I offer farmers a barter transaction: a painting of their farm for a film in which they, the farmers, present their business and their work. My aunt had such a painting of her parents’ farm, done in 1947, at a time when artists made few sales and farmers were popular exchange partners.
I like being a farmer and I would like to stay one was begun in 2000, first in my hometown, Heiligendorf, and its surroundings. 2007-2015, I have been working on this project in cooperation with Thomas Sprenger.
While I stand with my easel on the farm, like a plein air painter of the 19th century, the farmers film themselves and comment on their film. We generally need one week for this. We edit the films along the farmers´scripts.
The paintings remain at the farmsteads. Our archive contains 35 films about agriculture (in 2018), from Macedonia, Romania and Switzerland, from Austria, England and Wales, from the Netherlands, Germany, Spain and South Africa. The most recent film comes from the village Leuenberg in Brandenburg, Germany.
“I like being a farmer, and I would like to stay one” is the final sentence in the first film in our archive. Many farmers could have said the same.