Massimo Furlan / Numero23Prod.

Old Station Heroes

A project by Massimo Furlan for the Blickfelder Festival, Zürich, March 2006

This project is based on the “(love story) Superman” performance, created in Lausanne in April 2005 and further developed in Paris in September 2005 under the title “Superman Cosmic Green”. The aim of this project was to experiment with the embodiment of the heroic character of Superman using on an exteamly simple costume, available to the children we used to be: a blue pyjama, red underpants, red socks, and a red cape. We further worked with the typical postures of the hero: crossed arms, hands on the thies, flying positions, etc.
One of the characteristics and interests of this project is that those who embodied the hero were simple individuals (small, tall, skinny, fat) with nothing heroic. Further more several performers simoultanously faced the public, in identical costumes. The project was simoultanously extremely burlesque and profoundly humane. With “Old Station Heroes” we wanted to further pursue this research, with the embodiment of a single character by an important number of performers, old aged, and in a public space.

The heroic figure

What is a hero? What does Superman evoque? Superman is the only superhero who does not have human origins: he comes from elsewhere, his mission is to save the world – and America in particular -. He is an invention of nationalist propaganda, tainted with Christian values – Superman is an only child, sent by his father to act as redeemer. He was created at a time when society needed such a hero to project certain values. Superman is also the only hero who does not disguise himself. His attributes are his very essence, his costume his true identity. The costume is thus far more then a disguise.

Today we are witnesseing a comeback of the super heros of the 50s. Their recent versions multiply. In 2006 a new version of the film Supermann should be released. Furthermore, today, heroic figures are disseminated in all domains, among others sport and rock music. Advertisments show football players with supernatural powers, capable of shooting a ball around the earth. What interests us here is exactly the opposite: to unmask the mechanisms of heroism, to annul its powers, to show man loosing and lost.

The performers

We are not looking for professional actors, but simply people. People of old age who want to participate to the project in order to share an intense and comic experice. We do not demand any specific quality in the intepretation. It is enough to be what one is. We are looking for aproximatly 50 men aged over 65, around 70 (Superman’s character was created in 1934), thus giving the appearance of Superman having aged. We will mainly work on the issues of postures and immobility. What we want to show are a series of still images in the center of Zurich. We imagine a series of scenes rehearsed before hand, which would occur according to a precise scenario. The spectator would discover a multitude of Supermen scattered in the streets, the station, the cafés. We also want to work on the issue of age: to show tired bodies, which have grown old. To show a humorous image of Superman coming to terms with his age, at odds with the super hero’s image of eternal youth.