Seasonal Neighbours Residency
Curated by ife collective with the support of Culture Moves Europe, a project funded by the European Union.
2025, Vicenza
From March 16 to 29, ife collective hosted Claire Chassot and Jonathan De Maeyer—members of Seasonal Neighbours—among the gardens and communities of the Meeting Gardens network, to carry forward the project Hedges, a research initiative focused on hedgerows and orchards. Together with Claire and Jonathan, we were welcomed by Biblioteca La Vigna, Frutti di Marta, Risorgive di Bressanvido, Villa Mezzalira, Boschi Lanerossi and Ca’ Alte, Cascina and Bosco Carpaneda, Casa delle Sementi, Casa di Cultura Popolare, Fondazione Monte di Pietà and Pan Ti Voglio.
During their residency, a dialogue was also initiated with ife collective at the Sala dei Pegni of the Fondazione Monte di Pietà, starting from Seasonal Matters: Rural Relations (published by Onomatopee), a book that reconsiders contemporary rural challenges through relationships rather than oppositions. Based on experiences of seasonal labor, it explores the world of contemporary agriculture and European labor migration, analyzing the socio-political implications on rhythms, rituals, and cohabitation in the European countryside.
Claire Chassot is a French-Swiss artist, living and working in the Rhône watershed. Originally from the Geneva region, she is influenced by this environment and its multiple administrative and natural boundaries. She works in a variety of media that enable her to reveal, question and bear witness to the architectures, tools and gestures that mediate between human bodies and their environments. She has developed several installations and performances using materials sensitive to the passage of time and bodies (brick powder, latex, raw clay, etc.). In 2018, she created her first installations in the public space for the first edition of l'Art dans les lavoirs and for 40mcube’s HubHug space. Since 2020, she has been a member of the interdisciplinary collective Seasonal Neighbours, which explores old and new seasonal rhythms and neighbouring relations in contemporary agriculture. She has taken part in several group exhibitions in Madrid (Galeria Nueva), Z33 art center in Belgium, the FoodCultureDays biennial in Vevey or the Garden Meeting Festival in Vicenza. Lately she has been invited to work with the collective Hydromondes which addresses water uses and promotes a bioregional approach to our environments. With this new project, she confirms her artistic commitment to exploring and developing our ways to inhabit the earth.
Jonathan De Maeyer works and lives in Ghent, Belgium. In 2019 he obtained a master's degree in Fine Arts - Photography at LUCA School Of Arts Ghent.In different capacities, he explores his relationship with the landscape. He tries to understand the landscape by becoming a part of it, by observing and documenting it from the inside. In his work, he tries to reinterpret the landscape and give the viewer access to an alternative, personal perception. Lately he he increasingly works with the boundaries of visual anthropology and socially engaged projects both in rural and urban areas, always with a focus on human connections, ecology, food and agriculture.Since graduating, his work has been shown in exhibitions at Z33 (Hasselt), Netwerk (Aalst), MuZee (Ostend), FoMu (Antwerp), Kunsthal (Ghent) and Bpart (Berlin), among others.
Seasonal Neighbours examines the ongoing material and social transformations of rural life, particularly by paying attention to agricultural practices, the food chain, climate, and seasonal labour migration. The collective, based in the EU, brings together artists, designers, chefs, writers and architects whose practices touch on aspects of seasonality, temporary cohabitation, cultural memory, and practices of belonging. The collective shares a methodology of learning-by-doing and strive for a practice of 'neighbouring'. The collaboration results predominantly in site-specific interventions, rituals, audiovisual works and other forms, engaging us with places and their inhabitants.
This work was produced with the financial assistance of the European Union. The views expressed herein can in no way be taken to reflect the official opinion of the European Union.
