Grazing Choreographies/Graaschoreografieën – an exciting ongoing project

In Grazing Choreographies, Esther and Ivar draw the grazing patterns of cows.

 

This page is the umbrella page for all links to versions of the Grazing Choreographies project and links to related articles, presentations and more.

Artistic Motivation

Our work focuses on movement and landscape and how mobility shapes the landscape. Just over twenty years ago, this began with innovative artistic experiments with location technology (particularly GPS) as a means of recording movement. This often resulted in digital prints or animations of traveled routes. We saw this as a ‘photography of movement’. Within this experimental practice, we have looked for opportunities to use technology as a tool to provide a representation of the landscape as it emerges from movement. Our most recent move has been to create drawings that, while stemming entirely from those experiments with technology, are completely free of the technology itself in their execution.
With Grazing Choreographies, we now draw directly, trusting our human powers of observation, the movements we would have previously captured with GPS.

Grazing Choreographies/Graaschoreografieën

Grazing Choreographies Switzerland/The Netherlands

Our journey into drawing Grazing Chroeographies started in 2019, experimenting to find the right materials that could express time and movement within a still picture. Then we drew our first series of Grazing Choreographies in Tschlin, in the alps of Switzerland and a second series in Groningen, The Netherlands. The moutains versus the flatlands.
We published these two series, consisting of 48 drawings, including our diary, in a beautiful book designed by Karen Polder, with the title – inevitable – Grazing Choreographies.


Link to the web page

Grazing Choreographies IJsselstein, The Netherlands

In the midst of the Nitrogin crisis, when farmers took to The Hague to protest, we were asked by Museum IJsselstein to draw the grazing patterns of cows from that area. Some farmers were very reluctant to cooperate (since we wanted them to know that we were drawing their cows), but we found a biological dairy farmer who embraced our presence.

 

Link to the web page of the exhibition
Link to the article we got published about our stance concerning dairy, cows, drawing and the environment.
Grazing Choreographies/Graaschoreografieën

Grazing Choreographies Diepenheim, The Netherlands

During our residency at Drawing Centre Diepenheim in 2024, we stepped it up a notch, by moving to a considerably larger format – 160×125 cm. We drew at five different farms, four drawings at each farm. We also added stopmotions of the drawing process and short audio podcasts to each drawing.

 

Link to the web page of the project
Graaschoreografieën Markelo Heilersig Diepenheim

Grazing Choreographies Oerol, Terschelling, The Netherlands

In 2025 we will go even further in size, 450 x 125 cm. This we will be doing at the famous theatre, music and art festival Oerol on the Island of Terschelling.
As a performance we will be drawing 1,5 hour a day, adding grazing patterns tot the same drawing each day. The drawing will be outside for ten days and get battered by the weather. 
This version of the Grazing Choreograpies is called Koeklok (Cow Clock), named after an innovative data/drawing device from the early 1970’s with which researchers from the now called Wageningen University, studied grazing behaviour of cows on Terschelling.

 

Link to the web page of the project
Graaschoreografieën Grazing Choreographies at Oerol 2025

Press

pers – Mister Motley

Artikel Linda Keja in Mr. Motley over Berichten uit het Platte vlak in Kunstenlab

Linde Keja over onze expositie in Kunstenlab

pers – Nieuwe Oogst

Graaschoreografieën in Nieuwe Oogst

Pieter Stokkermans over grazen als kunst.

pers – Mister Motley

Artikel Linda Keja in Mr. Motley over Berichten uit het Platte vlak in Kunstenlab

Noa Zuidervaart bezoekt onze studio in Drawing Centre Diepenheim

pers

Jegens en Tevens over het boek Graaschoreografieën. 

Museumtijdschrift

Mondriaanfonds over Graaschoreografieën Diepenheim

Esther Polak in NRC

pers Dagblad van het Noorden

Artikel Linda Keja in Mr. Motley over Berichten uit het Platte vlak in Kunstenlab

Esther Polak spreekt tijdenshet debat Kunst en Design in de wereld van de Verenigde naties over PolakVanBekkums projecten waar koeien participanten zijn en hoe anders zij in het weiland zouden staan als zij niet autonoom zouden werken, maar in opdracht van de doelen van de Verenigde Naties.

Presentation CBK and VN

Artikel Linda Keja in Mr. Motley over Berichten uit het Platte vlak in Kunstenlab

Esther Polak spreekt tijdenshet debat Kunst en Design in de wereld van de Verenigde naties over PolakVanBekkums projecten waar koeien participanten zijn en hoe anders zij in het weiland zouden staan als zij niet autonoom zouden werken, maar in opdracht van de doelen van de Verenigde Naties.

Credits

Team Drawing Centre Diepenheim, boeren Meutstege, Heilersig, Wissink, Heutinck and Ten Heggeler.

Financiele ondersteuning

Mondrian Fund Recidency

Referenties:
Grazing Choreographies Diepenheim Blog
Grazing Choreographies the book
Tidings from the Two-dimensional; exhibition