The Cosmopolitan Chicken Project
Koen Vanmechelen
13.9.–8.12.2024
(Text in Norwegian: clik here)
The Cosmopolitan Chicken Project (CCP) by the Belgian artist Koen Vanmechelen explores the boundless potential hidden in biological and cultural diversity. What started by crossbreeding a typical Belgian chicken; the Mechelse Koekoek and a Poulet de Bresse from France; has, over the past 25 years, evolved into a universal breeding project that challenges monoculture both metaphorically and in practice. Vanmechelen’s goal is a Cosmopolitan Chicken that carries the genes of all chicken breeds from all over the world. Each crossing might boost the health and resilience of chicken, a species among many others that has been inbred and exploited for human needs.
Could the project tell something about diversity and society among humans as well? In each country the CCP is presented, the project provokes discussions and ethical debates about animal welfare, globalisation, genetic manipulation, and more. In Bergen, the project continues with the generation #29. The new hybrid emerging at Kunsthall 3,14 is a crossing between Norwegian Jærhøns, the only still existing indigenous domesticated chicken breed in Norway, and the previous generation with the genetic material of 28 other breeds from all over the world. In the exhibition space at Kunsthall 3,14, the visitor encounters a Jærhøns rooster, two generation #28 CCP hens, along with eggs in an incubator. When the eggs hatch in the course of the exhibition, a new generation of the Cosmopolitan Chicken will come into being: Mechelse Jær – CCP 29.
Mechelse Jær – Defying monoculture
Central to the project is the understanding that every one of the world’s chicken species is descended from a single ancestor, the Red Jungleflow, a bird living at the foot of the Himalayas. Humans migrate in the hopes of finding food, shelter, and freedom from conflict, but also to find economic opportunities, and to escape from poverty, religious intolerance, and political repression. Over the course of thousands of years of migration, humans have taken chickens with them, breeding them in different regions around the world and creating multiple indigenous breeds with their unique characteristics. The evolution of the chicken is therefore also a story of the effects of human migration. While migration is inevitable and necessary part of the human condition, it affects local and global ecosystems across species as well.
However, these chicken breeds, crafted through continuous human selection, now risk becoming too isolated, and their gene pools too narrow to remain sustainable. Monoculture – a culture characterized by sameness – is a threat to the continuity of all life. In living organisms, such as chicken and human, inbreeding may lead to impaired ability to adapt to changing environments, as well as genetic diseases and fertility problems. Similar impacts might trouble closed cultures and communities, where lack of outside stimulation can stiffen societal structures and halt creativity – will life risk to stance without cultural exchange? Vanmechelen’s project challenges monoculture and presents diversity as the only viable option for development. At the same time, the journey towards diversity has its challenges – conflicts tend to be on the rise when cultures crash, and the unpredictability of the crossings might create ethical dilemmas. The exhibition mirrors our endless search for balance between exploration and rootedness, the local and the global.
Book of Genomes and the hybrid of art and science
Chickens and humans might have more similarities than differences, as humans and chicken DNA are 75% similar. At Kunsthall 3,14, the visitor can explore the Book of Genomes, which presents the thousand pages long DNA code of one of the Cosmopolitan Chickens. But despite the physical interconnectedness and the species’ history as man’s most valuable companion – even sacred in some cultures – the chicken has become one of the most grotesquely exploited animals in the world.
Vanmechelen’s profound fascination in the chicken and its genetic identity started already in his childhood, when he kept pet chickens in his garden. He recognizes the farming machinery’s effect on chickens as a prime example of humanity’s prioritizing its own needs at the expense of all other species. As such, the Cosmopolitan Chicken Project is not only an artistic theoretical statement but also a practical intervention in contemporary farming practices. Art and science merge in the project, and just like the chickens, Vanmechelen’s oeuvre is a hybrid.
Human–animal entanglements in art
Animals have been a motive and an inspiration in the history of art ever since cave paintings, and both dead and live animals have been used in the production of art. Bones have become sculptures, insects and blood are used to create colours, mammals’ hair become paint brushes, and eggs and many other animal products are utilized today to develop binders and paints.
Live animals emerged in contemporary art in modernism, and direct gene manipulation is not foreign for contemporary art, either. Although Vanmechelen’s work does include selective breeding, direct genetic interventions are not part of his artistic method. Once Vanmechelen adds a new breed to the CCP, he allows nature to run its course. The animals’ well-being is the number one priority for the artist. He only intervenes with an incubator to hatch the eggs. Here, the interconnectedness of nature, culture and science actualizes. Often, the project sparks ethical debates, and controversy might follow. Is the chicken the subject or the object? Who has agency in the project? Is it the human artist, the chickens, and the sometimes-unpredictable crossings, or might the power lie in the human-animal entanglements?
In an art gallery, animals might be an obvious attention-grabber and have always sparked controversy. At the same time, the unusual gallery context can create an excellent opportunity to open up conversations, challenge myths and disturb misconceptions that might otherwise go unnoticed in society. Paradoxically, the situation might both alienate and create closeness to explore the relationship between animals and human-animals.
The Cosmopolitan Chicken Project wishes to restore the lost dignity of humanity’s most stead-fast and varied co-species. Vanmechelen’s art resists the temptation to diminish the animal to a multipurpose beast that provides man everything he wants. The bird needs to regain its original power. The journey of the chicken concerns us all – a reflection on the richness that springs from difference and the ever-evolving nature.
Koen Vanmechelen (b. 1965) is an internationally renowned artist working across a multitude of disciplines. He is situated at the confluence of art, science, philosophy and community. Key themes are biocultural diversity, fertility and the perpetuum movement for balance. In 2010, he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Hasselt and was awarded with the Golden Nica Hybrid Art (Linz, 2013) and Global Artist's Award (Venice, 2013). Besides making regular appearances at the Venice Biennale, his work has been shown at a.o. the Uffizi Gallery (IT), V&A Museum (UK) and Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de La Habana (CU). Worldwide, over 90 solo exhibitions have taken place and his work has been included in over 250 group shows. Vanmechelen has also performed at the World Economic Forum (2008) and in various TED-conferences. Since 2017, he is based in Genk (BE) where he creates LABIOMISTA; a 24hectare park where among great architecture and natural landscape installations, artworks and animals of the most disparate species live together. LABIOMISTA is the embodiment of Vanmechelen's artistic and philosophical vision, created on the belief in art as a driver of mutual understanding and as a guide in the search for answers to the major challenges of the 21st century, the relationship between nature and culture and in particular the development of sustainable communities.
Curated by Malin Barth