Vanmechelen often collaborates with scientists and experts from different disciplines, such as Jean-Jacques Cassiman, Rik Pinxten and Marleen Temmerman.

These have, over the years, become important symbols to Vanmechelen, allowing the artist to interconnect scientific, philosophical, and ethical issues, and to frame the subject of debates and lectures.

He is a self-taught artist who studied hotel management in Antwerp and worked several years as a cook and pastry chef in Belgian top restaurants.

Vanmechelen's interest in chickens and birds started at an early age, due to the trips he made with his uncle Louis Gonnissen, a Belgian ornithologist and television personality.

During the late nineties, Vanmechelen launched his Cosmopolitan Chicken Project (CCP), which occupies a unique place in art history.

The breeding of a perfectly “cosmopolitan” chicken, carrying the genetic material of all possible races, is a metaphor for multicultural human society.

According to Vanmechelen, humanity will only be able to thrive and stay “healthy” in a situation of maximized diversity, a notion reflected by the results of the repeated crossbreeding of races which had previously only been inbred: the offspring of the CCP have longer lifespans and higher fertility rates than the average domesticated chicken, as well as a more effective immune system, making them less liable to be stricken by disease.

In collaboration with esteemed Belgian human geneticist Jean-Jacques Cassiman, Vanmechelen researches the genetic make-up of the chicken races participating in the CCP.

[17] It was an offshoot of parent project Coming World Remember Me (CWRM), a collaboration between Vanmechelen and Jan Moeyaert.

The project was accompanied by a complementary charitative initiative, encouraging people to donate 1 euro to SOS Children’s Villages.

[20] In September of this year, an international and interdisciplinary team of thinkers traveled to Arusha, Tanzania to set up the second arena and to be immersed in the culture of the native Maasai.