In this second iteration of The Ephemeralization Project, the history of Milton Keynes’s iconic concrete cows—a public art piece communally created under the direction of American artist Liz Leyh in the 1970s—features as a literally concrete expression of the tension between real and ideal when it comes to collective, creative expression in the midst of (and as a response to) material pressures stemming from war, migration, and other major shifts in a community’s structure, resources, population, and identity over time.

Amid a landscape of pastures and newly built roundabouts, the cows were initially created in response to a practical dilemma. They were envisioned, and then purpose-built, to become the landmark they still are today: a way for Liz’s friend, the writer Jack Trevor Story, to find his way home. At the time, both Liz and Jack were artists-in-residence at Stacey Hill Farm in Wolverton, UK, their residency supported by the Milton Keynes Development Corporation in the effort to establish a sense of creative possibility and identity for the UK’s first “new town.” Prior to 1967, when the “new town designation order” was first issued for Milton Keynes, the area consisted largely of undeveloped farmland. By the time Liz and Jack were living at the Stacey Hill Farm the region was something between country and city--with looping roundabouts and houses and businesses set purposefully back from the roads. The cows were born as a playful solution to Jack’s complaint that, because Milton Keynes was neither city or countryside, there was nothing to navigate by. Liz recalls: “So, I said something like, we couldn’t build him a city, but could perhaps try a countryside. Like add a few chickens or cows next to the roundabout, where you need to turn right….” Constructed over a period of two years by 100+ volunteers, the cows achieved instant notoriety and soon became synonymous with the area’s rapid controversial urban planning. So much so, that the cows were controversial at first—berated by some for their apparent complicity in promoting an image of a soul-less new concrete jungle where “even the cows are concrete.” They’ve since been adopted as the city’s unofficial mascot and, for their protection, have been relocated to the green pastures surrounding the Stacey Hill Farm—now the Milton Keynes Museum. Replicas, produced by artist Bill Billings, stand at the original site and are still visible when driving the M1 (connecting London to Leeds). Subject to numerous acts of vandalism over the years (most of them heartily condoned by Leyh), once kidnapped and held for ransom, once transported to the Venice Biennale, and countless times reproduced as the once infamous and now iconic image of the UK’s first new town, the cows have become a vital fixture within a continuously changing landscape.

Drawing on both oral and written accounts of the history both of the cows and of Milton Keynes, “The Ballad of the Concrete Cows” was written and performed by artist, historian, and traditional ballad singer, Jennifer Reid, on May 27, 2024. The song’s form, based on a 17th century broadside ballad structure, and its one-time performance on the grounds of the Stacey Hill Farm, reflect both the transition and overlay between oral and print cultures and between agricultural and industrial forms of labour. It offers a record—as well as a creative interrogation—of both the apparently abstract and the observably concrete forces at work in defining both art and community,