A documentary by Lisah Hannik and Iris Kruip
From Grain to Bread was created as part of the course Material Culture, taught by Liedeke Plate in the BA Arts & Culture Studies at Radboud University.
Artist Statement
Our documentary explores how the transformation of grain into bread reflects broader changes in Dutch culture and community. Bread has long connected people to the land and to each other. While the basic process of turning grain into bread has remained materially similar for thousands of years, the context in which this transformation takes place has shifted from local windmills and communal production to industrialized, outsourced systems that often obscure their material and social origins.
To understand what this shift means, we focused on the Molen van Buursink in Markelo, a functioning 19th-century windmill that once formed the center of local grain processing and still operates today as a heritage monument. By visually following the grain’s transformation, from seed to flour to bread, we sought to capture how material processes shape, and are shaped by, human life. Filming at the mill allowed us to approach material
culture through sensory ethnography (Pink 2010). We were listening to the creaking wood, watching how the mill was operated, and observing how visitors can engage with this historical site.
The project draws on Arjun Appadurai’s and Igor Kopytoff’s idea of the social life and cultural biography of things (1986), Tim Ingold’s notion of making as correspondence between humans and materials (2013), and Jane Bennett’s understanding of vibrant matter (2010). Together, these frameworks guided our exploration of how bread and grain possess their own forms of agency and meaning within human and ecological systems.
Ultimately, our documentary argues that mills like Molen van Buursink are more than relics of the past. They are living mediators between people, materials, and landscape. By revisiting the material life of grain, we invite viewers to reflect on how re-engaging with local practices might restore a sense of connection between food, community, and environment.
Works Cited
Appadurai, Arjun, editor. The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. 1st ed., Cambridge University Press, 1986. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511819582.
Bennett, Jane. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. With Project Muse, Duke University Press, 2010.
Ingold, Tim. Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2013, https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203559055.
Kopytoff Igor. The cultural biography of things: commoditization as process. In: Appadurai A, ed. The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. Cambridge University Press; 1986, pp. 64-92.
Pink, Sarah. Doing Sensory Ethnography. SAGE, 2013.
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