ZwalmBE
The municipality of Zwalm, in the south of East Flanders in Belgium, comprises 13 villages with a total population of around 8,000 inhabitants. Its name is derived from the river Zwalm (or Zwalmbeek), which meanders as one of the main watercourses through an area of hilly woodland landscapes. Along its overgrown riverbanks, watermills still operate to mill flour and next to a working floodgate and its adjacent saving pond, one may end up with a freshly brewed coffee at Klein Zwitserland.
This former floodgate keeper’s cottage welcomes nowadays everyone as a snug forest bar as well as the starting and end point for visitors of the yearly rural art festival route Kunst&Zwalm.
Kunst&Zwalm is organised since 1997 as a biennial by the local initiative BOEM vzw and countless enthusiastic local hands, 2025 edition invited the artist collective Kunstenplatform PLAN B as curatorial team, who in turn invited local and international collectives and artists to think and learn together around the theme of soil (grond).
Wapke Feenstra, invited to participate, assembled a small local Myvillages team to return over multiple months to Klein Zwitserland and to meander with and along the river, in order to catch a glimpse of what actually lies beneath our feet and around us here in Zwalm.
| Region | East Flanders |
|---|---|
| Population | 8134 |
| Common fruit, vegetables, animals | Corn and potato crops, sprouting waterbanks, common plantain, waterlouse |
| Tradition | Kunst&Zwalm festival |
| Scent | Damp grass in the shade, freshly turned earth on the fields |
| Distances from Zwalm | Distances |
| Coordinators | Wapke Feenstra |
In early March, Wapke Feenstra visited the area for the first time at the invitation of Kunstenplatform PLAN B curators of the Kunst&Zwalm festival. During the visit, the curators introduced and shared the festival’s artistic theme and manifesto, followed by a joint walk through the landscape.
The theme - grond (land, ground)
Kunstenplatform PLAN B clarifies the theme as:
We want to discuss the visible land on which we build, live, and grow crops. But also the invisible land: the "roots" we share, or don't share, a collective ground as a way of working together and living together. The stereotypical image of the rapidly evolving city is often contrasted with the stagnation of the village. With Kunst & Zwalm 2025, we want to show that the countryside, too, is the scene of a multitude of exciting issues and themes.
Through the spring and summer, during a series of walks and visits to Zwalm (on April 19, June 21, and July 3), the Myvillages team, consisting of Ida Bomm, Niel de Vries, Jaron Vandevelde and Wapke Feenstra, developed a mobile tattoo station - Tattoo Station Zwalm, as our contribution to Kunst&Zwalm 2025 art route.
Ida Bomm writes about this experience:
Through this process we learned and shared how to relate to the more-than-human life that exists in, around, and beneath the soil of Zwalm.
To let our senses tingle and our minds wander, we went on a first collective walk in the mid of April. Together with the curatorial team and the other participants, we set off on the Kunst&Zwalm route: through sprouting crops, along narrow, overgrown streams, past the flour-encrusted brick walls of the local watermill and the village pub.
To get to know the soil of Zwalm better, we went on guided walks with local experts Vincent Decroock and Evert Gossenaerts. We learned about local plant and animal life, and about the soil’s ongoing geological becoming. The glances of the inhabitants we caught were carefully documented in drawings, each carrying its own stories and anecdotes…
By discovering a millions-of-years-old fossilised gastropod, Zwalm’s geological history suddenly surfaced on a pedestrian sidewalk.
By tracing the tracks of invisible beavers, the hidden network of inhabitants revealed itself on every nibbled tree along the streams.
By learning that the grote weegbree (common plantain) is also called ‘white man’s footprint', our colonial pasts followed us along almost every step along the cornfields — and remained present afterwards.
Gritty walking paths, monocultural crops, dense shrubbery by the water — the stories about the soil of Zwalm shift wherever you stand and however you move. By making our tattoo station mobile, we allowed different stories of soil to be heard.
We decided to wriggle with our tattoo station between the banks of Zwalm, just like one of its inhabitants. We transformed our cargo bike into a beekforel (brown trout) by spending long summer days recycling plastic materials into countless fish scales. The plastic waste — collected by the volunteers of the non-profit organisation Dokano from the waterways of Ghent and kindly donated to us — travelled as a beekforel with us to a new local ecosystem. And our drawings became templates for a series of stick-on tattoos, which found their place on the skin of Kunst&Zwalm visitors during the three festival weekends in August and September, each accompanied by a story we had kept, or by new meanings that visitors continued to give them…
The seeds of the grote weegbree (common plantain) can be gathered in early spring. They have a harmonic, mushroom-like taste and are delicious on salads.
The branches of the rode kornoelje (common dogwood) are an excellent local material for basket-making, as the plant’s latex content makes them flexible.
Beavers can indeed be spotted in Zwalm, if you’re lucky.
Tattoo Station Zwalm at Kunst&Zwalm
The Kunst&Zwalm Festival took place over a series of weekends, starting in late August and continuing through September (August 30–31; September 6–7 and 13–14).
It was during this period that the art project truly came to life. The Myvillages team - Wapke Feenstra, Ida Bomm, Jaron Vandevelde, Niel de Vries - was present every weekend, always with at least three team members, applying around 800 temporary tattoos depicting the biodiversity of the Zwalm to visitors. During the final weekend, a few of our designs turned into even permanent tattoos.
Ida writes:
On the final festival weekend, visitors were invited to return. Over two days, they had the chance to let the Zwalm inhabitants they had carried on their skin over the past weeks stay with them permanently.
With the help of the Kunst&Zwalm volunteers, we set up a two-day pop-up tattoo studio at Klein Zwitserland. The place where visitors began and ended the art route with coffee and cake, where artists throughout the weekends had found shelter during unexpected rain showers and gathered for collective meals. Returning visitors were patiently tattooed by Oanell Muzellec.
Together with the curators, organisers, volunteers, and fellow artists, we celebrated the end of this year’s edition with home-baked pizza in the garden of Klein Zwitserland, accompanied by one or another spontaneous, joyful dance session.
A small bottle of Zwalm soil, gifted by Kunstenplatform PLAN B to each artist team, travelled to the Myvillages archive in Rotterdam, carrying with it all the human and more-than-human encounters of the summer.
| Region | East Flanders |
|---|---|
| Population | 8134 |
| Common fruit, vegetables, animals | Corn and potato crops, sprouting waterbanks, common plantain, waterlouse |
| Tradition | Kunst&Zwalm festival |
| Scent | Damp grass in the shade, freshly turned earth on the fields |
| Distances from Zwalm | Distances |
| Coordinators | Wapke Feenstra |