2009 | The MBC Rearranging Space | 10 minute 11 second video loop
In this piece, we build structures that are at once ordered and precarious, purposeful and purposeless. In the process, we rearrange the space in infinite ways, revealing the method by which humans often pack and unpack, arrange and rearrange space, construct and deconstruct, and build and rebuild following collapse. From the everyday to the metaphoric, this work is a consideration of human perseverance, industriousness, and the often ludicrous business in our everyday lives.
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.