Changing Landscapes

Stills from an Unfinished Film

Jonathan De Maeyer and Maximiliaan Royakkers 

Using a 24 km hiking loop as their guideline, Maximiliaan Royakkers and Jonathan De Maeyer revisit the rural town of Kortenaken and the area around the apple and pear orchards where Jonathan conducted fieldwork in 2021. As rural flâneurs, they capture the landscape in a subdued photographic style and collect descriptions of the area through casual conversations with local residents, the direct neighbours of the orchards and farms. Brimming with commonplace opinions and personal anecdotes, these short testimonies inspired the artists to compose a series of visual short stories, each consisting of one still image. The result is a conspicuous unwinding of the predispositions as to how we perceive rural landscapes around us.

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Series of 14 'stills with subtitles', published in 'Seasonal Matters Rural Relations', 2024 Onomatopee