Myvillages

Photo: Stuart Whipps, courtesy of Eastside Projects Photo: Stuart Whipps, courtesy of Eastside Projects Photo: Stuart Whipps, courtesy of Eastside Projects Myvillages, International Village Shop, 2007– Myvillages, International Village Shop, 2007– Myvillages, International Village Shop, 2007– Myvillages, International Village Shop, 2007– Myvillages, International Village Shop, 2007– Myvillages, International Village Shop, 2007– Myvillages, International Village Shop, 2007– Myvillages, International Village Shop, 2007–

International Village Shop

Various locations, 2007–ongoing

International Village Shop is a shop with many shops where goods from rural communities are made and traded. Some shops are temporary, others permanent. They take on the shape of market stalls, honesty boxes, trading tables, cupboards and fold-out boxes. Most shops can be found in villages, but versions of it also open in urban art spaces.
The goods in the shop are a mix of existing local products alongside ‘New Village Goods’ which have been made especially for the International Village Shop and travel between places. These travelling products range from Horsemilk Soap (Friesland/NL) to Frogbutterspoons (Upper Frankonia, Ger), Caravan Pots (Ballykinlar, Northern Ireland) to Ittinger Ei (Kartause Ittingen, CH) and Ohner Linen (Ohne, Ger).

For Trade Show all ‘New Village Goods’ from recent years’ collaborations will be on offer together for the first time and sold  from a new bespoke walk-in market stall at Eastside Projects. A series of ‘New Village Goods’ films document the origin and group development of products from Switzerland, the UK, Germany and Friesland.

The International Village Shop has been set up as a joint initiative by Myvillages, public works and Grizedale Arts in 2007. The website went online in 2010 to collate the different ‘counters’ of the shop and to give insight into making and distribution of local goods. The shop is now run by Myvillages.

Related Events

Weblink

www.myvillages.org
www.internationalvillageshop.net

About myvillages

Myvillages was founded by artists Kathrin Böhm (Germany/UK), Wapke Feenstra (Netherlands) and Antje Schiffers (Germany) in 2003. The group’s interest is the rural as a space for and of cultural production. The collective aims of Myvillages are informed by the contextual nature of our individual practices and the autobiographical fact that all founding members come from small villages.

Myvillages sits within a tradition of rural art communities, but instead of occupying a ‘Künstlerdorf’ (artists’ village), the group represents a dispersed cultural space for production and dissemination, with its projects spanning across a vast trans-local network of rural places, communities and initiatives. Myvillages’ activities range from long term collaborative research projects to small scale informal presentations, from work in private spaces to public conferences, from exhibitions to publications and from personal questions to public debate.

Current and recent projects include the three-year long International Village Show with the Gallery for Contemporary Art Leipzig, Eco Nomadic School, Round 02, Made in Zwizzchi, Archstoyanie Festival and 5th Moscow Biennale, Good News From Nowhere at the Architecture Foundation, London and Vorratskammer (Pantry) for Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin.