buren - SPARE TIME WORK

Melissa Mabesoone and Oshin Albrecht, aka buren, prepare the performance SPARE TIME WORK which will premiere November 2021 during Playground festival. They are both maker and performer in this piece, which they see as a space, an installation where the visitor can take place in a different way than the regular theatre set-up. The scenography is an important part of the performance and reflects their visual background. Via text and play buren create a link with our current situation, our personal history and the relation to watching and experiencing, with a specific focus on the way we 'spend' time and our relation to work.

buren is a collective set upt by Oshin Albrecht and Melissa Mabesoone. Via performance, video, text, objects, photography and installation they navigate through ideas about community, domesticity, gender, (art) history and neoliberal fantasies. With a strong visual and musical drive buren approaches the scene as a critical playground, a surface for continuous (re)playing. They imagine humorous, fantastic and critical realities in relation to their surroundings, whether those are specific settings, a black box or a white cube. Their work is supported by and shown at Playground festival (STUK / Museum M), Vooruit, Kaaitheater, Pukkelpop, de Brakke Grond, Netwerk Aalst, Galerie AmPolylog, Z33, Buda, Bâtard, Casco Utrecht, Tatjana Pieters. In the period 2020-2024 buren is part of the European network Apap - Feminist Futures.

After an introduction in Philosophy at the University of Ghent, Melissa got her diploma Graphic Design at KASK Ghent. She worked for Kunstverein in Amsterdam and performed with/for David Freeman, Assaf Gruber, Dora Garcia, Peter Aers. In 2019-2020 she toured with Lies Pauwels' performance Anatomie van Pijn (NTGent).

Oshin graduated as visual artist from Luca School of Arts in Ghent and did artistic research at a.pass in Brussels. She has shown her work and performed at a.o. Z33, Ciap and NU Performance Festival Tallinn. In 2019 she was co-programmer Young Work at Theater Aan Zee. Together with Ezra Veldhuis and Bosse Provoost she created SUN-SET for Toneelhuis.