Antje Schiffers – Myvillages’ International Schnaps Bar

Good spirits are essential for everything people do in a community – and also for a biennale opening. With their International Schnaps Bar, the artist collective Myvillages (founded by Kathrin Böhm, Wapke Feenstra, and Antje Schiffers) takes these good spirits quite literally. Thanks to years of work in different rural contexts, they have collected homemade schnaps and liquors from many different hands and countries, distilled in communal distilleries or on small production sites. When farmers have a surplus of fruit that they can’t sell or consume fresh, distilling is a good option to make use of what they have. In regions where no fruit is available, distilling enthusiasts turn to herbs and roots. In Myvillages’ International Schnaps Bar, every spirit comes with a story. On the occasion of the biennale opening, the bar will be hosted and performed by Antje Schiffers.

Myvillages is an international artist initiative based in Rotterdam, founded by Wapke Feenstra, Kathrin Böhm, and Antje Schiffers. Since 2003 it has been pioneering a new, artist-driven way of producing contemporary art with rural communities worldwide. In collaborative, bottom-up projects, Myvillages challenges entrenched images and power structures in urban–rural cultural relations.

This event is part of the first day of the Biennale opening weekend.

Antje Schiffers is a Berlin-based visual artist with a focus on rural cultural production and experimental collaborative practices with artists and non-artists of all professions. She co-founded the international artist collective Myvillages. She uses artistic media as fluid tools for interaction and narration—for example, drawing and painting as means of barter, as props, and for stage-like installations. Her long-term projects include I like being a farmer and I would like to stay one (since 2000), with partners in HU, GB, ES, FR, RO, MK, CH, AT, NL, and ZA, and International Village Shop (since 2007), with partners in RU, GH, GB, CH, ES, NL, DE, RO, and CN. She has had exhibitions in institutions such as Hamburger Bahnhof and Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; Ludwig Museum, Budapest; Sprengel Museum, Hannover; Kunsthaus Graz; Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen; Moscow Biennale; Secession, Vienna; GfZK Leipzig; ZKM, Karlsruhe; CAAC, Sevilla; MUSAC, León; Whitechapel Gallery, London; and Skirball Cultural Center, Los Angeles.