Hillerbrand+Magsamen, the Houston-based art couple who mine their house and family life for video and performance material, have installed their newest video work at Houston George Bush Intercontinental Airport. The Houston Airport system and the City of Houston commissioned “Higher Ground,” a ten-minute video depicting “a crazy family building a 2 story rocket ship in their back yard out of the belongings from their house.”
The video follows a nuclear family, after it watches a NASA rocket launch on TV, who proceed to quietly and systematically disassemble their suburban ranch house and with the materials build an ad-hoc (and impressive!) space craft on their back lawn; they then all suit up in astronaut gear and launch into space. It’s charming. The video is installed in a customized display case in Terminal A. For more info and images, go here, and here.