Cow - The Udder Way

This performance-as-research output was a winning entry to the ‘Shrinking Cities: Reinventing Urbanism’ architecture and city planning competition (2005), produced by Kulturstiftung des Bundes (German Federal Cultural Foundation), in association with the magazine ‘archplus’.

The output was a 10-day live performance intervention in Liverpool; a resulting video installation subsequently toured internationally. Thomas, with co-choreographer Heidi Rustgaard, architects (Ulrike Steven, Eike Sindlinger, Gareth Morris), and a film-maker (Paul Cotter) experimented with live urban strategies. Together with 10 cows, they took up residence on various unused green areas along Park Street in Toxteth, Liverpool. The intervention focused on a core question: what to do with the ‘ground’ that becomes available if an urban population declines?

The competition’s theme was presented symbolically through a series of live performances. These explored diverse visions of self-preserving and self-supplying systems that enable different models of economic and strategic thinking, and ultimately the possibility of improved living environments for those forming part of this economy. The event encouraged people to share personal views of public space and its uses; in return, produce from the cows was freely given away to them. The work aimed to give an insight into the psychological constitution of inner city suburbia, its engagements with ‘common ground’ and its circuits of exchange.