Biography
In late 2012, Oshin Albrecht and Melissa Mabesoone founded the collective buren. Their work consists of performances, videos, texts, photographs and installations. They navigate between themes such as femininity, community, domesticity, sexuality, labour, pop music and neoliberal fantasies. They made their first film Parkways during the Bijlm-Air residency in Amsterdam, completed a postgraduate degree at HISK and published Confusion of Tongues by Posture Editions. In May 2019, a 3-day programme focusing on different aspects of their practice took place at Vooruit. Their work is shown in both visual arts and theatre contexts such as STUK, Vooruit, Pukkelpop, de Brakke Grond, Netwerk Aalst, Galery Am Polylog, Z33, Gouvernement, Buda, Beursschouwburg, Casco, Tatjana Pieters, Veem House for Performance and Theater aan Zee.
After an introduction to philosophy at Ghent University, Melissa Mabesoone studied visual arts at KASK in Ghent. She worked for Kunstverein Amsterdam and performed for Davis Freeman, Assaf Gruber and Dora Garcia and Peter Aers. In 2019 and 2020 she will perform in Anatomie van pijn by Lies Pauwels & NTGent.
Oshin Albrecht studied visual arts at Luca in Ghent and was a researcher at a.pass in Brussels. She has exhibited and/or performed her work in Z33, Scheldapen, Ciap, Viru Hotel, among others. In 2019 she was co-programmer for Jong Werk in Theater aan Zee and collaborated on SUN-SET, a performance by Ezra Veldhuis and Bosse Provoost in Toneelhuis.
In residentie Shoe/farm
01.09.2024 – 01.09.2024
After the stage performance SPARE TIME WORK (2021), buren continues its investigation of social roles and power relations in shoe/farm. This time, the duo starts from the places where they grew up: a farm in Zeeuws-Vlaanderen and a shoe shop along the Belgian coast.
They invert the dance floor of SPARE TIME WORK: from the grey floor that depicted the environment of school, office, golf course and nursery to a sand-coloured ground from which semi-industrialised agricultural scenes and scenes around dinnertime for breadwinners unfold. They engage with customs, habits and specific sayings associated with farm life and shoe sales: Life’s hard on the farm and Customer is king!
With a nod to the typical West Flemish work ethic of ‘Doe mo deure’ and ‘Ni neffest je schoen loopn’, they put on the shoes of their ancestors, drawing on their own experiences and imagination as ‘daughters of’. Their personal experience is linked to broader social issues around production processes, working conditions and consumerism, among others. The worlds of the ‘shoe’ and the ‘farm’ merge. Together with Benne Dousselaere (sound) and Vera Martins (light), they ‘shoe farm’ further and explore what position the audience can take within this imagination. They interpret different functions, being at the head of the business and at the bottom or beside: from shoemaker, farmer and servant to servant and consumer, from family business to chain.
Shoe/farm is a work that manifests itself in different phases and forms. The performance 7 Means Dinner for a Breadwinner, shown in early September 2022 at the Lustwarande in Tilburg, was a first step. In it, the focus was more on farm life. From August 2023, buren started creating shoe/farm, bringing the duo’s different worlds together. During Playground (Leuven) in November 2023, buren presented a performance where the audience takes place in and around the scenography, and within which different musical scenes unfold.