In the video “Forest on Location”, the audience descents into a replica of the last remains of primeval forest Bialowieza (at the outer border of the EU, between Poland and Belarus). In the film the avatar of the Iranian opera singer Shahram Yazdani sings his Persian interpretation of Nature Boy, the popular hit made famous by Nat King Cole. Nature Boy was composed in 1948 by Eden Ahbez, a proto-hippie who lived barefoot under the Hollywood Sign in Los Angeles, though its melody was claimed by Herman Yablokoff, a Jewish Broadway composer from New York who grew up in the region of Bialowieza forest. In Yazdani’s version, a wise tree talks to the lost boy, as an antithesis to the often imperialist relationship with nature in Western culture.
Biography
The artist duo Persijn Broersen & Margit Lukács live and work in Amsterdam. They work in a wide variety of media—most notably video, animation and graphics—producing a myriad of works that reflect on the ornamental characteristics of today’s society. The work of Broersen and Lukács is characterized by a quest for the sources of contemporary visual culture. With video pieces that incorporate (filmed) footage, digital animation and images appropriated from the media, they demonstrate how reality, (mass) media and fiction are strongly intertwined in contemporary society.
Margit Lukács (1973, Amsterdam) & Persijn Broersen (1974, Delft) studied at the Sandberg Institute and the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam.
Their films, installations and graphic work have been shown internationally, a.o. they represented the Netherlands at the Gwangju Biennale with their film I Wan’na Be Like You and earlier Lukács & Broersen presented I Wan’na Be Like You at Grote Kerk Alkmaar, NL (2024) and at AKINCI Amsterdam.
Further, their work was on show at Stiftung Kunst(Zeug)Haus, Rapperswil-Jona, Switzerland (2024); Stedelijk Museum Breda, NL (2024); Museum Kranenburg Bergen, NL (2022); Museum Het Valkhof, Nijmegen, NL (2022); Centraal Museum Utrecht, NL (2022); Het Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam, NL (2022); FOAM Photography Museum in Amsterdam, NL (2020); A Space Gallery, Toronto, CA (2020); Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, DE (2020); Centre Pompidou, Paris, FR (2019); Kunsthal Viborg, DK (2019); Art Wuzhen, CN (2019); Kasteel Oud – Rekem, BE (2019); Biennale of Sydney AU, (2017); Kröller Müller, Otterlo, NL (2016); Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, NL (2014); Casa Enscendida Madrid, ES (2012); Shanghai World Expo, CN (2010); MUHKA, Mechelen, BE (2009). Their films have been screened at various festivals including LAForum, Oberhausen FilmFest, Kassel Dokumentar und Filmfestival, Rencontres Paris Berlin at the Louvre, Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin, the New York Film Festival, International Documentary Festival Amsterdam, and the International Film Festival Rotterdam. The film ‘Establishing Eden’ was nominated for the 2016 IFFR Tiger Awards. In 2015, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam acquired the site-specific work ‘Ruins in Reverse’ (2015), specially made for the museum’s escalator. In 2022 Het Centraal Museum Utrecht acquired the work ‘Fix the Variable, Exclude the Accidental, Eliminate the Impure, Unravel the Tangled, Discover the Unknown’ (2021), which was specially made for the exhibition ‘The Botanical Revolution’. A public commission for the Noord Zuid Line Amsterdam led to a new work for the metro station in Amsterdam – Noorderpark: De Poorten van Noord (2018). Their work was presented at E22, Esch-Sur-Alzette, European Capital of Culture, Luxembourg.
