Futurefarmers
Futurefarmers is teaching the university a lot about avant-garde art.
Not to be confused with Future Farmers of America — the high school kids in the blue corduroy jackets — these Futurefarmers are the ones on the cutting edge of an art form called “social practice.”
And their founder, Amy Franceschini, is spending this semester as the UW’s interdisciplinary artist-in-residence, representing a collective of artists, activists, researchers, farmers, scientists and architects working to propose alternatives to current social, political and environmental systems.
The native of central California says the similarity between Future Farmers of America and Futurefarmers (formed in 1995) is no accident. She grew up in a rural area and was envious of her friends who were in FFA. “I really wanted to commit to living on a farm in the future. I thought it would be a constant reminder that I should save money and get on that farm as soon as possible.”
That ambition has merged with Franceschini’s art, as she and her Futurefarmer collaborators roam the world. Franceschini received her MFA from Stanford University, and she has taught visual arts programs at Stanford and at California College of the Arts, in San Francisco.
While at the UW, Franceschini’s semester-long residency is sponsored by the Arts Institute and the departments of art, design studies, horticulture and community and environmental sociology. She is teaching an interdisciplinary course, “Ecology of Research: Seeds of Time,” which involves visits from her collaborating professional artists Michael Swaine (a San Francisco fiber artist who operates a mobile mending library) and Joe Riley (a printer and master sailor). Students and instructors are all taking part in Futurefarmers’ international public art project “Flatbread Society” and its outgrowth, “Seed Journey.”
Flatbread Society
“Seed Journey” is a planned sailing voyage that will transport ancient grains to their long-ago native soil.
“Flatbread Society” is a permanent public art project created on a waterfront development in Oslo, Norway. Started in 2012, the ongoing project has resulted in the formation of an urban gardening community along with a permanent grain field and baking facility.
Building on that, “Seed Journey” is a planned sailing voyage that will transport varieties of ancient grains, recently discovered in Oslo, to their long-ago native soil in the Fertile Crescent. During the journey, artists, researchers and Futurefarmers will stop in various cities in Europe and the Middle East to exchange ideas and grains. Depending on the weather, they’ll depart Oslo this autumn and arrive at Istanbul sometime in October 2017. UW students are assisting with preparations for the voyage.
“What we’re doing with students here is that we’re including [them] on the research that we’re doing for the sea journey,” says Franceschini. “Each of the students has a [vocational] practice already, so there’s artists and chemists and biologists. They’ve taken the class because they find something in their work that relates to our project.”
Among other activities, students are designing and making the ship’s sail and the sailors’ togs. “We want to make them, not the everyday sailing outfit,” Francsechini says. “We want to have some personal touch. So we’re trying to make the clothes out of hemp, which is a plant that’s related to the seeds we have on the boat.”
The seeds themselves are ancient grains no longer in wide use. “In a way they’re kind of orphans,” says Franceschini. “They aren’t accepted in the mass market. You can’t really make money off them. And hemp is in the same place right now.”
If none of this sounds much like the art you’re used to, that’s understandable. Though some trace “social practice” art to the 1960s, it was only in 2013 that The New York Times attempted a definition: “Its practitioners freely blur the lines among object making, performance, political activism, community organizing, environmentalism and investigative journalism, creating a deeply participatory art that often flourishes outside the gallery and museum system.”
There’s also a healthy dose of Dada. As the Times noted, it pushes “the old question — ‘Why is it art?’ — as close to the breaking point as contemporary art ever has.”
Franceschini is much less interested in labels for her work than she is about the future of farming. She grew up on two farms, separated by divorce. Her father had a large industrial farm, and her mother ran a small organic farm. “I was living between those two kinds of ideologies and logic,” she recalls, “and I realized that there are two different people, two different kinds of farming, but they were both dedicated to making healthy food for people.”
Norma Saldivar, interim director of the Arts Institute, says Franceschini’s residency epitomizes the interdisciplinary focus of the institute. “Seeing the students in the classroom who may not have common majors come together and research for a high-caliber international project that brings together artists, environmentalists, farmers, scientists, etc., has been very exciting for us, “says Saldivar.
Students’ final presentation, “Ecology of Research: Seeds of Time,” will be held from 6:30 to 9 p.m. Friday, April 22, at Gates of Heaven in James Madison Park, 302 E. Gorham Street. Space is limited. For more information, visit go.wisc.edu/seeds.
