MADAM
THE WORLD UPSIDE DOWN

The hinged stilt under the most commonly used agricultural vehicle in the Kempen region is called 'the madam' there. It serves to set the cart horizontally when harnessing the horse.
The madam also plays an important role in using the cart as an instrument of punishment in charivaris. These are more or less violent punishments in which people take the law into their own hands. To mark disruption of normal, social order, the cart is locked wrong-footed by means of the madam, who then points upwards and is placed under one of the girders of the loading bay. The cart can then no longer move. Only with combined strength it can be 'untied' again. The element of the world topsy turvy is reflected in the expression to make a cart 'reformed' or 'geus'. In the predominantly Catholic Kempen, Protestants were considered ultimate outsiders.
The word MADAM is a palindrome, which itself refers to inversion: it reads the same backwards as forwards. In this collection, the madam is considered iconic for the old Kempen region. It embodies both the positive front and the negative back sides of culture.