147 Devices for Integrated Principles

Big Medium presents 147 Devices for Integrated Principles by Hillerbrand+Magsamen, Kirk Lynn, and Peter Stopschinski featuring photography, video and sculpture and an interactive performance Zoom event.

Rooted in our society’s ever-growing desire to exercise control over our lives through various devices, 147 Devices for Integrated Principles is informed by the artists’ experiences during Hurricane Harvey. Prior to the storm, the artists were confronted with a need to prepare a “hurricane box” with devices such as batteries, canned food, toilet paper, and bottled water. As the hurricane passed, the water receded, and their lives started to return to normal, they realized that it was actually not returning to ‘normal’ – that the feeling of being overwhelmed by many external forces still existed. Not only was it the stress of a natural disaster, but also, divisive politics, economic pressures, and concerns with the aging of elderly parents, that brought Hillerbrand+Magsamen the idea to invent new devices for more intimate and personal problems. They turned to the concept of homo faber, or the notion that human beings can control their fate and their environment through tools. This turn of the century idea, a response to the Industrial Revolution, is as applicable today as it was then. Once again, our culture is faced with a new wave of technology that can either help us with our problems or exacerbate them.

Watch the interactive Virtual Performance lead by Mary and Stephan of Hillerbrand+Magsamen

Artist Statement

Hillerbrand+Magsamen is the collaboration of Stephan Hillerbrand and Mary Magsamen. Together they create sculpture, installation, performance, video, and photographic works they call “Suburban Fluxus”. Often including their two children in their work, Madeleine and Emmett, the family critiques and playfully scrutinizes contemporary suburban life.

Hillerbrand+Magsamen have presented their videos in international film and media festivals including Houston Cinema Arts Festival, London SciFi Film Festival, WAND V Stuttgarter Filmwinter, New York Underground Film Festival, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Boston Underground Film Festival, and MonkeyTown. Their cinematic based installations have been exhibited at the Everson Museum (Syracuse, NY), Center for Photography Woodstock (Woodstock, NY), Diffusion Photography Festival (Wales, UK), and Houston Center for Photography (Houston, TX).

They have received grants from Sustainable Arts Foundation, Austin Film Society, Experimental Television Center, Ohio Arts Council, Houston Arts Alliance, and Houston Center for Photography. Their project HIGHER GROUND was a commission from the Houston Airport System and received 1st prize from juror Richard Linklater in the CineSpace program at the Houston Cinema Arts Festival.

Hillerbrand+Magsamen has participated in residency programs including Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (New York, NY), Experimental Television Center (Owego, NY), Elsewhere (Greensboro, NC), Santa Fe Art Institute (Santa Fe, NM). Stephan Hillerbrand is a recipient of two Fulbright Fellowships (Germany) and MacDowell Colony (Peterborough, NH) residency.

Mary and Stephan live and work in Houston with their two children, Madeleine and Emmett. 

hillerbrandmagsamen.com

Kirk Lynn is a novelist and playwright living in Austin, TX with his wife, the poet Carrie Fountain, and their children, Olive and Judah. Kirk is one of five artistic directors of the Rude Mechs theatre collective. With the Rudes Kirk has written and adapted a bunch of plays, including Lipstick Traces, Method Gun, and Not Every Mountain, which will premiere in 2018 at the Guthrie in Minneapolis. Kirk has also written work for the Foundry Theatre and Playwrights Horizons, who produced Your Mother’s Copy of the Kama Sutra in 2014 and who commissioned a new piece, My Heart is a Library, Yours is a Museum, which is in development now. Kirk is working on a new commission for Seattle Children’s Theatre entitled, The Lamp is the Moon, about a girl who hates naps and wants to be an astronaut. Kirk is also working on a commission from UT Austin and Texas Performing Arts about Leonard Bernstein for his centenary in 2018. Kirk is developing a TV series for the Weinstein Co. And in 2015, Kirk’s debut novel, Rules for Werewolves was published by Melville House which is currently being adapted for the screen for Temple Hill Entertainment.

Peter Stopschinski has composed music/lyrics for New York Musicals Festival’s 2015 Winner Best in Show: The Calico Buffalo, string arrangements for Grupo Fantasma’s 2011 Grammy Award winning album El Existential, music for Madeleine George’s Off-Broadway play which was a finalist for the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in Drama: The Curious Case of the Watson Intelligence, and the 2016 film score for two-time Academy Award winning director Al Reinert’s film for PBS Rara Avis: The Life of John Audubon. His operas and musicals have been performed across the country from Arena Stage (DC) to Playwrights Horizons (NYC) to Center Theatre Group’s Kirk Douglas Theater (LA) to Gertrude Opera in Melbourne, AUS to La Mama (NYC). Peter is currently working on a new opera based on Terry Galloway’s one woman show Lardo Weeping that was commissioned by LOLA Opera and will be premiered in Austin, TX in Fall 2020. Peter has just finished a new experimental rock version of Verdi’s MacBeth for Gertrude Opera in Melbourne Australia which premiered in Ngambie Lakes Fall 2016 and will tour in the U.S. in 2019. In 2018 he produced and co-wrote several tracks on Basura, the album by the revolutionary transgender artist CHRISTEENE. In 2017 he released 50 albums (totaling 496 songs or more than 1.2 days) of his own music for free on his website. 

peterstopschinski.com

Press

01-26-21, Austin 360
See This Art: At Big Medium, devices to get you through any disaster

01-25-21, Glasstire
Five-Minute Tours: 147 Devices for Integrated Principles at Big Medium, Austin