The goal of the CULTIVATION Festival was to present and analyse short films posted on YouTube that depict daily agricultural work. Shot by young farmers and complete with a soundtrack, the films, which usually last several minutes, show agriculture as a source of pride and satisfaction. The festival and competition screenings were organised in collaboration with a group of filmmakers, who also visited the festival, while researchers of the countryside, specialists in agriculture, ethnographers, sociologists and publicists were approached to analyse and comment on the phenomenon.

The project sought to reflect on the phenomena and problems of the modern-day countryside, such as socio-economic issues, mechanisation and industrialisation of agriculture, food production methods and ecology. Thus, the films presented at the festival became both an aesthetic and a research material – somewhat of a documentary of an immense and often overlooked social change that occurred in the countryside on the tide of modernisation in the 1970s and Poland’s accession to the EU. The project also aimed to critique stereotypical representations of the Polish countryside, which relatively seldom go beyond projections and schemes situated in a dialectical relation between idyll and decay. It was also an attempt to enquire about the significance of such kind of creative practice for local and online communities.

Curator: Aneta Rostkowska

A prize for the best migrant workers’ employer in the agricultural sector on Jersey is created in collaboration with the workers. The strategy and criteria for the prize will be developed through a series of discussions with the primarily Polish manual labourers exploring their labour conditions, experiences and expectations. During each session the workers will make clay potatoes relying on their tactile memory.

Jersey Royals are Jersey’s biggest produce export, accounting for around 70% of agricultural turnover and every potato industry worker in Jersey handles tonnes of potatoes every season; planting, harvesting, sorting and packing. The clay potatoes and the workers’ stories will be presented and distributed to the public using custom made honesty boxes and a video will be produced showing the process. One of the clay models made during the discussions voted as the ideal potato will be cast in bronze and incorporated into the trophy given as the prize to the best employer.

Commissioned by Morning Boat and Jersey Art House.

The title of the project refers to the Aliens Restriction Act enacted in Jersey in 1920 imposing strict conditions on all foreign nationals living in or visiting the island, including local women married to foreign nationals and anyone of foreign parentage. Alien cards were issued up until the 1960s, the majority of them to French agricultural workers.

Jersey's most popular agricultural crop is not endemic to the island: potatoes were first brought to Europe in the 16th century but didn't gain wider popularity until the late 18th century. They only started to be cultivated in Jersey in the 19th century, yet the Royal Jersey is the only potato that enjoys an EU Protected Designation of Origin. The title of the project is a provocation designed to reflect on ideas and issues of migration of both plants and people; and how people and plants can become local or remain alien, depending on political or economic interests at play.