buren - shoe/farm: a family business

With plenty of humour, buren use personal stories to cast a critical light on consumerism and working conditions

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"What we used to eat, we now put on your feet!"

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In shoe/farm - a family business ‘shoe shop’ and ‘farm’ merge into a fictional family business. Picturesque scenes portray a farm where shoes are grown, harvested, branded, and sold. As daughters of a shoe shop and a farm, Oshin Albrecht and Melissa Mabesoone question how family ties and background influence ideas about labour, class and family. What does it mean to be an heir in addition to being a ‘child of’? Homegrown and self-made?

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In buren’s first group performance for the black box, they perform specific tasks as a team and family of four. From a collection of clogs, glass boots, and denim shoes, they shine a light on fetishistic relationships to the shoe and contemplate what it would be like to stand in someone else's shoes. From the low-wage worker in the shoe factory to the have-it-all fashionista. In a playful and layered way, they manoeuvre from a pre-industrial era to late capitalism.

The performance is situated between music theatre, visual performance, and choreography; with instruments and props that are part of the scenography, they shape music, sound, and rhythm out of work-related actions and assembly-line work.