A few cows peacefully getting on with their lives at their own majestic pace within a giant frame into which the public is invited. The Belgians of Captain Boomer, masters of offbeat originality, invent a living painting in the middle of the city, upending our relationship with art, in a larger than life piece that disrupts reality and stops time. In this thought-provoking experience where the mind wanders and everything slows down, the boundaries are blurred and disappear. Is it fiction? A performance?
Both hyper-realistic and hyper-fantasy, with a soundtrack playing excerpts from speeches about art and beauty, performances and funny scenes, Pasture with Cows mixes levels of interpretation and feeling. This archetypal and classic scene, long since exhausted in pictorial depictions, questions our relationship with animals, the livestock industry, animal rights, and more. This new social space, where children pet the animals and adults face their state of mind, is an invitation for reflection, introspection, and debate. And of course, Captain Boomer’s team takes great care of these cows’ well-being, providing them with space, food, tranquillity, and the right environment.
BIOGRAPHY
Collectif Captain Boomer
The Flemish collective directed by Bart Van Peel, was founded in 2008 and is based in Antwerp, Belgium. It includes artists and scientists who create large-scale projects that explore the boundaries between fiction and reality in European urban public space. After London, Valencia and Ostend, the ultra-realistic sperm whale of Beached Wales was presented for the first time in France in Rennes (2016), then in Paris (2017). Skagt was presented in four countries, including London (Royal Observatory, GDIF Festival) and Paris for the mysterious tour of the Grand Palais (2018, Festival Paris Été). After A safe show, Pasture with Cows was developed in 2019 and has already been shown in Antwerp, London and Paris. The deliberately sensational, voluntarily provocative tricks and illusion of the collective’s installations experiment and cast doubt, each time with the same range of emotions, astonishment, laughter, sadness and awareness about the state of the planet.
DISTRIBUTION
Metteur en scène : Bart Van Peel
Chef de production : Joris Goorden
Acteurs : Pieter Piron, Stijn Vervoort, Lotte Schiltz, Beata Zaleszczyk, Joris, Goorden, Simon Van Buyten, Tim Van Noten
Concept : Bart Van Peel and Beata Zaleszczyk
Voix : Sébastien Gindre
