2008 | The MBC @ The Gallery13 minute video loop
This work considers modes of exhibition (specifically the pedestal), traditional standards of exhibiting art, and the implied conformism of such standards. In video performance, the MBC appropriates pedestals, transforming them into cohorts in a series of video studies focusing on spontaneous movement, primary color, organic and inorganic shapes, and the relationship between the animate and the inanimate. Each video work became part of a larger video “quilt” of simultaneous, yet independent parts--a colorful, ecstatic display of patterned chaos, which was then projected onto one wall and several pedestals at the Kendall College Gallery.
The ManosBuckius Cooperative | General Statement
The MBC embraces purposelessness! Our aim is to energize a space with our activities, and suggest new interpretations for existing structures both in the social/political and environmental/architectural sense. Formalist aesthetics...patterned yet spontaneous movement...vibrant colors and actions…we are Jacques Tati meets DEVO.
Working as a team, we interact physically with everyday objects and technological devices by using them to perform unconventional, bizarre and highly non- productive tasks. The work proposes that everyday objects and technologies might be reinterpreted in absurd, playful, and strange ways, and that the nature of productivity and function be re-examined. This work questions levels of authority and control: are we in control of technology, our immediate environment, and institutional systems, or is the reverse true?
Our work has included photography, mediated performances (live-feed to video monitor or projector), live performance with projections, videos, video installation with projections, and video installation with sculpture. The MBC is particularly interested in spaces that offer a potential for site-specific work, and we are often drawn to irregular and notably compartmental areas or rooms. We work specifically to the confines of a space, and each space becomes heterotopic through the experience.