Imaginary Spaces /
Imaginary Lives

M&A co-hosted a puppet show titled "Imagined Spaces/Imagined Lives" with The Manual Archives -- Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights (June 5,6 & 7 2009) at 8:00pm. Each night the fun started at Manual Archives on 3320 Sunset Blvd. with the first act of the night. Then a guided tour lead the audience to Materials & Applications for the finale. The series includes M&A supporters and local architects like Barbara Bestor and Ana Henton and M&A co-director Oliver Hess as well a motley crew of others. In fall 2007 you will no doubt remember Manual Archives partipated in our open conversation about starting your own art space. We finally intersected for this unique event.

Yelena Zhelezov collaborated with Oliver Hess to produce this unique puppet experience. Based loosely on how empirical investigations can still be important in scientific research and the scale and resonance of working in miniatures and their ability to amplify space and manipulate time. A contemplation of what it is to put on a puppet show to circulate a myth to reinforce humanism in the future efforts of scientific observation in such a technically mediated world. Yelena assembled the cast, made the puppets, and correographed the show while Oliver and his team made the island set. Oliver narrated and performed the pendulum. The show was such a success that the following year it was reproduced at LACMA for the EATLACMA show.

"Imagined Spaces/ Imagined Lives was a series of collaborations between architects and puppet theater artists. Ephemeral citizens inhabit impossible and impractical inventions. Building codes and zoning laws are dispensed with. Spacial hallucinations are investigated and architectural archeology is unearthed. These collaborations take the form of topographical maps, walking tours, puppet shows, installations and animated architectural models."

This event marked the finish of constructing the installation "Back to Basics." It is a coordinated effort to develop an installation without a design at the outset. A group of volunteers spent 2 months developing a shade system, a fish farm, and a new identity for the exhibition space. Back To Basics was open to the public through the summer of 2009. In November M&A hosted a closing party where we harvest our pescado and invited the neighborhood to have fish tacos with vegetables and fish raised in the installation.