Birch Bar

Every year, when the sap is starting to run out from the bitch trees, I know, the spring has finally arrived and nothing is gonna stop it now. It is a very happy moment of the year. Birch Bar was set-up to celebrate that moment. Collective 'Contemporary Wild' created an event were people could learn how to harvest the birch juice and offered them a range of delicious drinks and snacks to taste. In our menu one can find raw birch sap, several birch sap cocktails and vine as well as chicken pickled in birch sap and few desserts. See you next spring!

Siroop Rotterdam

Syrup Rotterdam was a year long investigation into the wild natural treasures hiding behind the concrete and the bricks of the industrial city of Rotterdam — in particular its neighbourhood Delfshaven. This project was a collaboration between the design collective Contemporary Wild and the social café Stroop Rotterdam.

Each month in 2015, a socially activating workshop was organised to gather plants and create a local, seasonal syrup during one afternoon. All participants of the workshop received a bottle of self-made syrup and the rest of the bottles were sold in the store of Stroop Rotterdam. The outcome was a series of 12 syrups that captured the complete rainbow of tastes in Rotterdam— an abstract portrait of a place, expressed through flavour.

Boerûh melk

Boerûh Melk is an exclusive product, super food made from the "holy grass" of the Philips Stadium field in Eindhoven. Over the time the football field grass has become an object of worship and superstition. A lot of expectations and emotions are related to those particular grass fields. It is holy and untouchable.

Collective 'Contemporary Wild' takes advantage of this taboo and upgrades the waste grass of football pitch into milk. Grass is not only a living carpet to play on but also an important source of nutrition.

Project created for exhibition FC DDW, curator Jules van den Langenberg; DDW 2015, Eindhoven, NL

Elm Collection

On the occasion of tenth anniversary of Thomas Eyck, curator Jules van den Langenberg has compiled an exhibition about Eyck's oeuvre and method of working. From the collection – usually shortened to 't.e.-collection' – ten series of objects were selected. These ten are illustrative of the various forms of co-operation that Thomas Eyck has developed with designers and artisanal firms. The curator subsequently invited ten other designers, artists and architects to study these objects and place them in a new context. The exhibition 10 Years of Thomas Eyck shows new projects and installations based on the objects from the t.e.-collection. This has resulted in a miscellaneous retrospective positioning Thomas Eyck and his collection in an experimental fashion.

Elm collection is 1/10th part of this project. More information will follow.

Photography by: Lonneke van der Palen

Nieuw Peil

As global warming brings the threat of rising tides closer, Contemporary Wild feels an urge to bring this subject into public discussion. There is a chance that in near future water gains back its importance in a global traffic network. The Amstel river in combination with great traffic infrastructure above it is very suitable context for this discussion.