Catalogue > Un extrait vidéo au hasard

Walt Disney’s film The Jungle Book(1967) and the 1894 book by Rudyard Kipling on which it is based are emblematic of Western imperialism, not only othering nature and animals, but also bearing colonial traces. This film by Lukács & Broersen, I Wan’na Be Like You, is named after the song of the same name from Disney's film. A ghostly figure appears and seduces the viewer with a dance and a song reminiscent of the song from The Jungle Book. The scene is set in a dilapidated glasshouse, a composite of several Western botanical gardens, a place where ‘exotic’ nature is tamed and studied for the scientific needs of mankind. A place where plant and tree species from colonised countries are othered and externalised. After its song and dance, the ghostly creature disappears to make way for the avatars of the Dutch Afro-Surinamese music group Black Harmony. They walk towards the greenhouse and confidently sing “Na mi”, “I am”, in their native language—a song that is their version of the Disney song.

Margit Lukács and Persijn Broersen are an artist duo based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. They are graduates of Graphic Design from the Rietveld Academy Amsterdam, followed by a MFA at Sandberg Institute Amsterdam. Furthermore they were artists in residence at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam (NL). Broersen and Lukacs explore in their work the connections between the histories of the relationship between culture and nature, rooted in their interest in media, music and technology. They interweave this with the politics of representing and appropriating nature, drawn from mythological, (art) historical, scientific and cinematic sources. Their work consists of films, installations and performances, in which the mythologies/origins of actual and fictional natural phenomenons are unraveled and retold from multiple perspectives. Their work has been exhibited in renowned institutions and organisations worldwide, a.o. Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (NL), MacKenzie Art Gallery (CA), arc en rêve (FR), Stedelijk Museum Breda (NL), Centraal Museum Utrecht (NL), FOAM (NL), MUHKA (BE), Centre Pompidou (FR), Breda Photo (NL), Cultural Capital City of Europe Esch (LU), HEK, Basel (CH), Kröller Müller (NL), WROBiennale, Wroclaw(PL), the Biennale of Sydney (AU), Rencontres Arles (FR), Wuzhen Biennial (CN). They represent the Netherlands at the Gwangju Biennale (KR) 2024