Koen's New Year's Letter

The times they are a-changin

As a long time Bob Dylan fan, it feels more than appropriate to look back on the year 2016 with his memorable words in mind. I do strongly feel the bard was right. Times are changing unexpectedly fast. Not only because of the remarkable geopolitical events of these last few weeks and the sudden environmental collapse we are facing. It also happened on a personal level. My team and I have been moving boxes from our former to our brand new studio in Genk, designed by Mario Botta. Furthermore 2016 marked a challenging new phase in my lifework the Cosmopolitan Chicken Project. By launching a new project entitled the Planetary Community Chicken (PCC) and by crossbreeding Cosmopolitan roosters with local commercial chickens, I introduce art to communities as an artistic urban farming project that connects economics and sociology to the topics of food, social interaction, and others. Early 2016 we started the project in the city of Sint-Truiden to develop the PCC further in Siberia, Zimbabwe and Detroit, where the first results are already bringing change to the communities. Art in the eye of society, in an engaging way, that is how I always felt art should be. But 2016 was also the year in which I found myself on a boat with two alpacas for the exhibition in Temse. Making hotdogs at the Dutch Design Week accompanied by LUCY, our biodiverse pig and my eye-to-eye contact with Stanley Kubrick but the cherry on this year's cake was without a doubt the article in the New York Times.

In a society whose biggest threat is fear, I want to make a different statement. 2017 will be the year of the rooster, a symbol of dawn and awakening. Triumph and success, we can only achieve at the price of hard work and patience. Together, in the knowledge that giving is getting and that sharing makes our network, and thus ourselves, stronger and more vital. We need to learn to trust again and care for others.

We hope you join us in taking the next steps from day one. Happy Holidays, Koen and team

Read the full letter via http://bit.ly/2gsD4FM