buren
wpZimmer resident in 2019
At the end of 2012 Oshin Albrecht (°1986) and Melissa Mabesoone (°1988) founded the collective ‘buren’. The term ‘buren’ was found in Heidegger’s ‘Building, Dwelling, Thinking’ in which ‘buren’ coincides with building and living. For them, buren functions as a noun and as a verb. As an umbrella term for practice and as a way of working together. The way our work relates to an environment, physically and content-wise. Something that is open for change and transformation. buren is also a third person, the one we deal with and relate to. A surrounding, the thing we can escape into or cannot escape from, an engagement we continue to make. In 2018 ‘buren’ celebrated its 5-year anniversary with everyone we every worked with.
Their work consists of performances, videos, texts, photos and installations. They navigate through themes as femininity, community, domesticity, sexuality, labour, popmusic and neoliberal fantasies. These subjects are approached with a sense of irony and humor as well as a future-oriented imagination. Central is the de/re-construction of image and language. They play with different meanings of words, gestures and things, creating objects to be handled as props or presented as art- objects.
‘Blue Skies Forever‘ is a performance that plays with the frontal gaze of the conventional theatre set up, female representations and media references. Together with Peter Aers the duo developed a salon ‘To Care as Caress‘ at Vrijstaat O. With Frank&Robbert/Robbert&Frank they created the exhibition ‘The Pursuit of the Gentlemen’s Gentlemen‘ at Croxhapox. April 2017 their book ‘Confusion of Tongues‘ was published by Posture Editions in collaboration Koen Brams. At the end of 2017 they became HISK laureates.
projects
Spare Time
Spare Time is a constructed, videogame-like park with an endless set of possibilities. The set makes one think of Minecraft: an ultimate space where everything seems possible in the infinity of virtual reality. Flat characters enter the set in the shape of humans and chairs. They ‘neighour’: they walk and act routinely and seem to need each other. When the scenography or terrain changes, their limits shift. What generates freedom for one, forms an obstacle for the other. Spare Time questions our use of leisure time: are we as free as we think? When we dispose of an endless set of possibilities, do we feel liberated, or oppressed?
Dorothy and Officer are recuperated and appropriated figures from the visual arts, mainstream media and pop culture. They appear in Pipilotti Rist’s Ever is over all, Beyonce’s Hold Up, The Wizard of Oz,… buren wants to investigate what these figures can mean in Spare Time and what their role could be in the theatre space.
credits
Concept & performance: Melissa Mabesoone and Oshin Albrecht
Music developed in collaboration with Ferre Marnjef
With the support of the Flemish Government, Cultuurcentrum Scharpoord, HISK
Residencies: Vooruit, KAAP, Netwerk Aalst, wpZimmer
Blue Skies Forever
In 2016 Beyoncé releases her video Hold Up, which seems to show similarities with the video work Ever is Over All by Pipilotti Rist from 1997. Fascinated by the different representations of women in both videos, buren started working with two figures from Ever is Over All: Dorothy, based on Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz and Officer, a female police officer.
In a dreamy, associative performance buren seeks how to imagine, portray, disembody and connect these figures. With a sense of abstraction and humour they dress up like them while transforming again and again.
In 2012 Oshin Albrecht and Melissa Mabesoone founded the collective ‘buren’. Their artistic practice consists of performances, videos, installations, prints, objects and films and deals with subjects as the feminine, the common, living, sexuality, pop music and neoliberal phantasies.
credits
Concept & performance: buren (Melissa Mabesoon & Oshin Albrecht)
Outside eye: Charlotte Vanden Eynde
Voice coach: Jakob Ampe
Music and sound: Benjamin Dousselaere & Ferre Marnef
Decor: buren & Dominiek Colpaert
Light: Frouke Van Gheluwe
With the support of de Vlaamse Gemeenschap, STUK, Vooruit, Gouvernement, De Brakke Grond, wpZimmer & CC Scharpoord
