Seasonal Matters: Rural Relations by Seasonal Neighbours is a new book that examines contemporary rural challenges through relationships rather than oppositions. It asks what would happen if traditional relationships – between humans and non-humans, plants, the weather and the rhythm of the seasons – are being lost in the race for profit and for increasingly intensive methods of production? 

The book provides sixteen contributions in which the interdisciplinary collective Seasonal Neighbours attempts to observe, record and archive narratives for the existing, disappearing and newly emerging relationships in the countryside.

As a collage-style field-guide, Seasonal Matters Rural Relations addresses the role that artistic practices and fieldwork can play in the complexity of rural relations. The collective reflects on storytelling and the variety of themes from the evolution of metabolisms in horticulture, the changing rural landscape, stories of European labor migration to questions of robotisation and upscaling, domesticity, public space, new forms of citizenship, etc.

Seasonal Matters Rural Relations gathers different nuances of the agricultural realities experienced by the collective members in their neighbouring processes, working side by side with farmers, seasonal workers, plants and crops. These fieldwork experiences helped shape a variety of contributions moving from visual essays to graphic collages, poems, maps, short stories, picking songs and musical scores to intercultural recipes with wild plants.

With contributions by: Claire Chassot, Jonathan De Maeyer, Anastasia Eggers, Fernando Garcia-Dory (Inland), Ciel Grommen, Pia Jacques, Carolien Lubberhuizen, Ioana Lupascu, Sébastian Marot, Karolina Michalik, Yacinth Pos, Caroline Profanter, Maximiliaan Royakkers, Ines Marita Schaerer, Arnd Spahn, Mona Thijs and Ewoud Vermote.

Onomatopee, 304pp, 13cm x 19cm, illustrated paperback, 2024