In the Voorstraat 183 has been recently established Recycle X, a project of The Patchingzone and NoordKaap, initiative that was launched in January. An international team of five artists / designers lived and worked for seven months in the street and invites residents, shop owners and visitors for a series of workshops and do-it-yourself design processes and experience. The first major project i.s.m. realized at Voorstraat 123 was the exhibition "City Parasite" with Mexican guest Gilberto Esparza. The team organized the acclaimed workshop "Talking with Plants" and with Gilberto they made a new installation 'Plantas Parlantes'. During the exhibition and the workshop was located a connection between man and nature, technology and art. Another project of Recycle X was recently developed for the Urban Explorers Festival: an interactive expedition fictional and non-fictional stories, secrets, gossip and sounds of the street for their collection. Together with local residents and businesses was a patchwork made space-filling bearing walls echoed the collected stories and secrets.
Recycle X remains active until mid-August in the street and will have a number of workshops for neighborhood organizing. Together with NoordKaap in a final project organized by Kitchen Budapest from Hungary.

Our mouse died today. After four months of company and escape, some night walks and a good job cleaning the left overs of our food on the floor he decide to leave the life. We thank him for not making us to catch him, but it is a pity because we had some collaboration plans with him on alternative energy.

Have a good trip Speedy!!

Recycle X is looking for volunteers willing to work on handmade textile art helping us for the URBAN EXPLORERS FESTIVAL. Whether you want to give a few hours or every waking minute we want to hear from you. Both women and men are very welcome!! This volunteering opportunity would be most suited to people interested in handicrafts, the arts and the urban environment and their application in a socially engaged setting, in connection with electronics and embroidery. We are looking for anyone who can give their time to support a project that explores issues of memory, creativity, community and people's responses to their own environment and history. We offer you free tickets for the festival in exchange. More information recyclex.project@gmail.com. You can come by our home Voorstraat 183 and also get info at Intermezzo Voorstraat 182.

Today we recieved some visitors in our exhibition: three joung men interested on the instalation as an instrument; a couple of patrons of the arts, close to Verbeke; and a new friend, a female duck interested on our garden.

The participants can communicate with their own plants. They brought specially plants from home for the workshop. By touching them and placing their hands in a water recipient they close the circuit of energy with their own bodies. This is a way of visualizing the energy that exits in the soil of plants, produced both from roots activity and bacterias activity that lives in the soil. This is a poetic and metaphoric way of communicating with plants, a trial of placing at the same level humans and Nature.

How is our relation with Nature: vertical, horizontal? How far are we today from Nature connections? Can we use technology to create an horizontal relation with Nature? Do we have alternative sources of energy that might change our attitude of exploitation of the planet where we live?

We used the result of the workshop for the exhibition, placing the table at the middle of the exhibiting space with plants and tools used.