Last year, Swiss-Italian and multidisciplinary artist Massimo Furlan created an in-situ railway performance on a local train with 120 musicians, called Nocturne. Now he’s back in Rennes for a new poetic and idiosyncratic adventure in public space. In Blue Tired Heroes, fifteen “senior citizen supermen” walk the streets to create a series of burlesque, yet subtle, tableaux, providing physical evidence that this eternally young superhero has actually aged, with residents who become “performers”.

Superman was born in 1933. Since then, Clark Kent has remained trapped in an eternal “superhero” youth, enjoying decade after decade of glory. But what if he finally accepted his real age? Massimo Furlan answers this question by releasing a strange infantry of around fifteen elderly men into the city to perform in public space, armed only with blue pyjamas and red pants, socks and a cape.

Their elderly bodies and wrinkled faces rattle our imaginations, providing amusing proof of the passage of time. These “blue tired heroes” are played by fifteen or so volunteer residents, who provide a humorous and self-depreciating portrayal of their age and image, a far cry from the muscular stereotypes we are used to. They will form a series of strange tableaux vivants (living pictures) across a set itinerary.

Blue Tired Heroes follows on from a series of experimental works in public space around the figure of Superman (Superman Cosmic Green, Love Story Superman), questioning the notion of a hero figure and the fantasy of superhumans in the popular imagination and replacing it with a profoundly human portrayal of the passing of time. This funny, intense, tender and visually refined piece is an extraordinary portrayal of ordinary men, speaking volumes about how capable “superheroes” really are of saving the world (or America). This is an amusing, laugh-out-loud and burlesque vision, and poetic and collective use of public space.