As a collaborative husband and wife artistic team, Hillerbrand+Magsamen draw upon the rich Fluxus practice of incorporating humour, performance, photography, video and everyday objects and expand their personal family situation into a contemporary art conversation about family dynamics, suburban life and American consumer excess. This new kind of “suburban fluxus” generates work that documents and re-contextualises our objects and possessions of self, family and culture, the role of the camera in contemporary art and challenges presumptions of the everyday.

In Higher Ground, commissioned by the Houston Airport System and the City of Houston, Hillerband+Magsamen embark with their children on an adventure to construct and fly a rocket ship to the moon by taking apart their suburban Texan home. The ambitious project was inspired by George Méliès landmark illusionistic film, “A Trip to the Moon”. This quirky and seemingly impossible task created out of cut up couches, duct-tape, Amazon boxes and pots and pans turns out to be not only achievable, but also believable. As the artist and their children pull apart and rummage around their home to build a spaceship, this cinematic odyssey references both the creativity and futility of the “American” experience.