of creative
destruction. But the CCP does not aim to reconstitute
the proto-chicken. It does not want to return to the
past. On the contrary, it symbolises the future. The
CCP is the starting point of a new form of evolution
that will never end, a perpetuum mobile of genetic
diversification and recombination.
Vanmechelen’s oeuvre is as diverse and as hybrid
as the Cosmopolitan Chicken itself: it’s a unique mix
of painting, drawing, photography, video, innovative
3D techniques, installations and wooden sculptures,
whose unifying theme is the chicken and the egg.
But, as mentioned before: nothing is what it seems.
The core of the project is neither chicken nor egg, but
crossbreeding and the diversity that comes from it.
The Cosmopolitan Chicken holds up a mirror to us.
Crossbreeding is a practical but also a philosophical
necessity, if not a moral duty. Today’s chicken breeds
are failing; to prevent inbreeding and degeneration,
new blood is needed. “Every organism needs some
other organism in order to survive,” says Vanmechelen, “If there is one secret in life, maybe it’s that everything is dual. Chicken and egg, cause and effect, good
and bad, construction and destruction: everything
exists in relation to the Other. If you pursue this line
of reasoning, you might even conclude that there’s a
parallel solar system outside our own, ensuring our
continued survival.”
“I see the chicken as a metaphor for man and
the egg both as a metaphor for the world and as the
laboratory of the future. The egg is a protected environment and a source of life. Yet it is also a cage, a
restriction from which we have to break free.” History
teaches us that progress is predicated on daring to let
go of what we already have. The result of hybridisation
is often uncertain. Do we dare expose ourselves to the
unexpected? Vanmechelen certainly does: “Fertilisation, enrichment – they always come from outside. It’s
precisely the unexpected things that are important
to me. I take notice of apparent coincidences.” This
is why the Cosmopolitan Chicken Project is also an
answer in progress, a work of art that will never be
complete. How the Cosmopolitan Chicken will turn out
or where the program will end, remain open questions, just as what will come out of the egg is an open
question, every time around.
The diversity that characterises Vanmechelen’s
work is not confined to the media he uses. The CCP
involves a symbiosis of art, science, philosophy, politics and ethics. It is Vanmechelen’s way of reflecting
on the existential questions of individual identity and
life, and it touches on contemporary issues regarding globalisations, racism, genetic modification and
cloning. The project invites the onlooker to join in the
debate.
The Cosmopolitan Chicken Project: approach and
state of progress
The first generation hybrid, the Mechelse Bresse,
resulted from crossbreeding the Belgian Mechelse
Koekoek - the pride of Flemish chicken farmers with the top French chicken, the Poulet de Bresse.
Each successive generation of hybrids comes from
crossbreeding the previous generation’s hybrid with
another pure breed.
In 2015, the artist’s ongoing creation of a worldhybrid chicken reached, with the Mechelse Sulmtaler,
its eighteenth generation; a royal breed, born in the
castle of Chimay (BE) as a result between the Austrian Sulmtaler and the Mechelse Styrian. One year
before, this Mechelse Styrian came into existence
after a crossing between the Slovenian Styrian and
the Mechelse Senegal at the Ars Electronica Festival
in Linz (AT). To date, the hybrid consists of regional
breeds of chickens in Belgium, France, England,
U.S.A., Germany, The Netherlands, Mexico, Thailand,
Brazil, Turkey, Cuba, Italy, Russia, China, Egypt, Senegal, Slovenia and Austria.
♂ MECHELSE KOEKOEK
Belgium
×
POULET DE BRESSE ♀
France
♀ MECHELSE BRESSE
CCP
×
♀ JERSEY GIANT
U.S.A.
×
×
Thailand
♂ MECHELSE
CCP
♀ DENIZLI HOROZU
Turkey
×
×
×
×
MECHELSE AURACANA ♂
CCP
×
Russia
CUBALAYA ♂
Cuba
♀
China
×
AURACANA ♀
Brazil
×
×
×
POULET DE SENEGAL ♀
Senegal
MECHELSE SENEGAL ♀
CCP
♀ MECHELSE STYRIAN
CCP
♂ AYAM CEMANI
Indonesia
♀
MECHELSEM EEE ♂
CCP
♂ MECHELSE
CCP
♂ STYRIAN
Slovenia
ANCONA ♀
Italy
×
Egypt
LOUISIANA ♀
Mexico
×
MECHELSE ANCONA ♂
CCP
♂ MECHELSE
CCP
DRESDNER ♀
Germany
MECHELSE LOUISIANA ♀
CCP
×
♂ MECHELSE CUBALAYA
CCP
♀
MECHELSE DRESDNER ♂
CCP
♂ MECHELSE UILEBAARD
CCP
♂
ENGLISH REDCAP ♂
England
MECHELSE REDCAP ♂
CCP
♂ MECHELSE GIANT
CCP
♀ UILEBAARD
The Netherlands
×
♀ MECHELSE DENIZLI
CCP
×
MECHELSE SULMTALER ♀
CCP
SULMTALER ♂
Austria