De Hoop - A Nomadic Garden

For the third edition of Zomertank, Werktank invited Katinka de Jonge, Laurens Mariën, Zoë Brennan and Marie Malingreau to organize a project in Sint-Maartensdal (Leuven). This resulted in DE HOOP, a nomadic garden.

The project began with the concept of the “city festival” and grew into the creation of a nomadic community garden, investigating how a pile of seeds, sand, water and sun can transform into French fries with mayonnaise. These will eventually be presented and eaten at the ‘harvest festival’ in Sint-Maartensdal on the 21st of September.
With this proposal, the artists aim to unpack the production chain of a very regular dish. Everything in the production process is made by the artists themselves. From the potato and salt to the eggs, vinegar and the frying oil.
Instead of one piece of land, the artists divided the garden into fragments. This allows all participants to adopt and care for a temporary piece of garden, and thus all become involved in the chain and network: DE HOOP. All ingredients are grown in separate ‘modules’ that can live in people’s homes or at organizations. A public program of workshops and lectures will take place in which the garden will be used as a metaphor to think about ecology and living together, but also as a tool to shape a collective imagination.
In late August, the garden modules will be brought together creating a complete garden, which will be on display in Sint-Maartensdal as an art installation. DE HOOP fries will be baked and served at Sint-Maartensdal’s “Harvest Festival” on 21.09.2022 where, of course, all participants are welcome to join us in enjoying our coveted bowl of fries: the Sint-Maartensdal Speciál!

Read an article from Katinka on De Hoop here.
Listen to an interview with Laurens about the project here.

https://dehoop.hotglue.me

Katinka De Jonge
Laurens Mariën
Zoë Brennan
Marie Malingreau