Let’s Get Married, 2008
Single channel or three channel video installation, trt 3:30

Let’s Get Married is a collaborative project between artist team of Magsamen + Hillerbrand and Austin playwright, Kirk Lynn based on the surrealist writings of Comte de Lautréamont.

In this video three people playfully construct and devour faces made out of bread, peanut butter and jelly. The images become chaotic as the audio of bees buzzing and a woman reciting lines that end with “peanut butter and jelly”. Another video plays beautifully lit pieces of bread that are being shuffled and organized.

This project was inspired by writing by Lautremont:
All my life I have seen narrow shouldered men, without exception, perform innumerable stupid actions, brutalize his fellows and poison minds by every conceivable means. Seeing these things I have desired to laugh and smile with the others, but this strange imitation was impossible for me. I have taken a knife and severed the flesh at the spots where the lips come together, cutting them into a smile. For a moment I thought to have accomplished my end. I looked into the mirror and inspected the mouth I had deliberately butchered. It was a mistake! The blood falling copiously from the two wounds made it impossible to distinguish whether this was really the smile of other men. But after several minutes of comparison I could see clearly that my smile in no way resembled human laughter: in other words, I was not laughing.