buren - shoe/farm – a family business

In shoe/farm - a family business, “shoe shop” and “farm” merge into a fictional family business. Scenic scenes portray a real-life shoe farm, where shoes are grown, harvested, branded and sold. Potatoes are exchanged for Buffalo rolling over the counter. It will be buren's first group performance for the black box: as a team and family of four, they perform specific tasks but are simultaneously interchangeable within the production line. The performance is between musical theatre, visual performance and choreography: with instruments and props that are part of the scenography, they shape music, sound and rhythm from work-related actions and band work.

As daughters of a shoe shop and a farm, Melissa and Oshin question how family ties and lineage influence ideas about labour, class and money. What does it mean to be an heir in addition to being a “child of”? Homegrown and self-made? From a collection of clogs, glass boots and jeans shoes, they shine a light on fetishistic relationships to the shoe and ponder what it would be like to be in other people's shoes: from low-wage worker in the shoe factory to the have-it-all fashionista. In a playful and layered way, they manoeuvre from pre-industrial to late-capitalism.

TEAM / CREDITS

Concept by buren Performers: Oshin Albrecht, Melissa Mabesoone, Katja Dreyer, Léa Dubois Lighting design: Vera Martins Sound design and music in collaboration with Benne Dousselaere Outside eye: Charlotte Vanden Eynde Construction scenography: Sjoerd Van Leeuwen Instruments in collaboration with Gert Aertsen Production assistant: Katlijn Vanhulle Production: Caravan Production Coproductions: Kaaitheater, Arts Centre BUDA, STUK, C-takt, de Brakke Grond, KAAP, Theaterfestival Boulevard, Perpodium With the support of the Flemish Community and the Tax Shelter measure of the Belgian Federal Government through Cronos Invest

buren is a collective founded in 2012 by Oshin Albrecht and Melissa Mabesoone.

The name is derived from a term in Heidegger's “Building, living, thinking” in which “büren” coincides with “build” and “inhabit”. What does it mean to nest, to have a household? For Melissa and Oshin, it functions as both a noun and a verb: as an umbrella term for their practice and as a modus operandi. How their work relates to an environment (site-specific, black-box or white cube), both physical and substantive, is always active. Through performance, video, text, objects, photography, publication and installation, they navigate ideas about community, domesticity, gender roles, (art) history and neoliberal fantasies. These topics are approached with a sense of irony and humour and a forward-looking imagination.

buren focuses on the de- and reconstruction of image and language. They approach the scene as a critical playground, a surface on which they constantly replay. They install a sense of familiarity and gradually distort it. Their work has a strong visual character with a specific focus on the musicality of text and how sound and music function as a means of communication.

buren's crossover practice can be seen in visual arts and theatre-related contexts such as Playground (STUK / Museum M), Vooruit, Pukkelpop, de Brakke Grond, Netwerk Aalst, Galerie AmPolylog, Z33, Buda, Bâtard, Kaaitheater, Casco, Tatjana Pieters. buren did a postgraduate at HISK 2016-2017.

In 2020-2024, buren is supported by the European network apap - FEMINIST FUTURES, a project co-funded by the European Union's Creative Europe Programme through Arts Centre Buda.

From 2023, buren will be one of the householders of Kaaitheater, Brussels.

After an introduction to philosophy at Ghent University, Melissa studied Fine Arts at KASK, Ghent. Her work has been shown at Sale Docks, M HKA, Verbeke Foundation and published in nY magazine. She has performed for Dora Garcia, Assaf Gruber, Lies Pauwels & NTGent, Peter Aers (among others). In 2023, she is working on a fiction film and installation about ethical shrimp farming. Melissa is a core member of Engagement, a movement addressing sexual harassment, sexism and abuse of power in the arts.

Oshin graduated as a visual artist from Luca School of Arts, Ghent and did artistic research at a.pass in Brussels. She exhibited her work and performed at Z33, Ciap and NUPerformance Festival Tallinn, among others. In 2019, she was co-programmer for Jong Werk at Theater Aan Zee. With Ezra Veldhuis and Bosse Provoost, she co-created the performance SUN-SET. In 2023, she will work as scenographer for dancer/choreographer Ingrid Berger Myhre's Games Spectacle. And she teaches at LUCA Hogeschool voor de Kunsten in the Mixed Media department.