The Unthinkable Experiment gives young people a chance to think outside the box, while residing in the fertile frontier between wilderness and civilisation. Inspired by the environment of LABIOMISTA. Sheltered by the freedom of the arts. Empowered by the encounter with others. 

In the lockdown year 2020, and in honor of the 20th anniversary of the artist’s Cosmopolitan Chicken Project (CCP), we invite 1000 people from around the world to  become a co-writer in a handwritten edition of the Book of Genomes. Made possible only by the contributions of many. Many people, many manuscripts, many hours. Love letters invites reflection on the cryptic code of DNA which develops in all its facets into the complexity of life.

Art, Nature and Human Rights come together for a better way forward. Through a specially designed face mask with a highly charged symbolism, artist Koen Vanmechelen, ecologist Ignace Schops and Human Rights expert Manfred Nowak invite you to become pioneers of a post-corona recovery and healing process that focuses on the well-being of the other(s), both human and non-human animals, nature and culture.

The Human Rights Pavilion is an evolving artwork by renowned Belgium artist Koen Vanmechelen, initiated in the context of the 58th Biennial of Venice, May you live in Interesting Times, in collaboration with Global Campus of Human Rights, Fondazione Berengo and the MOUTH Foundation.

The Planetary Community Chicken project focuses on bringing new, healthier chickens to the world’s communities. It emphasises the importance of diversity and local, small-scale community farming for long-term sustainability.

The art-science installation “Incubated Worlds” at the Addis Ababa campus of the International Livestock Research Institute is a unique combination of art and science that aims to improve nutrition and incomes in East Africa with disease-resistant, climate-resilient poultry. The facility opened on April 26, 2018.

Perfect Strangers is a project that brings together human and chicken in a search for identity, migration, diversity and the connection between them. Initiated as part of Vanmechelen's Perfect Strangers installation at Ecovention Europe, Het Domein, Sittard (NL) in October 2017, the project continued far outside of the walls of the musuem, and found new nests in different local communities.

From the beginning Koen Vanmechelen has partnered with scientists to understand the impact of diversity, immunity and fertility.  MOUTH ensures biodata of Koen's work is collected and stored for future fundamental biological and medical research.

SOTWA – meaning umbilical cord – was developed in 2014. With SOTWA, Koen Vanmechelen explores the benefit of crossbreeding between cattle stock in Africa, where climate change increasingly threatens the tribe’s traditional cattle herding. Anno 2018 the project is extended to Zimbabwe (in collaboration with the Future of Hope) and Ethiopia (in collaboration with ILRI).

LUCY - PEEL PETUUM MOBILE is a collaboration between Koen Vanmechelen and Heyde Hoeve, a collaboration of four pig farmers in Holland that differentiate through their focus on transparency and sustainability in food production. With LUCY, a bio-diverse pig is created. A new pig that tells the story of the search for a better, more sustainable economic system.

In 2017 artist Koen Vanmechelen created a café as a continuously evolving living art work on the same location, where in January 2016 the first chicken from the Planetary Community Chicken project saw the light of day. As a visitor, you literally become a part of the artwork through the “art of food/food of art concept”. In 2019 Vanmechelen takes the cosmocafe concept and the value of authentic conversation around the world, in a moving Pavilion of Human Rights

In the Mushroom, Egg, Chicken, Camelid project, Koen Vanmechelen explores the boundaries dividing different species and whether substances from one organism can migrate to the organism of another species. 
The project aims to show that in some way we are all related and interconnected, part of the same universe. Man is bioculturally connected with all other species, some of which can be of vital importance for our survival. The art is finding the appropriate intermediary agents that form the bridge between the species; here chickens and mushrooms.